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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (79469)	1/23/2010 8:59:32 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Energy and Climate Change: C+ by Daphne Wysham / Published on Saturday, January 23, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus When Barack Obama was elected president, many climate activists were thrilled. With the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere reaching dangerous levels, and Democrats controlling the House and Senate, hopes couldn't have been higher among climate campaigners that Obama would act swiftly to make energy and climate change one of his top priorities. In his first few months in office, Obama did in fact take some significant actions. In the stimulus package, according to budget analysts, he provided $32.80 billion in funding for clean energy projects, $26.86 billion in energy efficiency initiatives, and $18.95 billion for green transportation, giving a total of $78.61 billion directly earmarked for green projects. In May, Obama announced tough new vehicle gas-mileage standards. The agreement requires automakers to meet a minimum fuel-efficiency standard of 35.5 miles per gallon, roughly 30 percent greater than today, by model year 2016 — four years earlier than Congress currently requires. However, compared to the Obama plan, California's clean car laws would achieve 41 percent more greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020. Obama's "cash for clunkers" program was somewhat misguided on several fronts. Instead of encouraging U.S. consumers to buy fuel-efficient U.S. cars, and help out the ailing auto industry in Detroit, it handed a major taxpayer subsidy to mostly foreign auto manufacturers. The program also did not set the fuel efficiency standards for a car trade-in high enough, thereby allowing people to get cash for new cars that were still relatively fuel inefficient. Similarly, the stimulus dollars invested in roads, another subsidy for the more polluting automobile, could have been invested in public transportation. Obama took a hands-off approach with the climate and energy legislation as it moved through the House. Despite his campaign pledge that there would be a 100 percent auction of pollution allowances, he remained silent as the Waxman-Markey bill (officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) became weighted down with giveaways to polluters, including a free allocation of over 80 percent of pollution permits. Yet the budget submitted to Congress counts on raising $627 billion through a 100 percent "cap and trade" auction from 2012-19, with 20 percent dedicated to clean energy investments ($15 billion/year) and the rest funding the “Making Work Pay” tax credit for working families. The free giveaway will reduce this revenue stream and adversely affect the intended beneficiaries. An expanding cast of characters has come to recognize climate change as, among other things, a security issue. The last Bush administration budget, however, allocated $88 to its military forces for every $1 spent on climate change. The Obama administration significantly narrowed this gap to a proportion of $9 to $1. But the vast majority of the investment—87 percent--came in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In the future, these investments will need to be made in the regular budget. Obama’s efforts in Copenhagen did break down one obstacle imposed by the U.S. Senate: In the so-called Copenhagen Accord, major developing countries (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) and the U.S. — representing roughly 50 percent of global emissions — agreed to a target of two degrees Celsius as an upper limit in the rise in global average temperature. However, in reaching this agreement outside the formal UN process, the Copenhagen Accord has given a boost to the Major Economies Forum to the detriment of multilateralism. The challenge now is to make these commitments legally binding, to strengthen them to reach a target of 350 parts per million of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, and to reaffirm and restore a multilateral approach. So, too, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge to help raise $10 billion per year in climate adaptation and mitigation funds by 2012, and $100 billion per year by 2020 (as noted in the Copenhagen Accord), is ambitious but open to criticism. While the United States is at least rhetorically supporting a significant cash infusion to a global climate fund, critical in building trust with developing countries, the U.S. contribution has yet to be put on the table. The challenge remains: to push the Obama administration to support an adequate and unconditional U.S. contribution beyond existing development aid spending, to shift the fund’s sourcing from carbon markets to a financial transaction tax and other mechanisms, and to house the new body in the United Nations and not the World Bank. *Daphne Wysham co-directs the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

To: coug who wrote (79469)	1/23/2010 9:10:08 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

How Costa Rica became the happiest place on Earth seattletimes.nwsource.com Nicholas D. Kristof / Syndicated Columnist Costa Rica's decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends, writes columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad. SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Hmmm. You think it's a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it's also arguably the happiest nation on Earth. There are several ways of measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this pearl of Central America does stunningly well by whatever system is used. For example, the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answers to surveys by Gallup and others, lists Costa Rica in the top spot out of 148 nations. That's because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4 and Togo and Tanzania bring up the caboose at 2.6. Scholars also calculate happiness by determining "happy life years." This figure results from merging average self-reported happiness, as above, with life expectancy. Using this system, Costa Rica again easily tops the list. The U.S. is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last. A third approach is the "happy planet index," devised by the New Economics Foundation, a liberal think tank. This combines happiness and longevity but adjusts for environmental impact — such as the carbon that countries spew. Here again, Costa Rica wins the day, for achieving contentment and longevity in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and Zimbabwe is last. Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country, when one isn't admiring the sloths in the jungle (sloths truly are slothful, I discovered; they are the tortoises of the trees). Costa Rica has done an unusually good job preserving nature, and it's surely easier to be happy while basking in sunshine and greenery than while shivering up north and suffering "nature deficit disorder." After dragging my 12-year-old daughter through Honduran slums and Nicaraguan villages on this trip, she was delighted to see a Costa Rican beach and stroll through a national park. Among her favorite animals now: iguanas and sloths. What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists. I'm not anti-military. But the evidence is strong that education is often a far better investment than artillery. In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender-gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others. Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe. This emphasis on the environment hasn't sabotaged Costa Rica's economy but has bolstered it. Indeed, Costa Rica is one of the few countries that is seeing migration from the United States: Yankees are moving here to enjoy a low-cost retirement. My hunch is that in 25 years, we'll see large numbers of English-speaking retirement communities along the Costa Rican coast. Cross-country comparisons of happiness are controversial and uncertain. But what does seem quite clear is that Costa Rica's national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad. In the meantime, I encourage you to conduct your own research in Costa Rica, exploring those magnificent beaches or admiring those slothful sloths. It'll surely make you happy. *Nicholas D. Kristof is a regular columnist for The New York Times.