tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50600241623751064252024-03-14T06:59:50.854+01:00Maladets!En ny tid - en ny maladetsMaladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.comBlogger341125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-7704272789325544252013-07-24T19:02:00.000+02:002013-07-24T19:02:13.590+02:00Bulgaria is burningI have been planning to write something about the anti-governmental protest in Bulgaria for a while - after last night's events I feel I have to get it done.<br /><br />In February Sofia witnessed massive street protests against the government, initiated by expensive heating bills. The center-right-populist GERB government quickly resigned and called new elections. These elections were carried out on 12th of May. GERB got the largest vote, but was unable to form a government, thus a technocrat government was elected, dominated by BSP (socialist) and DPS (representing the Turkish minority).<br /><br />When the infamous media mogul (think a teenage Robert Murdoch) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/world/europe/after-political-appointment-in-bulgaria-rage-boils-over.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Delyan Peevski</a>, with an impressive and well known CV of murky business was appointed head of the State Agency for National Security, Sofia's streets were again filled with protesters, asking for the government to resign. <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=152300" target="_blank">Last night</a> (23/7 2013) protestors surrounded the parliament and prevented MP's from leaving, which lead to a night of tumultuous scenes, 2 injured policemen and 15 injured protesters. <br /><br />Judging from the <a href="http://btvnews.bg/bulgaria/obshtestvo/pod-obsada.html" target="_blank">TV scenes</a>, it seems that the police were far from controlling the situation, and that most of those hurt were innocent bystanders or doing non-violent resistance, for example sitting down in the way of vehicles. The number of injuries would have been way higher if the crowd had not showed an impressive self-restraint.<br /><a title="By Ivan Milev [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeptemvri_1925.jpg"><img width="512" alt="Septemvri 1925" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Septemvri_1925.jpg"/></a><br />The protests had so far been massive, with tens of thousands of people attending, peaceful and innovative - with arty flash mobs, coffee drinking, bike- and marathon protests. They have called for the resignation of the government, amends in the election law and expressed a general disdain for the Bulgarian political class in general, and more specifically the socialists, seen as non-reformed communists, decidedly pro-Russian.<br /><br />There has also been a strong emotional sentiment. I think many Bulgarians feel offended by the way the politicians did business-as-usual when appointing Peevski, at a time when Bulgarians expected a profound change for the better, and by the arrogant way the government has ignored the protest during the last month.<br /><br />As a left leaning European it would be tempting to connect this eruption of popular discontent with the anti-austerity protests showing up from time to time in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy. (And maybe even Tunisia and Egypt...) That is hardly true. Economic grievances have not been on the agenda in these protests, and when it is it is actually <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=152239" target="_blank">pro-austerity resistance against the government's budget proposal</a>.<br /><br />On the contrary, a very vocal group among the protesters have been <a href="http://www.extremecentrepoint.com/archives/335" target="_blank">right wing libertarians</a>. This has caused some bad blood and make someone like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D1%81-%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%8A%D1%80-%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BD/114474565231611" target="_blank">Petar Volgin</a>, one of the very few public left wing voices in Bulgaria condemn the protests. But it is more than obvious that the belief in Ayn Rand's fairy tale world is not enough to drive so many Bulgarians into the streets for so many days. This is a people that is angry, not a right wing coup, as some people complain.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=151957" target="_blank">Less leaning commentators</a> have connected the protests with those in Brazil and Turkey, and there is probably more to that theory. Just like in these countries, the protests in Bulgaria is dominated by young, well educated, middle class people in Sofia, even if they have a far wider support. They are people who live modern lives in states less modern, who have started to demand a state that is less corrupted and more reliable. <br /><br />Another all too obvious comparison is with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_revolutions" target="_blank">colour revolutions</a> in Ukraine, Georgia etc. during the 2000's. When I lived in Bulgaria in 2007 i told people about Moldova, and the Bulgarians asked me if Moldova hadn't yet had its colour revolution. Moldova did, and now the Bulgarians find themselves in the streets shouting "maffia!" at redressed communists who enjoy the spoils of private enterprise but are less sanguine about European values, or markets that actually work.<br /><br />The track record of the colour revolutions is not very inspiring - neither Ukraine, Moldova or Georgia is much closer to Europe or a real democracy now than they were in 2005 or 2000. But it is probably also a miscalculation by Bulgarians to stress the similarities between Bulgarian socialists and Yanukovich in Ukraine. Bulgaria is an EU member, and Russia could never play the role in Bulgaria that it can play in Ukraine. <br /><br />Moreover, the Bulgarian socialists may be throughout corrupted, but there is hard to see anything totalitarian about Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not facing a state that owns the oligarchs, as Russian dissidents do. <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=151977" target="_blank">They face a state that is owned by private business</a>, which is more like a perverted version of west European politics.<br /><br />Due to the violence yesterday the parliament is closed today, but tomorrow it will take up work again, and some sort of protests will most likely resume. Hopefully they will continue in the peaceful vein of the first 40 days. <br /><br />Will they succeed? Yes. No. And yes. I am convinced the government will eventually resign, probably after preparing their comeback with hand outs like economical benefits to the part of the electorate that is rather distanced from the protests in Sofia, that will suffer most from the next right wing government, be it GERB or some of the other parties that are more popular among the protesters. <br /><br />The political culture in Bulgaria will not be much different in 2015 from what it is now. If the oligarchic model is to be challenged, the economical interests of the oligarch's must be hurt, and to do that would take a more vigilant grass root political environment, running their own parties, their own media. It will take time, but the protesters have so far shown a lot of persistence.<br /><br />So yes... After these protests, Bulgaria will not be the same, even if the politicians are. Whatever happens after the resignation of the government, many of those that are currently in the streets will feel that there are more steps to be taken. Petar Volgin has lamented the lack of an intellectual left in Bulgaria, but it might just be the birth of it that we are witnessing now. In the streets people come together in a decidedly un-libertarian act of political action. They are fighting for their society, and when the first obstacle - the government, is overcome, they will continue to fight for it. Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-87189426085878448602012-12-26T10:23:00.000+01:002012-12-26T10:23:13.685+01:00Of fiscal and other cliffs<br />
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Most likely American politicians will reach a deal that prevents the country from going over the so called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/us/politics/obama-returning-to-washington-to-seek-fiscal-deal.html?hp&_r=0" target="_blank">fiscal cliff</a>, and most likely they will do it as late as possible. This is all part of the political theatre. Invent a problem, describe it as a matter of economic survival, and solve it half an hour before deadline in an all night meeting with no journalists present.<br />
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARocky_Cliff_with_Stormy_Sea_Cornwall-William_Trost_Richards-1902.jpg" title="William Trost Richards [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Rocky Cliff with Stormy Sea Cornwall-William Trost Richards-1902" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Rocky_Cliff_with_Stormy_Sea_Cornwall-William_Trost_Richards-1902.jpg/512px-Rocky_Cliff_with_Stormy_Sea_Cornwall-William_Trost_Richards-1902.jpg" width="512" /></a><br />
In deed, there are real problems to solve. There is climate change. A war in Syria. An economy that no one is content with. Not all world citizens have access to clean water - others still have o access to education. But "the fiscal cliff"? Unlike these other problems it does not correspond to anything happening in the real world - it is a problem invented by US politicians, it would be rather disappointing if they can not even solve that.<br />
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It is easy to criticize politicians. But maybe the problem is not that they are not doing their job, but that they are nothing but human? Maybe it is the curse of humanity that we can only solve the problems we have invented (not the one we have caused) - on an individual as well as societal scale. We are apt at resolving quarrels with friends that were not really about anything at all, but quite unable to deal with facts beyond our own making, e.g. our own death. Similarly, society is better at solving problems related to traffic - a system invented by us, than problems relating to matters beyond our control, like some historical - or environmental issues.<br />
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If so... it would mean that we can expect from politicians to solve the fiscal cliff (and maybe ask them not to invent another one), and blame them for all those kids who don't go to school. But on the other issues, clean water and climate change, we can not expect human solutions. We have no choice but trusting our faith and good luck.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Pleven, Bulgaria43.4170423 24.6066846999999643.3247783 24.445323199999958 43.5093063 24.768046199999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-19480011424837476582012-11-06T20:10:00.000+01:002012-11-06T20:15:12.292+01:00No arson on VitoshaThe Bulgarian police has investigated whether arson was behind last summer's fires on Vitosha Mountain, and found no one guilty, <a href="http://www.segabg.com/article.php?id=621732#.UI4x-h3_A55.blogger">SEGA</a> [<a href="http://spasi-vitosha.blogspot.se/2012/10/blog-post_29.html">Spasi Vitosha</a>] reports.<br />
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<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIncendie_Granville_1793.JPG" title="By Jean-François Hue (Historial de la Vendée, Les Lucs sur Boulogne) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Incendie Granville 1793" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Incendie_Granville_1793.JPG/512px-Incendie_Granville_1793.JPG" width="512" /></a>
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Suspicion about arson have circulated since days after the fires. The fires erupted in an area seldom visited by tourists, so it was unlikely that a visitor would have lit it by mistake. But the police have now gone through material filmed from helicopters, seeing no signs of anyone at all, even though an arsonist would need quite some time to get from the spot.<br />
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This is hardly compelling evidence, but it is still worrying. Bulgaria, as the rest of the Balkans did endure an extremely hot summer due to climate change, and if this fire erupted without human interference, more fires is a likely scenario to play out in the years ahead.<br />
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In the wake of Hurricane Sandy I would like to add that whereas climatologists are <a href="http://effektmagasin.se/orkaner-och-klimat-sandy-orkaner">not so certain that global warming causes hurricanes, there is no doubt that global warming will lead to more draught and floods.</a><br />
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Also in Sweden the last summer has been discussed this week in <a href="http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=5330931">the public radio</a>. It was extremely wet, which made some farmers suffer, while others saw record harvests. Again - it is not proven that climate change leads to more hurricanes, but certain that it will change rain patterns.<br />
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I think this illustrate how climate change will be a very different experience in different places. To some Europeans it will mean dangerous events like wildfires and floods, to some it will mean that some places for growing potatoes will have to be abandoned for others. <br />
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The second scenario, which is more likely for Sweden is probably a whole lot easier to live with, and would so be if we ate only potatoes. But the true impact on Sweden will come not from extreme events, but from disruptions of global supply chains in other countries.<br />
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<a href="http://www.overgas.bg/image/journal/article?img_id=91347&t=1348833497637" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
To round off, I couldn't help but laughing at this commercial, visible next to the article in SEGA. <br />
<a href="http://www.overgas.bg/image/journal/article?img_id=91347&t=1348833497637" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="70" src="http://www.overgas.bg/image/journal/article?img_id=91347&t=1348833497637" width="400" /></a><br />
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Santa Claus in a sun chair... the airplane exhausts say "nothing's wrong". Quite a telling picture of what climate change will look like. The irony is not lessened from the fact that the ad is for an oil company - <a href="http://overgas.bg/">Overgas</a><br />
Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Råbyvägen 15F, 224 57 Lund, Sweden55.696163893908825 13.2055664062555.121196893908824 11.94213890625 56.271130893908825 14.46899390625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-77863535917105657952012-09-21T20:11:00.001+02:002012-09-21T20:11:22.253+02:00Mocking Muhammed, mercy for Middleton <p>When asked about his opinions about western civilization, Gandhi is said to have answered - <a href="http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/will/CPP/gandhi.html"><em>I think it would be a good idea</em></a>. A hundred years later, I agree. We should in deed try something like that. But it is still to be seen.</p>
<p>The last week has been revealing about the deeply hypocritical stance he so called western world takes on freedom of speech. Whereas it is deemed a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/09/2012919103357864641.html">constitutional right to mock the prophet Muhammad</a>, it is <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/09/201291810393369479.html">criminal</a> to publish pictures of the English princess Katie Middleton's tits. I do think both ideas are in deed sensational and unworthy of attention - what I find provoking is the difference in how the matters are handled.</p>
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<a title="By Ishâq al-Nishâpûrî [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArriv%C3%A9e_de_Mahomet_%C3%A0_La_Mecque-Ish%C3%A2q_al-Nish%C3%A2p%C3%BBr%C3%AE-1581.jpg"><img width="256" alt="Arrivée de Mahomet à La Mecque-Ishâq al-Nishâpûrî-1581" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Arriv%C3%A9e_de_Mahomet_%C3%A0_La_Mecque-Ish%C3%A2q_al-Nish%C3%A2p%C3%BBr%C3%AE-1581.jpg"/></a>
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<p>Caricatures of Muhammad has become a quite boring tradition in western news outlets, as have the predictable response in Muslim countries. The way most people seem to deal with these caricatures is like this: It is bad taste, but the point of free speech is that bad taste is not illegal, therefore it is up to editors, not censors, to decide what to publish or not to publish. I completely agree. I do not think it should be illegal to publish caricatures of Muhammad. </p>
<p>But these caricatures should be discussed, as all published should. It is not really the same thing as Monthy Pyton did in Life of Brian, when Jesus was caricatured. First of all, one can notice that Monthy Pyton are quite kind on Jesus himself - what makes the film humorous is that one recognize modern power in the Romans, modern left wing extremism in the various Jewish liberation fronts etc. As all literature, it is a comment on the time in which it was written.</p>
<p>I guess the same is valid for Muhammad caricatures - they do comment something in the world we live in, presumably a political correctness that taboos criticism against minorities. Is there such a political correctness? I am not sure. What I see, living in a Swedish town with many Muslims, is that Muslims are discriminated against in almost everything except legislation.</p>
<p>There is also a rather murky side of this business. One has the feeling that there is some kind of hatred against Muslims hiding behind the freedom of speech, and sometimes such suspicions are confirmed. As when Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist mainly known for his Muhammad caricatures appeared on an extreme right convention about islamization in the US.</p>
<p>Still. Freedom of speech is important, and in a troubled democracy like ours it is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, Muhammad caricatures should be discussed, but not banned.</p>
<p>Which is why it is equally important that topless pictures of royalties are not banned. On the whole, I can not get what is so provoking with topless pictures. We all knew that Katie had tits, right? And in case she thinks it is a great deal, she does not need to go out topless on the French riviera in the first place. That is a life she has chosen, a life that includes papparazis, so live with it.</p>
<p>Here I feel much more alone, though. Most people seem to regard this as an issue of privacy, not free speech. And that the News of the World debacle has made the press wary. Please, it is quite different to steal phone numbers from crime victims than photographing people who have chosen a public life in situations they did not choose. It is very bad taste, of course, but then again - is not the whole point with free speech that bad taste?</p>
<p>I think sheds light on how our society uses different rules for different people. We like to pride ourselves of our liberalism and humanism, but the reality is, like Gandhi said, that the western world has never been able to behave in a civilized manner.</p>
Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund, Sweden55.7046601 13.191007355.633085099999995 13.0330788 55.7762351 13.348935800000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-33230300070279380762012-08-16T21:29:00.000+02:002012-08-16T21:30:05.974+02:00The Banana Monarchy<p>You know it already - Sweden wanted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange">Julian Assange</a> extradited from the UK to charge him for sexual harassment. The UK agrees, and mr. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. In the background lurks the US - the charges against Assange appeared less than two weeks after Assange had published chunks of classified US diplomatic cables. The US wowed to take revenge, but since Assange is not yet imprisoned, Bradley Manning - the true hero of this story - is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/bradley-manning-military-code-lawyer">tortured</a> in stead.<p>
<p>This afternoon <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/16/julian-assange-political-asylum-ecuador">Ecuador has granted Assange asylum</a>, and moreover accused Sweden of having a politicized juridical system, which of course has caused a lot of furore in this haven of hypocrisy. Our foreign minister Carl Bildt who is known not only to bring peace to the Balkans but also to bring death and destruction to Sudan and Ethiopia through his oil business, <a href="https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/236141401295945729">tweeted</a> angrily about it. Not that I take his tweet much more seriously than <a href="https://twitter.com/HSMPress">al Shabaab's</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/MedvedevRussia">Dimitry Medvedev's</a>. I bet they are all friends on Facebook.</p>
<p>Please note: I do not believe that Julian Assange has harassed anyone and should get away with it. I do find the allegations against him ridiculous, and I fully agree with the Ecuadorian analysis of our juridical system. Sweden is working on behalf of the US. Most countries who show this degree of dependency are called banana republics, but since are proud to sport a royal house, Sweden must be classified as a <em>banana monarchy</em>.</p>
<a title="Titian [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATizian_093.jpg"><img width="256" alt="Tizian 093" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Tizian_093.jpg/256px-Tizian_093.jpg"/></a>
<p>According to the attorney, Assange during a brief stay in Sweden stayed in some female aquintancies' apartment, and coerced at least one woman into having sex against her wishes. A truly disgraceful behavior, true, but do not think it is illegal in Sweden, unless you are wanted by the US. There have been several cases during the last year where our highest judiciary signalizes one thing - men's violence against women is not a crime. <em>Hovrätten</em> is the highest juridical instance for this type of crimes in Sweden and its judgings are considered predicative.(Links below are in Swedish)</p>
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<li>In <a href="http://www.sydsvenskan.se/malmo/inget-skadestand-till-flickan-ndash-inte-tillrackligt-krankt/">February 2011</a> four men, four men who had been convicted at lower court for prostituting a 14 year old girl had their sentences amended - two of them were freed. The girl got no compensation whatsoever.</li>
<li>In a case from <a href="http://www.sydsvenskan.se/lund/hovratten-sankte-straff-for-sexbrott/">2005</a> which is more similar to the allegations against Assange, a 40 year old man also got a leaner sentence in the <em>Hovrätten</em> than in lower courts, for sexually abusing a 13 year old girl. Specifically, the <em>Hovrätten</em> did not want to charge him with rape, but with sexual harassment, and lowered the compensation to the girl.</li>
<li>Earlier this year two men were found guilty of luring women from Romania to Sweden to prostitute them here, but alas <a href="http://www.expressen.se/kvp/hovratten-sanker-straff-i-koppleriharvan/">the Hovrätt did not find it proper to call it trafficking</a>. These men were sentenced with 9 months and 2 years in jail.</li>
<li>Ultimately, a patriarchal society rests on a reliable hierarchy within the family - a <a href="http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/hogg-sambon-med-samurajsvard---far-straffet-sankt/">drunk paterfamilias</a> attacked his woman with a Samurai sword and almost took her life. Not enough to charge him with murder, said the Hovrätt and lowered his sentence form 8 to 5 years in jail. This happened earlier this year.</li>
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<p>In this context, what sentence would a crime like the one Assange is accused of get? If found guilty he would maybe have to pay a few thousand Euros in compensation - after all the victim is neither trafficked, nor under aged or anything, and he didn't use a samurai sword to get into her pants.</p>
<p>The thought that any Swedish man would be searched for abroad for a crime that our judiciary finds so utterly unimportant is ridiculous. And quite frankly I would be glad if the resources spent on trying to convict Assange were spent on some other male suppressing women around him. They are not so hard to find, actually. There must be some other reason Sweden wants him extradited.</p>
<p>And what reason might that be? Ask Bradley Manning, who is bearing Assange's cross. The US wants him, of course. But our media are so lame. Ecuador have publicly stated that they have asked both Sweden and the UK for guarantees that Assange is not extradited to a third part. Carl Bildt did not comment on that, and no reporter made him say if Sweden has received such a proposal, if it has denied it and why, if that is the case.</p>
<p>All in all, it is a pretty nice example of the decay in morals and politics in Sweden. If Julian Assange should go to court, he should at least be allowed to do it in a country with a working judiciary.</p>
Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-22804970446775784342012-08-05T21:39:00.000+02:002012-08-05T21:39:22.914+02:00Naivities and failing empiresWhile making a raspberry tartellette, I was listening to an interesting but slightly enervating discussion on the public Swedish radio about private security firms. The most (in)famous such firm is the American <a href="http://academi.com/">Academi</a> , formerly known as Blackwater and known for doing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi#Litigation_over_actions_in_Iraq">dirty work</a> for the Americans in Iraq. But there are several other firms, also Swedish.<br />
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To sum up what was said in the discussion: such firms do work that the state has not resources to do, e.g. protect NGO's, which is a good thing, but they do wage violence in the name of the state beyond any political control and compete with the national armies for competent staff, which is bad. All of this is something that is almost never discussed in public. <br />
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What struck me most about the discussion was the lack of any historical perspective, and the naivety about our democracy.<br />
<a title="See page for author [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABashi-bazouk_Ottoman_Postcard.jpg"><img width="512" alt="Bashi-bazouk Ottoman Postcard" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Bashi-bazouk_Ottoman_Postcard.jpg"/></a>
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First history. Are these firms a neo-liberal phenomenon, typical for our time? Not so much. Outsourcing violence has been, and is being done done before in many different contexts. Who is doing the massacres in Syria? Not the Syrian army but the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha">Shabiha</a> militia. Shabiha is a pretty new name - a few years ago it was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janjaweed">Janjaweed</a> militia that were talked about. Almost 150 years ago, when the Ottoman empire was unraveling, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashi-bazouk">Bashi-bazouk</a> were famous for brutality against Christians on the Balkans, notably <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak_massacre">the Batak massacre</a> in Bulgaria.<br />
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The Wikipedia article on Bashi-bazouk notes that "Although Turkish armies always contained <i>bashi-bazouk</i> adventurers as well as regular soldiers, the strain on the Ottoman <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal_system" title="Feudal system">feudal system</a> caused mainly by the Empire's wide expanse required heavier reliance on irregular soldiers".<br />
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I believe this is the key insight - when states and empires crumble, as the US and Syria are today, they are forced to rely more heavily on irregular forces. When the Ottomans conquered the Balkans they did it with a very loyal force of Jannisaries, controlled directly by the Sultan. When they lost it they did it with self-sufficient Bashi-bazouks. Which of course undermines the very essence of the state - its monopoly on violence.<br />
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Thus, the rise of private security firms, is a strong indicator of an empire in decline. And these days anyone can see that the West's grip on the world is weakening.<br />
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So much about history. Then there was the naivety. It is true that the outsourcing of violence is a democratic problem. But it is not strange that it is not discussed. Since when do we discuss fundamental issues? When did you last see a government official including climate change and peak oil in economic forecasts? Still the same politicians will acknowledge these problems when discussing environmental policies. We live in a state of official denial about the future of civilisation, so why on earth would we discuss this matter?<br />
<br />Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Råbyvägen 15, 224 57 Lund, Sweden55.6960823 13.203665555.6938453 13.19873 55.6983193 13.208601tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-15953832428813002332012-07-03T21:50:00.001+02:002012-07-03T21:50:26.933+02:00When I am writing this I am aware of three areas struck with wild fires - in the <a href="http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/news/colorado/ci_20994853/waldo-canyon-fire-fight-seeing-success-near-colorado">US</a>, in <a href="http://www.euronews.com/2012/07/03/pilot-dies-in-battle-to-control-spanish-wildfires/">Spain</a>, and in <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=140901">Bulgaria</a>. I suspect there are many more that I do not know about. And for sure, there are many more to come.<br />
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<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJohan_Christian_Clausen_Dahl_Waldbrand_1846.jpg" title="Johan Christian Dahl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Johan Christian Clausen Dahl Waldbrand 1846" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Johan_Christian_Clausen_Dahl_Waldbrand_1846.jpg/512px-Johan_Christian_Clausen_Dahl_Waldbrand_1846.jpg" width="512" /></a>
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Climate change has been hotly debated for several years, and anyone who has read an article about it will know that more, and more intense, wildfires is one out of many predictable effects of a warmer atmosphere. Other predictable effects are fiercer storms, droughts and floods.<br />
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The key fact is that warm air holds more vapour than cold air. That means it will rain more seldom, but more intense when the rain falls. Some places are flooded, while others remain dry.<br />
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The key insight is that weather has always been potentially extreme. On a certain location at a certain time, there is always a potential for extreme weather. A warmer climate does no bring any new events - it simply changes the likelihood of them to occur.<br />
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But given that the world is now somewhere around <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/">0.6<span id="goog_2070168119"></span><span id="goog_2070168120"></span></a> degrees warmer than it was 30 years ago, and given the immense damage caused by events like the wildfires in Colorado, it is very relevant to ask to what extent these events are due to warmer weather.<br />
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Scientists and activists who have been saying this for years of course make this connection. And you can find journalists in regional newspapers. But you will search in vain for a discussion of climate change in connection with real world events in major news outlets like CNN or NY Times.<br />
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This would make sense if CNN and NY Times rejected the idea that warmer temperatures affect the weather, but, alas, you can find several articles describing the effects of climate change on these sites.<br />
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How can an article that <i>predicts</i> that climate change will give more wildfires, not be referred to when wildfires do appear?<br />
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It's the politics, stupid. One could easily imagine the loathsome comments to a NY Times article about wildfires that even hinted at climate change. It would be highly controversial.<br />
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But if we let such bigotry stand in the way of discussing climate change when it happens, how could we ever manage to deal with it? Well... it is like that. We can't. <br />
<br />Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Råbyvägen 15L, 224 57 Lund, Sweden55.695438298536146 13.20470809936523455.690963798536146 13.194837599365234 55.699912798536147 13.214578599365234tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-47989827398482051672012-03-20T19:03:00.000+01:002012-03-20T19:03:39.997+01:00Potato potato - Greek crisis breeds Permaculture and Marx is proven right (again)I am about to start a course in Permaculture design, and am trying to read up on the topic. So I was thrilled to see Permaculture ideas in action in crisis-struck Greece. <br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture">Permaculture</a> is an attempt to answer the fundamental issues of our time in a coherent way - how can we live without depleting the Earth's resources. Be it oil, phosphorus, benign climate conditions or top soil - if we keep on the current trajectory, it will be very hard to generate food enough to feed humanity 50 years form now.<br />
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How could we arrange things differently? The answer that Permaculture gives is that since gardening is an incredibly efficient way to produce food, we must base our food consumption on local gardening, not global monoculture agriculture and food chains.<br />
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVictor_Gabriel_Gilbert_Gardening.jpg" title="By Victor Gabriel Gilbert [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Victor Gabriel Gilbert Gardening" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Victor_Gabriel_Gilbert_Gardening.jpg/256px-Victor_Gabriel_Gilbert_Gardening.jpg" width="256" /></a><br />
What can not be produced in the consumers own gardens, will have to be bought on the market of course. But it will be bought by nearby farmers, with a relation to the consumers.<br />
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Traditionally, high costs of transportation made it more profitable to sell potatoes to your neighbour than to foreign citizens. Today, there are a number of initiatives to achieve this. One is that customers "subscribe" to a farmers produce, pay a bill and receive a certain amount of potatoes each Friday.<br />
Another is that a number of consumers get together and do the farming themselves and share the produce. Hopefully that will not be so much work per participant.<br />
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A third way is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture">CSA - community supported agriculture</a>. Wikipedia defines CSA as "a particular network or association of individuals who have pledged to
support one or more local farms, with growers and consumers sharing the
risks and benefits of food production".<br />
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I very much think that this is how we will get our food in the near future, so I have been browsing for similar projects in Sweden. There are some, run by idealists, but it is still a very new movement. In other places it is already becoming the norm.<br />
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The Guardian is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/mar/18/greece-breadline-potato-movement-farmers?newsfeed=true">reporting</a> that a new movement is taking shape in Greece, where local authorities help linking local farmers with local consumers. Buyers and sellers then get together at local fairs and exchange goods and money. Farmers get paid instantly, and consumers get food much cheaper than in the Supermarket.<br />
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APotato_Diggers.jpg" title="Constantin Meunier [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Potato Diggers" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Potato_Diggers.jpg/512px-Potato_Diggers.jpg" width="512" /></a><br />
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The Greek potato movement could be an idea straight from a Permaculture textbook. But as Marx would have pointed out - this revolution is not created by idealist radicals, but by the grim realities of a capitalist crisis. Permaculture is a very non-Marxist movement, emphasising individual life style choices over political action and ignorant of social classes. But I think Marx fundamental analysis - that the ideas do not become real because they are good, but because they are economically necessary is right. Fortunately, Permaculture might be such an idea.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com3Lund, Sweden55.7046601 13.191007355.6688726 13.112043300000002 55.740447599999996 13.2699713tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-59808297228313145232012-03-13T16:56:00.000+01:002012-03-13T16:56:02.689+01:00The New BreadAs a student of history, I once learned that most revolutions started as bread riots, and that there was no thing as sure to spark unrest as a spike in bread prices.<br />
<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABread_riots_in_St_Helier_Jersey_Channel_Islands_1847.jpg" title="By Mikebisson [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Bread riots in St Helier Jersey Channel Islands 1847" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Bread_riots_in_St_Helier_Jersey_Channel_Islands_1847.jpg" width="256" /></a>
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(Bread riot in the UK, 1847) <br />
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Living in Bulgaria the role of bread struck me. In a country where almost nothing was regulated, the price of bread was a matter of political discussion, and had recently been strictly regulated. Not so strange in an economical context where people had nothing but bread, and increased bread prices meant starvation.<br />
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Bulgaria has not left that economical paradigm behind <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/201111201060321427.html">completely</a> - many people still live hand to mouth and precariously close to starvation. But for many Bulgarians this world is a fading memory. For these Bulgarians, as for Swedes, the price of bread has very little to do with your actual quality of life.<br />
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The central role of bread has diminished. Just as it was the life blood of an agrarian society, it has been replaced with the life blood of modern society - oil, or on the consumer market gas.<br />
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And just as bread prices once did spark activism - so is gas prices doing now. In Bulgaria, as well as in several other countries. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=protest+gas+prises&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=protest+gas+prices&hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=Sp9&channel=fs&prmd=imvns&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&ei=cWNfT_qLF-Kg4gTK1_XeBw&ved=0CAsQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=accae0551d0d718b&biw=939&bih=417">Searching Google News</a> for "protest gas prices" in the last week, gives articles about Bulgaria, the UK, the US, Lebanon, Yemen, Indonesia... that is just the first page with search results.<br />
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It is hard to imagine that a problem that strikes consumers in all these countries is caused by the national government. A more likely culprit would be the oil price, that will be the same in Lebanon as well as in Liechtenstein. When writing this a barrel of WTI costs 106 USD, and a barrel of Brent 125 USD.<br />
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But of course, it would be more convenient if the politicians could fix this. That is even what the Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21537932">hoped for</a> in their New Years issue.<br />
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My guess is that they would if they could, but that the price of gas is outside of their control. Such a pity that everything we consumed is transported with the use of oil, and that expensive oil will make everything else expensive. Including the price of bread.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund, Sweden55.7046601 13.191007355.6688726 13.112043300000002 55.740447599999996 13.2699713tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-14665791324566223642012-01-04T18:35:00.000+01:002012-01-04T18:35:04.162+01:00The eternal crisis<p><em>Humanity has become its own greatest enemy. We have made progress, and improved the lives of millions, but at a high price. Our progress has been economical, not spiritual. We have chosen to exploit the earth, rather than to learn to live with it. We have pursued profit up to a point where we are depleted of resources, and not only those profits but our very survival is threatened.</em></p>
<p>These words are my own, and they all ring true to me. It is not a controversial statement - it is a more or less well formulated sum up of what ecologism stand for in today's debate.</p>
<p>Empirical data seems to support such a vision - no other animal has ever treathened Homo Sapiens. In the first quarter of 2010, <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013">314,7 mn mobile phones were sold</a>, which indicates the enormous scope of economic development. In spite of this, no one would argue that art or litterature has reached a higher level of development. As for how we treat the earth, think about <a href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/01/03/bangladesh-titas-is-the-name-of-a-murdered-river/">the river Titas in Bangladesh</a> or deforestation in the Amazon (or are we <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295830">bettering</a>?). Where there ain't much rubber left, anymore. In stead we have to make rubber from petroleum products. I guess you haven't missed <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php">we are running out of oil</a>? It is hard to see how we will live in a world without oil, even harder in one <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/limiting-global-temperature-rise-to-2-degrees-now-looks-impossible/18761/">more than two degrees warmer</a>, the scenario that we should get used to.</p>
<p><a title="By Pearson Scott Foresman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGlacier_930_(PSF).png"><img width="512" alt="Glacier 930 (PSF)" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Glacier_930_%28PSF%29.png/512px-Glacier_930_%28PSF%29.png"/></a></p>
<p>The odd thing is that writing this feels relevant. A few years ago, when I was competition-blogging about climate change, I could easily have written something like this and being praised for it. But it is an old story, and should be so even to my grandmother. Earlier today I finished a neat litte book by the Swedish writer <a href="http://www.elinwagner.se/english.html">Elin Wägner</a> - Fred med Jorden. Where she writes exactly the same thing. The book as written during the second world war. But the same idea, clad in better words, is easy to locate also in Gandhi's or Tolstoj's writings from the late 19th century.</p>
<p>Isn't is strange, how we can live a hundred year under an immidate threat to our existence? It is easy to think that the ecological question is maybe not so urgent after all, if we have managed so well until now. On the other hand a friend just yesterday told me how fast he had seen the glaciers in the Alps dissapearing, and there is a lot of hands-on <a href="http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/">information</a> about the loss of ice in the arctic and antarctic regions as well. To presume that a world without ice will be a similar word seems to contradict physics.</p>
<p>Well, maybe there will come out something from the Large Hadron Collider that changes all we know about physics, and explains why ecological crises do not really affect us.</p>
<p>Or maybe this is a political question, as much as one about science. Maybe it is about the clash of two ideologies - one seeing man as master of the universe, and the other one seeing man as a species among others. A clash that has been raging since the beginnings of industrial society.</p>
<p>That is almost certainly a valid description of reality. Somewhere out there there is a reality - less ice and less life, but it is interpretated through our pre-determined minds. I guess that is why we can not really discuss climate change, or environment politics - such topics are most often perceived either as political correctness or as ill-guided radicalism.</p>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-59492101656782468612011-12-31T10:12:00.000+01:002011-12-31T10:12:49.079+01:00The world in 2012The climate in 2012
I am traveling to Bulgaria to celebrate New Year Eve and since I calculated to spend six hours traveling I got myself a copy of <a href="http://www.economist.com/theworldin/2012">The Economist's The World in 2012</a>. 24 hours later I am still traveling and so i could read it twice if I wanted.
Which I might. The Economist is one of my favorite English language publications, and I am a big fan of the way the combine insight with a great prose. This time I feel a little let down.
The 2011 I lived through was a year not so much of politics as of deep transformations. It was climate change, peak oil and <a href="http://occupywallst.org/">#occupywallstreet</a>. We have yet to see what comes out of that movement, and I did not expect the Economist to sympathize with a movement saying that the interest of 1% is contrary to that of 99%. But I was eager to read some analysis of the return of street politics in the western world. There was none, just a one sentence speculation that US Left wing populism might gt violent in 2012. Did they use a NYPD white shirt officer to edit the paper, or what?<br />
<a title='Ilya Yefimovich Repin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADemonstration_on_October_17%2C_1905_by_Ilya_Repin_(adumbration_1906).jpg'><img width='400' alt='Demonstration on October 17, 1905 by Ilya Repin (adumbration 1906)' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Demonstration_on_October_17%2C_1905_by_Ilya_Repin_%28adumbration_1906%29.jpg/800px-Demonstration_on_October_17%2C_1905_by_Ilya_Repin_%28adumbration_1906%29.jpg'/></a>
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Peak Oil is discussed in one article, that actually hopes that OPEC will use its influence to lower oil prices and boost global growth. Are there people at the Economist who actually believe that the current oil prices are inflated by greedy sheiks? During my 2011 countries like <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/02/09/207484/wikileaks-peak-oil-saudi-arabia-reserves-overstated/">Saudi Arabia struggled to meet demand</a>, and will continue to do so in 2012.
As for climate change, the treatment of the issue was disheartening. The buzz phrase was sprinkled over the text were appropriate, but in every occasion described as a political choice, e.g. what will it mean for UK politics when the government tries to curb co2 emissions?
That is a valid question, of course, but not at all what I expected from the Economist. If someone accepts climate change as a reality, it is also clear that it will have tremendous effect on all kinds of social and economical life. <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/tech/hard-disk-drive-shortage-hits-manufacturers-retailers-and-you-140412.html">Floods might disrupt industries</a>, or new crops can become profitable. An initiated analysis of how climate change will affect the global economy would be among the most relevant reading right now. How sad that the Economist fails to deliver that.
The writers seem to presume that business and politics can exist somehow independently of the physical world they exist in, something that they know very well is not true. But I guess some graphs predictions about how severe weather will affect the US economy would cause furore, and anger the papers' readership. In publishing, you give the people what the people wants.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Budapest, Hungary47.4984056 19.040757847.3267646 18.7249008 47.6700466 19.356614800000003tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-71351859570760542132011-12-28T23:32:00.000+01:002011-12-28T23:42:01.393+01:00Climate change arrives in Sweden2011 is likely to go to history as the year that the New Climate started affecting Sweden. Not only has this Christmas been <a href="http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/en-av-de-varmaste-jularna_6735079.svd">one of the warmest ever</a> - insurance costs caused by extreme weather was <a href="http://di.se/Default.aspx?pid=254710__ArticlePageProvider&epslanguage=sv&referrer=">up 18%</a> since last year according to the local insurance industry. A spokesman for the insurers explains that climate change will mean more extreme weather, with increased prices for insurances as a result. <br />
<a title='Cornelius Krieghoff [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Passing_Storm%2C_Saint-Ferr%C3%A9ol_-_Cornelius_Krieghoff.jpg'><img width='400' alt='The Passing Storm, Saint-Ferréol - Cornelius Krieghoff' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/The_Passing_Storm%2C_Saint-Ferr%C3%A9ol_-_Cornelius_Krieghoff.jpg'/></a>
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<p>The insurance industry has for a long time been the great hope of many industrialists, including <a href="http://maladets.blogspot.com/2011/07/c-word.html">me</a>. Not because an inherent goodness - this industry is probably as controlled by greed as any other. Which is what makes insurance companies interesting - they are set to lose a lot of money from more volatile weather, and have a strict vested interest in combating climate change.</p>
<p>It is nice to see the Swedish insurers out of the closet - hopefully they can lend some weight to environmentalists demands for more robust climate politics. I have a secret dream that they would actually use their power and refuse to insure companies that work against them - like oil drilling companies. BP would not exist today if <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon">Deepwater Horizon</a> had not been insured. On the other hand it is probably a very bad idea to let private companies use political power.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, climate change is now not only a question for environmentalists. It is a new business reality that has officially arrived in Sweden.</p>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com2Lund, Sweden55.7046601 13.191007355.6688726 13.112043300000002 55.740447599999996 13.2699713tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-92022819692079370762011-12-21T23:34:00.000+01:002011-12-21T23:34:05.747+01:00Ni är inte ensamma!When I first visited Bulgaria, in the fall of 2007, I could not help but notice posters, billboards, buttons everywhere saying "<i>Ne ste sami!</i>" It means "you are not alone", and is probably the first full sentece I learned in Bulgarian. In Swedish it would be, literally "<i>Ni är inte ensamma</i>!", and when I come back to Sweden in January after this winter's Bulgaria trip I hope to see those word written all over town.
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<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSV9b_9xmAX_VrJD9KtNjNr1uPCMThwBswgvwpKITlhd-zcyl-q" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="198" width="255" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSV9b_9xmAX_VrJD9KtNjNr1uPCMThwBswgvwpKITlhd-zcyl-q" /></a></div>
(The <i>Ne ste sami</i>-ribbon)
The slogan was aimed at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_nurses_in_Libya">the five Bulgarian nurses</a> that were sitting on death row in Libya, blamed for contaminating blood with HIV, and killing Libyan children. This was before the Arab spring, and Libya was still a dictatorship where it was easier to blame and jail foreigners than admitting mistakes.
The Arab spring has yet to affect Ethiopia. The state is more suspicious of dissent than ever, maybe scared by the specter of public protest like those in the Mediterranean Arab states. Scores of local foreign journalists have been harassed. Two of them are the Swedes Johan Peterson and Martin Schibbye.
They were earlier today <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/21/swedish-journalists-guilty-terrorism-ethiopia">found guilty</a> of supporting terrorists and entering Ethiopia illegally. They have confessed of entering without VISA together with an ethnic militia that has been terror-labeled by the government in Addis Abebba, but maintain that their purpose was solely to investigate the work of the Swedish company <a href="http://www.lundin-petroleum.com/eng/">Lundin Petroleum</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden">Ogaden</a> province.
My private opinion is this: Lundin Petroleum is a secretive company with a very bad reputation when it comes to Human Rights. Schibbye and Peterson should be praised, not jailed for trying to bring stories about their work in Ogaden into the light.
Another opinion might be that Schibbye and Peterson were acting foolishly and should be reprimanded and thrown out of Ethiopia but not senteced to jail. This seems to be <a href="http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/det-maste-bli-en-friande-dom_6687246.svd">the official view of our Foreign Minister Carl Bildt</a> (Link in Swedish), who himself worked for Lundin Petroleum when the company's activities in Ogaden were initiated.
A lot of thing could be written about Carl Bildt's dubious role in this drama, but it might suffice to say that the best thing with having him in government is that it keeps him away from Lundin Petroleum where he might do more harm.
A lot could also be written about the terrorism laws that Peterson and Schibbye are sentenced under. Western commentators point out that these laws allow the Ethiopian government to label anyone it doesn't like a terrorist. But it is hardly the first government to do so. It is simply abusing a system of black listing organizations that has been abundantly abused since 9/11.
But right now, the main focus must be to get Peterson and Schibbye home. Sweden needs journalists like them, the world needs to know about Lundin Petroleum and they do need us. They need to know that they are not alone.
The Bulgarian "Ne ste sami" campaign was succesful, and the nurses eventually returned to their families. There is no reason Sweden should not manage to get Peterson and Schibbye free. But it might take a stubborn campaign saying "Ni är inte ensamma!" Let us start it now.
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(Foto: Scanpix)Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-92042412256357988332011-08-01T21:59:00.000+02:002011-08-01T21:59:07.118+02:00AcidificationIf China criticised Sweden over Human Rights would you believe them?<br />
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<a title='Av Jan Stanisławski (www.pinakoteka.zascianek.pl) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StanislawskiJan.DnieprSzafirowy.1904.ws.jpg'><img width='500' alt='StanislawskiJan.DnieprSzafirowy.1904.ws' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/StanislawskiJan.DnieprSzafirowy.1904.ws.jpg'/></a><br />
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Today, 1st of August, there has been a lot of talk about acidification in Sweden. Acid lakes was identified as an environmental problem in the 60's and in the early eighties the Swedish state started bombing lakes with lime, in order to increase their pH.<br />
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In the 7.00 morning news, the national radio <a href="http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=4624027">reported</a> that researchers at <a href="http://www.naturvardsverket.se/en/">the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency</a> had found that pH levels had improved, but still are far from good, in spite of less acid pollution from industries. The study found that lime bombing will have to continue far into the future, in spite of being the most expensive environmental campaign ever in Sweden, the total cost since 1977 is about 400 million EUR.<br />
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That must sound scary in libertarian ears, and quite predictably - in the 19.30 news Rapport, the most viewed TV news, <a href="http://svt.se/2.108068/1.2492710/fortsatt_masskalkning_av_sjoarna">reported</a> that researchers from <a href="http://www.slu.se/en/">SLU</a> (the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) had found that a) the natural acidity of our lakes has been undervalued, b) the role of pollution has been over rated c) that lime bombing is unnecessary, or might actually harm some lakes, by bringing their pH level to above normal. "We do not want all lakes to look the same", a long haired fellow explained to the reporter.<br />
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In his long hair he looked like the traditional lefty environmentalist, but such a statement is pretty hard to swallow when it comes from an institution that uses state money to propagate for agribusiness. It is an institution that has argued that agribusiness <a href="http://miljoaktuellt.idg.se/2.1845/1.256280/slu-professorerna-hade-fel-om-ekologiskt-jordbruk">does NOT</a> emit more nitrogen and phosphorous than ecological farming. And that Santa Claus exists... If you look at the kind of agriculture SLU prefers over organic, it consists of large harmful monocultures. For sure, I don't want our lakes to be overly alkalic, but that problem is a very minor one in the context of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/30/richness-of-life-on-earth_n_913958.html">biodiversity loss</a>. <br />
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The situation is a little like if China would criticise Sweden about human rights. No matter where we live, of course, there are things to criticise, Sweden for example has not signed a number of international treaties about the rights of native populations. If such criticism came from Amnesty international, we would take it seriously. But if it came from someone who breaks human rights every day at home, we would expect that something else lies behind. When SLU speaks about biodiversity, you should be equally suspicious.<br />
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If you have spent some time reading debates about climate change, you know the script. A scientific truth - that our akes are still acid, is encountered with some study of a minor detail - we have a lacking understanding of the historical acidity in our lakes, that comes with a politically pleasant conclusion - we should not spend money on lime bombing.<br />
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It is amazing how the libertarians, who are so critical of post modernism, feminism and queer theories in humanities, have so totally embraced post modernism in science. Theirs is a world where truth exists only in the eye of the beholder, and the perspective can be changed until a politically pleasant truth appears. Outside of the beholders eye is chaos.<br />
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But maybe the world is like that? Maybe there are no all encompassing truths to believe in? In some sense there is not, but in cases like these there are two ways to realize whom to believe, the one who argues for lime bombing or the one who argues against.<br />
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The first one is to using high school science. An 8th grader should be able to see the flaw in SLU's argument. Acidity is a natural process, that is greatly boosted buy humans burning fossil fuels. As long as we burn fossil fuels, we will have acid lakes. We have managed to limit the impact, but not to prevent it. Which is what was reported in the morning news.<br />
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The second way to see who is lying is to look if they put their money where their mouth is. Since money is the measure of all things in this world, those who care about the environment will also be those who propose to spend money on it. Those who argue against such spending care for something else.<br />
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So why did the topic of acidification suddenly get so interesting in Sweden? It must be wonderful for the government to have such an institution as SLU. Now they can propose to cut money for lime bombing, and refer to sound science. Whatever the their own Environmental Protection Agency says.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-88378578011087064212011-07-22T11:34:00.002+02:002011-07-22T11:43:53.057+02:00Revkin, againThis year has been ripe with climate-related news. Tornadoes, torrential rains and heat waves. Today the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14238358">reports</a> that the deadly heatwave that has been lingering in the US midwest is moving east, and affecting approximately 50% of the nations inhabitants. As always, some are more affected than other's.<br />
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<a title='By Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2008-07-11_Air_conditioners_at_UNC-CH.jpg'><img width='500' alt='2008-07-11 Air conditioners at UNC-CH' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/2008-07-11_Air_conditioners_at_UNC-CH.jpg/500px-2008-07-11_Air_conditioners_at_UNC-CH.jpg'/></a><br />
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A few months back, when tornadoes, not heat waves, was the big problem, Andrew Revkin <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/in-tornado-zones-seeking-shelter-from-the-storm/#postComment">provoked</a> the Green mainstream, <a href="http://maladets.blogspot.com/2011/05/ill-posed-question-or-how-andrew-revkin.html">including me</a>, by saying that protecting people against disasters is a more urgent problem than lowering co2 levels in the atmosphere. He was wrong, but at the same time strikingly right.<br />
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It is obvious that anyone concerned about disaster protection, must urge for radical cuts in co2 emissions. Business as usual will make more severe storms occur more often, and render any current disaster protection useless. The only protection that lasts more than a decade will be to address the cause of the problem, not the symptoms. <br />
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Against the backdrop of climate change, it is very tempting to regard the world of day to day politics as futile and irrelevant. When the world is four degrees warmer now, we will have much more serious problems than budget deficits or Rupert Murdoch's media politics.<br />
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Unfortunately, Revkin was right about one thing: while we wait for the disease to be cured, the symptoms will have to be treated. Huffington Post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/21/heat-wave-2011-states-cut-programs-electric-bills_n_906263.html">illustrates</a> how the bickering in politics affects a population reeling under climate change: several US states have cut money to help poor citizens pay their electrical bills. So when the heat now is on, many poor Americans can't afford an air conditioner, which means long days in potentially harmful temperatures. <br />
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Not surprising at all - when climate change strikes, we are no omniscient semi gods, but human beings stuck in the same spider web of petty politics as we has always been. <br />
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Personally, I see alternatives to public spending in cases like these as Utopian. But this is what we should discuss. Politicians shouldn't be caught up in a 18th century ideology where a balanced budget is the aim of politics, but address the real question - how do we as a society make sure that as few people as possible suffer as little as possible from climate change. <br />
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Be it trough public spending for electricity bills, incentives to build better houses, or encouraging the suffering people to invent their own solutions. The only thing that is really wrong, is ignoring the problem, and pretending that a balanced budget is going to help.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Pleven Municipality, Bulgaria43.4082397 24.62030490000006543.224976700000006 24.337396400000063 43.5915027 24.903213400000066tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-76617439112668158472011-07-13T16:14:00.001+02:002011-07-13T16:17:03.716+02:00Sofia BikesBefore heading south to Plovdiv I've spent a little less than 24 hours in Sofia. It was relentlessly hot, and to a large extent everything was as I remembered it. Lots of shabby houses still standing around, several new glass and steel buildings int he outskirts, and building sites everywhere which gives a sense of a constant work in process.<br />
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Besides from the better looking park in front of NDK, two things impressed me, though. One was the boom of small stores/bars/restaurant with a dedicatedly alternative and green image. The second thing was that it seemed everyone has bought a bike since I was last around.<br />
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<i>This post is the first on my holiday blog <a href="http://maladetsinbulgaria.blogspot.com/">maladets! - freewheeling</a>. Stay updated with it, if you want to read more like this. </i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_mEIGLY7g4/TeEEcGlQnfI/AAAAAAAADGM/yLGAzQ5n7Oo/s1600/cqla+karta+naj+new.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_mEIGLY7g4/TeEEcGlQnfI/AAAAAAAADGM/yLGAzQ5n7Oo/s320/cqla+karta+naj+new.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
(Picture grabbed from the <a href="http://joiyaa.blogspot.com/2011/05/sofia-cartoon-map.html">Among the Birds</a> blog) (c) 2010 <a href="http://www.zurbana.com/">Zona Urbana</a><br />
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There are a lot of cool places to go nowadays for those living in, or staying in Sofia. A bunch of alternative water holes present themselves on this lovely cartooned map of Sofia. A must for anyone who wants to visit the best of Sofia. This kind of places, the common ground between them might be a shared clientèle, and shared values like alternative life style, small scale and environmental thinking. It is vegetarian restaurants, bio-shops, and craft stores producing jewelery form recycled material. <br />
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As a Swede, it is not without envy that I watch such places appearing one more and more street corners. In my home town, Lund, the development seems to be the opposite - small stores are rapidly pushed out of market by big retail chains and the shopping malls outside the city. It is curious how the numerous malls in Sofia has not yet managed to destroy this market for small scale commercial activities.<br />
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Two reasons are obvious - more and more young Bulgarians have developed a taste for this kind of things, and also some money to pay restaurant bills with. And due to the still rough state of many buildings in central Sofia, rents are still far from what they are in Western Europe, even in a place like Lund, which makes it easier to make money on small businesses. If I was a Sofia politician, I would think a lot about how to improve buildings in the center, without raising rents too much. Too many cities have made their centers tidy but boring. Sofia still has a chance to avoid that.<br />
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So for the bikes. When I was living in Sofia, some people did bike, but they were very rare. It was perfectly possible to go an entire day without seeing a single bike. Now, bikers are still a minority, they are a very visible minority. In almost every crossing you would see one biker navigating between cars.<br />
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Which is probably one clue why so many people do it. Biking is green, cheap and fashionable as in Western Europe, but except for that it seems to be the absolutely fastest way to move through central Sofia. Cars are usually stuck in two lines, buses and trams as well, but a daring biker find his way in between. A Swedish biker probably wouldn't, let's say that the bicyclists in Sofia bike pretty much as the drivers drive.<br />
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I look forward to coming back to this city twice a year for the rest of my life, and this is the kind of things I hope to see more of. Which reminds me of my everyday life back home... it is definitely time for me to buy a new bike.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Plovdiv, Bulgaria42.1438409 24.74956150000002742.0875119 24.666124500000027 42.2001699 24.832998500000027tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-63122886036085878282011-07-07T23:44:00.000+02:002011-07-07T23:44:20.806+02:00Let's produce!<p><em>The topic is in media again - we waste too much food. But what else could you expect from a consumer?</em></p><br />
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<p>This morning <a href="http://www.sr.se">the Swedish radio</a> reported that 25% of all carrots produced in Sweden are never reach the supermarkets. If they are not the right size and shape, producers throw them away. It is not the first time the topic of food waste is in the media. In 2010 Svenska Dagbladet <a href="http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/tusentals-ton-mat-slangs-varje-ar_5043641.svd">reported</a> that the supermarkets themselves throw away enormous amounts of food, and in 2009 Dagens Nyheter <a href="http://www.dn.se/sthlm/hushall-slanger-mat-i-onodan">reported</a> that households do the same. All in all, according to the Swedish radio, a third of all food produced in or imported to Sweden is thrown away (and usually not even composted).</p><br />
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<p>I guess this does not upset Marxists already suspicious of markets. Hardhearted liberals who sees it as a human right to waste food if you find it makes you happier will not raise their eyebrows. The one's who find the story disturbing are either greens, eager to diminish our ecological footprint or blue eyed liberals that see markets as something beautiful, something that allots the best opportunity to each man and each carrot, and leaves nothing as waste. And of course the great majority of people who sees a problem in food scarcity, and wait for market economy to solve it. Silly dreamers.</p><br />
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<p>Imagine a market, anywhere, anytime. Imagine an oriental bazaar in the middle ages, a Swedish mârten in early 20th century or a supermarket in Tokyo. It is the same thing everywhere. A buyer comes armed with money to a seller, and his task is to pick out the best possible product she, or sometimes he, can get for those money. If the seller sells carrots, it is the very essence of buying to pick out the larger and straighter one's, and reject the smaller and quirkier one's.</p><br />
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<p>The fact that those small and quirky carrots might get sold in the oriental bazaar is just because there wasn't enough of the big and straight one's. In modern Sweden there is no such scarcity, and logically they get rejected. We have PR agencies and social sciences predicting consumers behavior, and supermarkets know very well that a quirky carrot will not be sold, and might even destroy the whole impression of their vegetable selling area, reducing other sales as well. </p><br />
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<p>Farmers also know that, so why would they bother to send the carrot to a supermarket that will not manage to sell it? In this society it makes more sense to aim at returning food waste as compost to the land, than to try to stop the waste, that is the very symbol of wealth. </p><br />
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<p>Is it a problem? Yes it is. <a href="http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Number_of_hungry_people_in_the_world">925</a> million people go to bed hungry already today so there is use for all this food that is thrown away. <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/foodcrisis/">Food scarcity</a> is ever more likely as populations grow and agriculture deteriorates due to <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html">climate change</a> and <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Soil_retrogression_and_degradation">unwise use of land</a>. And we are heavily over-using our ecological resources. Using land for resource intensive agriculture and then trow away the products is politically acceptable to some of us, but suicide in the real world.</p><br />
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<p>Since the problem is not what we do wrong, but to our correct and logical behavior as consumers in the market, the clue to solving it is to let people be producers, not just consumers. A consumer's job is to choose between carrots, but a producer would rather see the amount of work that was invested in all of them. For the consumer the carrot's value is relative, for the producer it is absolute. And since the world does, actually, depend on biological and physical facts, a absolute world view makes more sense than a relative one. Whereas the consumer would would choose the catastrophe that brings the most bang for his buck, a producer mind would spend the money to avert a catastrophe.</p><br />
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<p>The problem is consumerism itself. You can not expect a consumer to be wary about resources. But who said that we all must be consumers? Inside we are all artists and gardeners. And that is what the world requires of us to be. Let's stop pretending we are something else.</p>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com1Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-26028716383918714772011-07-04T18:08:00.000+02:002011-07-04T18:08:15.158+02:00The C-word<p><em>The inhabitants of the Danish capital Copenhagen are shocked. <a href="http://www.cphpost.dk/news/local/87-local/51885-drenched.html">Flash floods in the weekend</a> unearthed the invisible urban dwellers, roads were closed, and insurance claims are the highest ever. One wish only that such extreme weather had occurred at another time. </em></p><br />
<a title='See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britannica_Rat_-_Brown_Rat.png'><img width='500' alt='Britannica Rat - Brown Rat' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Britannica_Rat_-_Brown_Rat.png'/></a><br />
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<p>Extremely heavy rains on Saturday flooded the Danish city, with the result that living and dead <a href="http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE1326879/sundhedsstyrelsen-advarer-mod-kloakvand/">rats from the sewers</a> appeared on street level. Don't touch them without a glove - rats can carry diseases, authorities warn. I wouldn't try touching a rat that was spewed out from the sewer no matter what authorities say, but obvious there might be people who have never before been exposed to the existence of rats. </p><br />
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<p>They are as ubiquitous in modern cities as they ever were, but modern city planning has manged to separate the rat population from the human population to the degree that people are surprised once they see one, even though rats as a race live where humans live. You didn't see a rat on top of a mountain, did you? It is telling how severe weather can make the ghosts form past centuries reappear in the modern metropolis.</p><br />
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<p>The consequences of the flood are wide ranging - some people in Sweden are unable to access their email accounts located on danish servers. "I am lucky to be on vacation" a commenter on <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/vader/article13265411.ab">Aftonbladet</a>a>, a Swedish news site, writes. Whatever will be the final cost of this disaster, they would have been much worse had it occurred on a busy weekday than on a Saturday in July.</p><br />
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<p>Miraculously, no person have been injured, but thousand of buildings have been flooded, and the insurance claims will be record high, insurance companies say to <a href="http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE1326120/forsikringschef-efter-skybrud-dette-slaar-alt/">Politikken</a>, a major Danish newspaper. It will probably also take record time to find out exactly how big. The last record was set as far back as - 2010, when less violent rains caused damages of approximately 134 000 000 EUR. The last record before that was in 2007, which makes a worrying trend. </p><br />
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<p>In another Danish paper, <a href="http://www.b.dk/nationalt/et-saerdeles-usaedvanligt-skybrud">Berlingske Tidene</a>, a meteorologist says that he has never before seen a similar rain. Of course he has not. There will not be any more rains like the one's we have seen. Our climate is changing and chaos is the new normal. But anyone with computer and/or library access during the last five years know that this is what a warming atmosphere leads to. As the IPCC wrote in its <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html">Fourth Assessment Report</a> back in 2007 : <q cite="http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/spmsspm-c-10-europe.html">Negative impacts [of climate change] will include increased risk of inland flash floods, and more frequent coastal flooding and increased erosion (due to storminess and sea-level rise). </q> I am not implying that anyone with a computer has been reading IPCC reports, but there has been a lot of articles and blog post about this throughout the last decade.</p><br />
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<p>When the predicted flash flood now comes, wouldn't the reasonable reaction be to think that the prediction is true, and go to extreme measures to mitigate climate change? Or at least saying "hey, this was predicted four years ago - maybe reevaluate those predictions?"</p><br />
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<p>Still, the taboo around climate change seems to be stronger than it ever was . You will have to look really hard to find an article in a mainstream paper evening mentioning <em><acronym title="CLIMATE CHANGE"> the C word</acronym></em> in connection with the Copenhagen floods. </p><br />
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<p>When I looked for some older articles with climate change predictions, I read that <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/klimathotet/article11586059.ab">in 2008</a> thousand of people were marching in Swedish cities, demanding political action against climate change Where are they (we) now? As these predictions come true one after another, the discussion about climate change have lost its intensity. Maybe it was more convenient to discuss it when it was a threatening future, rather than a lethal presence? </p><br />
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<p>Maybe things would have looked different if the COP15 meeting in December 2009 had taken place in a flooded Copenhagen. Maybe Obama & co. would than have realized what was at stake? That winter was oddly normal, something that surely made it easier for politicians to believe that things were not as bad as scientists said. The international negotiations derailed, and public interest waned. And the climate changed.</p><br />
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<p>If there is anything positive in all this, it is the record breaking insurance costs. The insurance man quoted above is taken aback by the extent of damages, but hardly surprised - for good reasons. Insurance companies have economic incentives to take climate change seriously, as <a href="/www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/28/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism">the Guardian</a> recently pointed out.</p><br />
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<p>While other industries fight hard to keep on making money on destroying the planet, the insurance business is the one who has to pay for the party, as claims from floods, wild fires and tornadoes amount. The world's biggest insurance company, Munich Re is already <a href="http://www.munichre.com/en/group/focus/climate_change/default.aspx">active</a> to put climate change on the agenda, and ultimately they will have their way. Society wouldn't work without reasonably priced insurances, any more than it works with too expensive oil. You either pay that insurance, or bears the cost yourself, which is suicidal when weather is bound not only to get worse, but to continue deteriorating for a long time. </p><br />
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<p>At one point all other business will be at the insurers' mercy. Until then we will not see any real political initiatives against climate change. And media will continue to avoid <em><acronym title="CLIMATE CHANGE"> the C word</acronym></em> in order to not appear greenish and left leaning. How soon is that? Cast your vote in the poll to the right!</p>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-20903977346503555052011-07-03T19:44:00.001+02:002011-07-03T21:28:43.119+02:00Energy waste<em>Every environmentalist's favorite sports event - the <a href="http://www.letour.fr/us/homepage_courseTDF.html"> Tour de France </a> is on again, so what could be more suitable than a post on cycling.</em><br />
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<a title='By Agence photographique Rol (Bibliothèque nationale de France [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcel_Godivier.jpg'><img width='500' alt='Marcel Godivier' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Marcel_Godivier.jpg/500px-Marcel_Godivier.jpg'/></a><br />
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<p>I live approximately four kilometers from work, a distance where individual choices really matter. It is far enough to go by car, close enough to take the bike, and public transport is frequent and smooth. So everything, save <a href"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWz55bmEsxa8">helicopter</a>, is a realistic choice for me. I do read a bunch of ecologist blogs and dress in Patagonia wear so it might not be a surprise that I take the bike. </p><br />
<p>Now imagine a fictive colleague of mine who also lives four kilometers from our workplace. Let's call him Charlie. Charlie thinks of my lifestyle as a slightly hypocritical way of being hip through pretending to worry about 1000 and one catastrophes. He takes the car, always did, and tells himself that whatever is true about global warming, his driving or not driving is very unlikely to change the bottom line. I might change his own bottom, though.</p><br />
<p>I eat a breakfast consisting of about 3-400 k cal Is it unreasonable to presume that Charlie does as well? Not so. At work we eat together, and both consume about 500 k cal for lunch. Since Charlie and I are both bon viviants in hiding we usually consume about 650 k cal for dinner. To sum up: in a day we both consume 1450-1550 k cal</p><br />
<p>These numbers are completely arbitrary. My point is this: it is not unreasonable to imagine two individuals with the same intake of energy and the same job, one of them bicycling and the other one driving a car. I could even invent a scenario where the car driver eats <em>more</em> than the cyclist, without being unreasonable.</p><br />
<p>Obviously these 1450-1550 k cal is enough to transport me to work and back without feeling dizzy. It is also enough to take me through a working day with the same kind of tasks as Charlie. The question is what happens to them in Charlie's body.</p><br />
<p>We differ incredibly much, and conclusions could not be made about a single individual. Some of us can ride cars without growing a stomach, some of us can not. But unless bicyclists eat more, and car drivers work out more in their spare the result on the population at large can only be one: fat car drivers. And this is what nation after nation turn into as modernity spreads around the globe. There is a very strong correlation between car driving and obesity. It is shown in <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/obesity-and-driving">statistics</a>, and self evident.</p><br />
<p>It follows that investing in highways and making it easier for people to commute by car, as governments around the globe do, will have adverse effects on the nation's health. And that anyone who drives a car on a daily basis must come up with some kind of plan of how to use the energy he or she consumes as food during the day. </p><br />
<p>The problem is not only related to car driving, of course. It is a general problem in a society where human work is replaced with automation. We are likely to eat the same amount of food as we always did - so what do we do with the energy we do not need any more? </p><br />
<p>The alternative to obesity is to exercise for the sake of exercise. That can be relaxing at times, but if you think of it as energy usage it is rather wasteful - like sending people to dig a whole and refill it, like the first French Republic did to curb unemployment. Wouldn't it make more sense to use up that energy for productive work, and then have a rest?</p><br />
<p>In other situations we tend to think that working hours and energy should be used for something useful. Why do we not think the same about the energy we consume as food? The enormous amount of human power in <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_population">a 7 billion world</a> could be harnessed for something better than gymming, right? </p>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-58043612051562644282011-06-27T20:32:00.001+02:002011-06-27T20:33:48.786+02:00Good newsIt is often said that bad news dominate media, and that positive developments are ignored since they do not have the dramatic news appeal of a disaster. <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/impacts/species/polar_bears/"><em>Climate change kills ice bears</em></a> makes more headlines than <a href="http://www.foodoresund.com/composite-497.htm"><em>the consumption of ecological food increases</em></a>. <br />
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<a title='Av Olaf Bertram-Nothnagel (Eget arbete) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) eller CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young-Toad.jpg'><img width='500' alt='Young-Toad' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Young-Toad.jpg/500px-Young-Toad.jpg'/></a><br />
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There is some truth in that, but unfortunately the opposite is equally true. According to Google <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=ecological+food+consumption&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=">"ecological food consumption"</a> renders 3,900 000 hits, while "climate change ice bears" renders merely <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=sv-SE&q=climate%20change%20icebears">1,600 000</a> hits. Media consumers do sometimes cherry pick positive news in a negative trend, as recent reporting about threatened species show. (Isn't it funny how often two opposite things are equally true? Maybe the world should not be understood in truths, but in riddles and contradictions).<br />
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The fact that the Arabian Onyx is <a href=""http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110617-arabian-oryx-unicorn-endangered-extinct-species-animals/>not any longer threatened</a> is of course positive. It was duly reported in on-line media during the last weeks. The animal was once hunted into close to extinction and only survived as a minuscule population in zoos. But hard work of reintroducing it to wildlife has brought fruit, and the species is not any more threatened. A cynical mind would probably add that the Arabian Onyx, being specialist on desert survival, is more than average fit for the new word of desertification and global warming.<br />
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Whereas the Onyx became a poster child for <em>hope</em>, a promise that everything that is broken can be fixed, much less media attention was given to the fact that the total number of endangered species is <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110617-arabian-oryx-unicorn-endangered-extinct-species-animals/">higher than ever</a>, in spite of years of hard work from biologists, NGO's and authorities. The most threatened group of animals are amphibians, and what is troublesome that unlike the Onyx it is not mindless hunting or other human misconduct which threatens them but the way we feed ourselves. We have done away with the wetlands, and those we didn't do away with are rapidly covered by grass, fueled by the enormous spill of nitrates from agriculture. <br />
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To change that would take action on a completely different scale than a wildlife preservation campaign. It is unlikely to be done before amphibians go extinct, and someone should start thinking about what that means for humanity. Someone else should ponder over what it means for morality that humans not only make use of nature, but dispose with species at will. <br />
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The Arabian Onyx was a global story, southern Sweden had its own local eco-sunshine story. A peregrine falcon, the hallmark of threatened species, the bird whose almost disappearance led to the ban of DDT and fueled the emergence of the ecological movement, has <a href="http://www.sydsvenskan.se/oresundsbron/article1496247/Rara-falkar-bor-pa-Bron.html">started nesting</a> under the Öresund bridge.<br />
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Great news, in deed. Over all, the Öresund bridge has not become the ecological disaster that some people feared, it has rather added life to the marine environment. That shows that humans can build without threatening animals and the eco systems, no? It does. But once again it is ridiculous to see the commotion about the peregrine falcon, when the list of endangered species and plant is growing also in Sweden, for the same reasons as elsewhere in the world.<br />
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So is it really true that bad news get more press than good news? The short answer is no. A little longer one is that the problem is that only news that can be good headlines are discussed. Arabian Onyxes and peregrine falcons are big and beautiful animals, and it is very easy to invoke human sympathy for them. Having sympathy for a toad usually requires either a religious veneration of the creation, or an understanding of its role in an ecological system. Which is why religious and scientific thinking are anything but opposite when it comes to nature.<br />
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The media logic also affects what bad news are reported. A good story has a beginning, a development and an end. Things like wars, revolutions and floods meet these demands and get reported. But the underlying trends - positive like the factual and gradual emancipation of women in many countries, or negative like a gradually warming climate or the gradual loss of biodiversity among insect and amphibians do not meet these demands and are therefor underreported.<br />
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How wonderful it could be if we could be glad about the Arabian Onyx, and let those good news inspire us to do something for other species as well. But if we acted like that we would be gods, not humans.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-17447103250131011412011-06-24T19:30:00.000+02:002011-06-24T19:30:51.542+02:00The S***t hits the fanPeak Oil has been discussed on-line for quite some time, but while you are reading this, the thing is actually happening. A number of countries dependent on oil-imports headed by the US were so worried about the effect of high pill prices on the economy that they have decided to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-iea-release-idUSTRE75M3AR20110624">tap their emergency oil reserve</a> to the market in order to lower prices by political intervention. Prices have, of course, fell, and as could be predicted, another group of countries dependent on oil-exports, OPEC - Saudi Arabia are obviously infuriated. Such a development is almost sure to have geopolitical consequences, but I predict that it will not be the winner of this battle, but the country that first breaks it dependence on oil that will be the next world leader.<br />
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<a title='By Creativity103 (oil slick) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diffraction_by_oil_on_water.jpeg'><img width='500' alt='Diffraction by oil on water' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Diffraction_by_oil_on_water.jpeg'/></a><br />
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The Reuters article I link to above somehow manages to discuss the event in economical and political terms without even mentioning peak oil - in spite of acknowledging the fact that meager oil reserves makes oil more expensive in an article <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-energy-summit-robeco-idUSTRE75C4K020110613">13/06</a>. Nor does it mention climate change, even though writing about the topic <a href="a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/18/us-moose-ticks-idUSTRE75H1UJ20110618">18/06</a>, and the common sense knowledge that if we use all oil there is on earth, we will render the planet inhabitable. With peak oil and climate change in mind, high oil prices are hardly a problem. It might slow down economies, but it will <br />
<ul><li>a) make oil reserves last longer and</li>
<li>b) make climate friendly alternatives to oil more profitable.</li>
</ul>Reuters is a praiseworthy news source, writing for a specific set of readers - the international business community. They sense danger when politicians try to manipulate commodity markets in this way, and with good reason so. This is but one sign of the fact that free market liberalism is a dieing ideology. It has never been more than an ideology, and as such it should serve the needs of the ruling elite. Power is based on more or less content consumers, and when the ideology of free markets can not generate that, elites will discard with the ideology, not with their power. Technically, one could argue that since the consumer countries have paid for these reserves they are free to do what they want with them, but that is beside the point, since states have pledged to abstain from this kind of action, even though they always have had the opportunity.<br />
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Since the move is headed by president Obama, republican politicians in the US are also <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/23/us-usa-oil-obama-idUSTRE75M44D20110623">protesting about</a> that they see as an unwise use of reserves. It is hard to imagine that a party based on "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill,_baby,_drill">drill, baby drill</a>", would have behaved more wisely if they were in power, and Obama would probably face even fiercer resistance if he tried to limit co2 emissions or prepare the US for Peak Oil, but the republicans nevertheless find themselves in the right on this issue. <br />
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Oil prices are high, but they have so far not made people in the west starve, even though they have aggravated poverty in the south. On the other hand, oil prices might be more likely to push people into self-sufficiency in the south, and thus improve their position. We know that more business as usual would have fatal consequence for all, so what is the sense in using the reserves now, and not when we really need them? And what is the sense in going into a conflict with oil producing countries? It is plain logic that OPEC will retaliate, but they are probably wise enough to do when they reckon that the consumer countries have used up their reserves. Then it will really be the seller's market, and the consuming countries would not come out as winners of such a conflict. At least not without going to war, so we could expect more Iraq/Afghanistan-like action in oil producing countries in the decades to come. <br />
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The shit has now hit the fan. Peak oil has made oil prices rice to the point where they pose a political problem, and elites are getting desperate. Especially so since nuclear power is less attractive after Fukushima, as Reuters points out. Maybe so, but I think many politicians will see no good alternative to nuclear power in the years ahead. Because oil prices will never return to the levels that keep America going. <br />
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Nuclear power, however, is vulnerable to peak oil in the same way as food is. We do not eat oil, but the price of oil affects the price of food since agriculture is motorized and food must be transported. Nuclear power is a highly centralized way of creating electricity, and as such it requires a lot of oil to run. The mining of uranium is motorized, and also uranium must be transported at a price that is determined by the oil price. The only way to create cheap nuclear energy for the consumer is to subsidize it, and the nuclear industry is already today <a href="http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/gambling-nuclear-power-how-public-money-fuels-industry">heavily subsidized</a>. But those subsidizes must come from somewhere, i.e. from the consumers tax bill. It seems this is an equation without solutions for the modern state, something that can be moderated in the short run but will be fatal in the long. What we are looking at is a civilization in decline.<br />
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And what are politicians so desperate about? As I wrote before, if the concern was the wellbeing of people, it would make a lot more sense to save as much oil as possible for later, or preferable stop using oil at all, starting tomorrow. What is at stake is not peoples lives, but companies' profits. Obama and the pack are desperate about keeping up GNP numbers, and other statistics on the macro level until the next crash. They are buying time, and pay with our future. As they always do.<br />
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What I wonder is which country will be the first to make a brave move and try out the obvious alternative: to dismantle centralized systems and let local communities supply food and energy for themselves, using oil, wind- nuclear power, donkey charts, bicycles or whatever they find suitable. That country will not look like the states we know of today, but it will be the powerhouse of the 21th century.<br />
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The S***t hits the fan<br />
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Peak Oil has been discussed on-line for quite some time, but while you are reading this, the thing is actually happening. A number of countries dependent on oil-imports headed by the US were so worried about the effect of high pill prices on the economy that they have decided to release their emergency stocks to the market in order to lower prices by political intervention. Prices have, of course, fell, and as could be predicted, another group of countries dependent on oil-exports, OPEC - Saudi Arabia are obviously infuriated. Such a development is almost sure to have geopolitical consequences, but I predict that it will not be the winner of this battle, but the country that first breaks it dependence on oil that will be the next world leader.<br />
<br />
The Reuters article I link to above somehow manages to discuss the event in economical and political terms without even mentioning peak oil - in spite of acknowledging the fact that meager oil reserves makes oil more expensive in an article <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-energy-summit-robeco-idUSTRE75C4K020110613">13/06</a>. Nor does it mention climate change, even though writing about the topic <a href="a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/18/us-moose-ticks-idUSTRE75H1UJ20110618">18/06</a>, and the common sense knowledge that if we use all oil there is on earth, we will render the planet inhabitable. With peak oil and climate change in mind, high oil prices are hardly a problem. It might slow down economies, but it will <br />
<ul><li>a) make oil reserves last longer and</li>
<li>b) make climate friendly alternatives to oil more profitable.</li>
</ul>Reuters is a praiseworthy news source, writing for a specific set of readers - the international business community. They sense danger when politicians try to manipulate commodity markets in this way, and with good reason so. This is but one sign of the fact that free market liberalism is a dieing ideology. It has never been more than an ideology, and as such it should serve the needs of the ruling elite. Power is based on more or less content consumers, and when the ideology of free markets can not generate that, elites will discard with the ideology, not with their power. Technically, one could argue that since the consumer countries have paid for these reserves they are free to do what they want with them, but that is beside the point, since states have pledged to abstain from this kind of action, even though they always have had the opportunity.<br />
<br />
Since the move is headed by president Obama, republican politicians in the US are also <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/23/us-usa-oil-obama-idUSTRE75M44D20110623">protesting about</a> that they see as an unwise use of reserves. It is hard to imagine that a party based on "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill,_baby,_drill">drill, baby drill</a>", would have behaved more wisely if they were in power, and Obama would probably face even fiercer resistance if he tried to limit co2 emissions or prepare the US for Peak Oil, but the republicans nevertheless find themselves in the right on this issue. <br />
<br />
Oil prices are high, but they have so far not made people in the west starve, even though they have aggravated poverty in the south. On the other hand, oil prices might be more likely to push people into self-sufficiency in the south, and thus improve their position. We know that more business as usual would have fatal consequence for all, so what is the sense in using the reserves now, and not when we really need them? And what is the sense in going into a conflict with oil producing countries? It is plain logic that OPEC will retaliate, but they are probably wise enough to do when they reckon that the consumer countries have used up their reserves. Then it will really be the seller's market, and the consuming countries would not come out as winners of such a conflict. At least not without going to war, so we could expect more Iraq/Afghanistan-like action in oil producing countries in the decades to come. <br />
<br />
The shit has now hit the fan. Peak oil has made oil prices rice to the point where they pose a political problem, and elites are getting desperate. Especially so since nuclear power is less attractive after Fukushima, as Reuters points out. Maybe so, but I think many politicians will see no good alternative to nuclear power in the years ahead. Because oil prices will never return to the levels that keep America going. <br />
<br />
Nuclear power, however, is vulnerable to peak oil in the same way as food is. We do not eat oil, but the price of oil affects the price of food since agriculture is motorized and food must be transported. Nuclear power is a highly centralized way of creating electricity, and as such it requires a lot of oil to run. The mining of uranium is motorized, and also uranium must be transported at a price that is determined by the oil price. The only way to create cheap nuclear energy for the consumer is to subsidize it, and the nuclear industry is already today <a href="http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/gambling-nuclear-power-how-public-money-fuels-industry">heavily subsidized</a>. But those subsidizes must come from somewhere, i.e. from the consumers tax bill. It seems this is an equation without solutions for the modern state, something that can be moderated in the short run but will be fatal in the long. What we are looking at is a civilization in decline.<br />
<br />
And what are politicians so desperate about? As I wrote before, if the concern was the wellbeing of people, it would make a lot more sense to save as much oil as possible for later, or preferable stop using oil at all, starting tomorrow. What is at stake is not peoples lives, but companies' profits. Obama and the pack are desperate about keeping up GNP numbers, and other statistics on the macro level until the next crash. They are buying time, and pay with our future. As they always do.<br />
<br />
What I wonder is which country will be the first to make a brave move and try out the obvious alternative: to dismantle centralized systems and let local communities supply food and energy for themselves, using oil, wind- nuclear power, donkey charts, bicycles or whatever they find suitable. That country will not look like the states we know of today, but it will be the powerhouse of the 21th century.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Karlstad Municipality, Sweden59.378235499999988 13.50421959999994259.02131649999999 13.062971099999942 59.735154499999986 13.945468099999943tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-10512243659936246262011-06-20T23:07:00.000+02:002011-06-20T23:07:42.899+02:00When bad news are the good news<em>It is horrifying to read about the natural disasters that torment country after country. But maybe disasters like these is the only thing that can make our politicians wake up?</em><br />
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<a title='By cjohnson7 from Rochester, Minnesota (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Storm_clouds.jpg'><img width='500' alt='Storm clouds' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Storm_clouds.jpg/500px-Storm_clouds.jpg'/></a><br />
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Fears loom that the international community will fail against to find a binding agreement on co2 emissions, and that the compromises made in Copenhagen and Cancun were made in vain. I think this is<br />
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<nl><li>very likely</li><br />
<li>sad</li><br />
<li>but less relevant</li></nl><br />
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It is sad that our leadership fails us when we need it the most, but it could hardly be a surprise for anyone. Climate politics is but one example of the obvious fact - elected politicians do not rule - they are ruled by special interests like the car-, oil- and coal industries. The function politicians are playing in the modern democratic society is to mitigate between different interests, to execute their policies, and to shield these interests from public anger. The perfect example is Greece, where the government carries out a policy dictated from the IMF, and willingly face the anger of it's population, rather than letting signore EU/IMF take the hit. <br />
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In fact, all data was on the table in Copenhagen, and if there was ever a chance for a political solution to the climate problem, it was then. Obama knows as well as I do that the climate is changing, but as a corporate America servant his job is to keep the issue out of the public debate until capitalists have moved their assets from dieing industries like cars and coal into perceived green industries as solar, nuclear and wind energy. <br />
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The result of the Copenhagen meeting in itself indicates that we have nothing to hope from politics as they look today. Quite frankly, nothing that can come out of the next meeting in Durban, SA, will be worth the paper it is written on, so if the diplomatic process breaks down it is just as good. Maybe better.<br />
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We have to look for the good news somewhere else. And right now the worst news are the best one's.<br />
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For things to change, the realities on the ground must change. And they are changing. Even though media is still oddly nervous about discussing the relation between climate change and extreme weather events the connection is as well documented as it gets. It is almost a truism - climate change means changing weather. The statistics are horrifying: staggering <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/record-42-million-displaced-worldwide-by-climate-change-mega-storms/">42 million people</a> are displaced due to climatic changes. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that <q cite="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=noaa-makes-2011-most-extreme-weather-year"> extreme weather events have grown more frequent in the United States since 1980. Part of that shift is due to climate change, said Tom Karl, director of the agency's National Climatic Data Center. I wonder what the other part of that shift is due to... <br />
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Last year, like the years before it witnessed unprecedented weather events. <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2010_Pakistan_floods">Pakistan flooded</a>, and the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-03/worst-russian-drought-in-50-years-threatens-next-crop.html">drought in Russia</a> made food prices peak (again). This year's weather looks even grimmer. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5060024162375106425">Tornadoes<http: a="" news="" world-us-canada-13247442="" www.bbc.co.uk="">, </http:></a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/15wildfires.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=Arizona&st=cse">wildfires</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/06/17/17greenwire-perfect-storm-along-missouri-river-puts-army-c-55680.html?scp=5&sq=levee&st=cse">floods</a> in the US. <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-06/20/c_13940264.htm">Floods</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/25/china-drought-crisis-yangtze-dam">drought</a> in China. <a href="http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/06/pakistan%E2%80%99s-water-deficit-hits-alarming-levels/">Water scarcity</a> in Pakistan. Do I sound like an alarmist? Well, if one manages to <a href="http://action.350.org/signup_page/connections">connect the dots</a>, as Bill McKibben writes in an article far better than this post, there is real reason to alarm.<br />
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Politicians on a local level, presumably since big business doesn’t bother to buy them have already started to deal with the new reality. Chicago is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/science/earth/23adaptation.html">planning for climate change</a>. So is <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/skeptical-or-not-cities-prepare-for-climate-change/">other cities</a> worldwide. <br />
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Obama and other world leaders can not ignore this reality for ever. But the question is not only when they are prepared to act, but if they are prepared to let go of their servitude to big business, and let communities on the local level govern themselves democratically. States can't afford to lose business. Local communities can't afford losing one day of adaption for climate change. Which is why it makes sense to decentralize the important decisions to the local level. </q>Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-67020907796131527682011-06-15T22:15:00.000+02:002011-06-15T22:15:45.080+02:00The conflicts that are notThe arab spring and the greek crisis has brought street protest back to the TV screens. But if we don't realize the threat of climate change, democracy won't do us much good.<br />
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The Mediterranean spring brought the ancient battle between people and their rulers back to the TV screens. The Arab spring has so far shown meager results. The success stories Tunisia and Egypt look increasingly like <a href="http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/05/20/disappearing-spring">stolen revolutions</a>. The West seems incompetent to make change happen in Libya, too scared about any chaos involving Israel to bother with Syria and supportive of the oppressors in Yemen and Bahrain.<br />
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<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:May_2010_Greek_protests.jpg" title="By Jesse Garcia [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="May 2010 Greek protests" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/May_2010_Greek_protests.jpg/500px-May_2010_Greek_protests.jpg" width="500" /></a><br />
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On the other side of the Mediterranean, that sea that always served as unifier, not an obstacle, similar movements in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13482778">Spain</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13741105">Italy</a> and <a href="http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2011/06/15/anger-remains">Greece</a> fight their battles for democracy in a very different context. But they don't look any more successful. <br />
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Successful or not they remind us that democracy is never to be taken for granted but must be struggled for, and when you are not struggling it doesn't exist.<br />
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Do not underestimate my cordial support for anyone fighting for democracy, especially when putting her or his life at stake. But the truly worrying about today's political context is not these conflicts, but how irrelevant they rapidly become. We all know that the world is quickly becoming a very different place, with fuel shortages and ecological disasters. In such a world survival is important. The Greek sovereign debt is not. Not any more than the Byzantine empire's debts - a matter for historians.<br />
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Syrians are lacking democracy and economic development. But putting Syria on the right track will require something quite different than introducing elections and market economy. It will need to re-invent a way to live in a desert without the help of fossil fuels. While I am writing the Syrian army is carrying out a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8573582/Syria-hundreds-flee-scorched-earth-tactics-of-Assad-regime.html">"scorched earth"</a> campaign against rebellious cities in the north. <br />
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This earth has already been scorched. <q cite="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/middleeast/14syria.html">"The four-year drought in Syria has pushed two million to three million people into extreme poverty"</q> New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/middleeast/14syria.html">wrote</a> less than a year ago. Two and a half year ago AFDP <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXbS8a3ggiMm4ekludBbmWQMb-HQ">reported</a> that <q cite="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXbS8a3ggiMm4ekludBbmWQMb-HQ">160 Syrian villages have been deserted due to the drought</q>.<br />
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This is the real problem, the one that should be on TV every day. It is absolutely global. <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/record-42-million-displaced-worldwide-by-climate-change-mega-storms/">Million of peoples</a> are turned into beggars and refugees by climate change. And yet we find time to discuss the Greek sovereign debt... As a grim irony - when citizens that have endured four long years of drought now run from the army, they are now <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0614/Just-inside-Syria-refugees-from-embattled-town-huddle-in-makeshift-camp">greeted by heavy rains</a>. Grim, but predictable. For decades science has <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Effects_on_weather">predicted</a> that global warming will make weather events more extreme. Drier droughts and heavier storms.<br />
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Of course, dictatorships are not fit to meet this challenge, and one could very optimisticly see the current push for democracy as a first step towards governments that dare dealing with the real issues that Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks and all of us face. But in order for that to happen, global elites would have to realize the gravity of the matter and lend such a movement support. At the moment they are not.<br />
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Did the Syrian four year drought and the massive displacement of rural citizens play a part in generating the current unrest? Is it a coincidence that conflicts appear in areas severely affected by climate change?<br />
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The political impacts of climate change could be a wake up call to politicians and if so, that would be good. Because if we don't address the issues that really matter - climate change, peak oil and food insecurity, democracy will not bring anything good, not matter how heroic the struggle for it may be.<br />
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Still. My heart goes out to those risking their lives for a better world. If we all were so brave, maybe we could get out of this mess?Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-7208112982105394162011-06-14T18:55:00.000+02:002011-06-14T18:55:43.057+02:00Hypocrisies<i>Swedish local communities can veto against wind power - but not against oil drilling. What is fair about that? </i><br />
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<a title='By State22 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vindkraftverk.jpg'><img width='240' alt='Vindkraftverk' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Vindkraftverk.jpg/240px-Vindkraftverk.jpg'/></a><br />
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Last week the Swedish parliament <a href="http://miljoaktuellt.idg.se/2.1845/1.390057/riksdagsbeslut-kommunerna-far-behalla-sitt-vindkraftveto">voted</a> on a proposal from the opposition to restrict local communities' right to veto against wind power investments. The reason such such a veto exists is not pure <a href="http://miljoaktuellt.idg.se/2.1845/1.390057/riksdagsbeslut-kommunerna-far-behalla-sitt-vindkraftveto">nimby-ism</a> or conservatism. Wind mills does affect the local environment and any environmentalist approach to land usage must recognize the local communities right to decide over local investments. <br />
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Still, the veto has been criticized as an obstacle to the development of clean energy in Sweden. We currently produce <a href="http://www.reegle.info/countries/SE">less than 1500 GWh</a> of wind power while other European countries like Spain produces <a href="http://www.reegle.info/countries/ES">less than 30 000 GWh</a> and Germany <a href="http://www.reegle.info/countries/DE">around 40 000 GWh</a>.<br />
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That is much more wind power produced per inhabitant. Of course, every country (or rather every <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bioregion">bio-region</a>) has to find it's own energy mix, and the value of this kind of comparison might be limited. <br />
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What makes the matter sour is not so much this decision per se, but the hypocrisy that surrounds it. In various parts of southern Sweden oil companies are <a href="http://heavenorshell.se/category/senaste-nytt">searching for places to extract more fossil fuels</a>.<br />
You can not drill oil wells in Sweden, but you can extract some using the infamous method of <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing">hydraulic fracturing</a>. An activity that does not only add new co2 emissions to a heated world, but in many cases destroys the life of local communities through pollution. We talk about ugly sites that makes land unusable for tourism. We talk about noise that makes people leave their homes. And we talk about numerous cases of local disasters where chemicals leak out and poison drinking water. <br />
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If you have not heard about hydraulic fracturing before I advise you to watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEB_Wwe-uBM">this video </a>- and be aware that this is an issue <a href="http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/is-natural-gas-fracking-too-dangerous-for-europe/14617">coming to your country</a> if it isn't already there. <br />
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Against such land usage neither local communities, nor the land owners themselves have any veto. Because they only own the land - whatever lies under it is leased by the state to private interests.<br />
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Imagine having a small scale farm trying to attract tourists to a distant but beautiful area. This is not an uncommon scenario for European countryside dwellers. Against your will the state gives a company you never heard of the right to extract oil 200 meters from your house. If you're lucky it won't kill you. But you can forget any plans you had about developing your land. <br />
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<a href="http://heavenorshell.se/category/senaste-nytt">Civil resistance</a> against Shell's attempt to extract oil in Skåne was actually too strong to prevent it form happening, but campaigners have been working hard for a change in the law, giving landowners and local communities a say similar the wind power veto. Such a proposal was however turned down in the parliament, without any clear motivation. The law will be revised, but not changed. <br />
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To make matter worse, the right wing populists Sverigedemokraterna are cynically used in the debate. Yesterday the opposition <a href="http://www.thelocal.se/34250/20110609/">forced through</a> further revisions of the government's social policy, helped by the votes of Sverigedemokraterna. Of course, the government was eager to point out this, and that the opposition can only have its way by cooperating with a racist party. But if it wasn't for this racist party, the government would have lost this vote, and there would be no local veto against wind power investments.<br />
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Could one claim that a miniscule racist party that manages Sweden's energy policy? I think it is more fair to say that it is managed by undue respect for corporate interests, voluntary blindness and hypocrisy. <br />
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How does these matters look in the country where you look? Do you have a right for local communities to veto against wind power / fossil fuel extraction? I would love to read about that in the comments.Maladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0Lund Municipality, Sweden55.7028541 13.19291250000003455.568321100000006 12.940108500000035 55.8373871 13.445716500000033tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5060024162375106425.post-30901128366732059052011-05-30T22:35:00.000+02:002011-05-30T22:35:51.157+02:00Let Germany save us allAs it happens in democracies, <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster">events in the real world</a> affects German politics. After being <a href="http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14943224,00.html">severly punished</a> in the state elections, Merkel's liberal right governement changed its mind on nuclear power, and decided to honour the previous government's promise to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/30/germany-to-shut-nuclear-reactors">close all German reactors by 2022</a>.<br />
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<a title='By Nuclear_power_plant.svg: Hendrik Tammen (Enricopedia ⇄) derivative work: Theanphibian (Nuclear_power_plant.svg) [CC-BY-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons' href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_plant_blue.svg'><img width='120' alt='Nuclear power plant blue' src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Nuclear_power_plant_blue.svg/120px-Nuclear_power_plant_blue.svg.png'/></a><br />
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It is easy to hold strong opinions about nuclear power. In spite of the fact that influential green thinkers such as <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/">James Hansen</a> and <a href="http://www.jameslovelock.org/">James Lovelock</a> both advocate nuclear power as the best/only way to maintain civilisation without fossil fuels. True as they might be, what Lovelock and Hansen are talking about is the so called <a href="http://www.jameslovelock.org/">fourth generation of nuclear power</a>. These plants theoretically solve a host of the problems today's plants create. Like the waste issue - in stead of building an enrourmous pile of potentially lethal waste, these plants promise to reuse the waste as fuel, until it is not dangerous any more. Which sounds great if it works. We might have no choice but to try.<br />
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The facilities that are to be closed down in Germany are nothing like this though. They are <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/30/us-germany-nuclearpower-idUSTRE74T1F720110530">old and problem torn</a>. Any one who believes in nucelar power should be glad to see them closed. The industry, however seems more eager to run them as long as they are profitable before building next generation plants, which is the core of the nuclear problem. Nuclear power could maybe be safe in the hands of scientists like Lovelock and Hansen, but any CEO will treat it as just another souce of large and safe income which makes him relunctant to renew it.<br />
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The reactions in Sweden, and elsewhere in Europe, to the German U-turn is shock and fear. The major newssource Dagens Nyheter <a href="http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/tyskt-avveckling-leder-till-dyrare-elpriser">claims</a> that the price of electricity will double if the decision is carried through. Interstingly, most people interviewed in the article does not think so, but DN chose that headline. For some reason, that is what they want readers to believe.<br />
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Let us for a moment presume that it is true. Prices on electricity will double. Everyone agrees that we need to save energy - wouldn't a drastic price hike be the best way to create energy prudence? Wouldn't it drastically increase the profitability of renewable energy? <br />
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For sure it would, and the way things look right now it would be a blessing. The Swedish energy authority forecast Sweden's energy useage to <a href="http://www.energimyndigheten.se/sv/Statistik/Prognoser/LP2010/">keep growing until 2030</a>. If that happens, what chances do we have to lower co2 emissions? None. Any positive development would require a shock therapy. If the decision in Germany doubles prices in Sweden - we ought to thank he Germans for saving our future. Unfortunately, it is so much easier to whine about higher prices, than to realize what problems low prices create. <br />
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IN the real world it is unlikely that the German decision will have so drastic consequenses, and it is still far from <em>fait accompli </em>. Merkel's decision must first be approved in the parliament, where it will come under fierce critizism from the industry and politicians. It will be intersting to see who comes out as the winner in the end - Europe's strongest civil society or an <a href="http://oecdwatch.org/cases/Case_170">infamous industry</a>.<br />
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IMaladets!http://www.blogger.com/profile/18417369862816717835noreply@blogger.com0