Archive for 2011
sampai sekarang ini saya masih teringat ingat tentang yang di katakan pak tua tukang pijat tersebut,yang mengatakan kalau saya ini mempunyai garis tangan yang langkah.("waahh...agak gembira setelah mendegar hal tersebut").tapi sebelum itu saya akan menceritan pertemuan saya dengan pak tua tersebut.
saat yang akan pesiaapan mengikuti ajang Porprov JATIM 2011,tentunya dengan latihan yang keras ("maklum atlit Taekwondo,maap kalau promosi.heheh"). saya mengalami cidera yang cukup parah yakni Usus saya mengalami yang namanya "usus tertarik",sakitnya minta ampun kalau kaki di angkat.
singkat cerita pelatih saya menyarankan agar saya berobat alternatif di daerah pasuruan. akhirnya saya dan pelatih saya dan beberapa teman saya kesana, di situlah pertemuan saya pertama kali dengan pak tua tersebut.
saat giliran saya untuk di pijat,entah kenapa pak tua tersebut memegang tangan kiri saya dan melihat ,meraba garis tangan saya dan pak tua tersebut mengatakan..kalau saya ini mempunyai garis tangan yang langkah,dan ketika saya usaha apapun pasti akan sukses. entah apa maksud perkataan beliau.sampai pulang pun saat masih bingung dan teringat perkataan beliau.
akhirnya saya pun mencoba mencari makna di balik garis tangan saya ini,dan akhirnya saya menemui penjelasan,bahwa garis tangan saya ini di namakan garis tangan SIMIAN LINE.
dan menurut kabar Kelainan ini ditemukan pada sekitar 4 persen orang bule, sementara orang Asia jumlahnya sekitar 14 persen. Sementara di seluruh dunia, mereka yang punya simian lines ini cuma sekitar 3 persen, dan kebanyakan ditemukan pada laki-laki ketimbang perempuan.("sempat terkagum-kagum")
- Versi pertama dari sisi ilmu membaca garis tangan alias palmistry.
Dari sisi ini, orang yang memiliki simian line ibarat pedang bermata dua. Menyatunya garis kepala dan garis hati konon menunjukkan bahwa orang tersebut susah memisahkan antara emosi (garis hati) dan rasio (garis kepala). Di satu sisi orang seperti ini bisa punya kemampuan kuat untuk memfokuskan diri pada satu hal tertentu, namun di sisi lain punya kecenderungan untuk melakukan sesuatu tanpa pikir panjang, hiper aktif, agresif dan cenderung tidak sabaran.
Karena kemampuannya untuk terfokus pada satu hal, seringkali orang dengan simian lines mudah mencapai apa yang sudah menjadi keinginannya. Namun demikian di sisi lain ia juga sering menghadapi lebih banyak cobaan dibandingkan orang kebanyakan. Karena itulah ia disebut bak pedang bermata dua. Bisa merugikan sekali, tapi juga bisa menguntungkan sekali.
Karena itulah, konon lagi, dengan karakteristiknya ini orang dengan simian lines banyak mengubah dunia baik untuk kebaikan maupun untuk keburukan. Beberapa tokoh dunia seperti PM Inggris Tony Blair, mantan PM Rusia Nikita Kruschev, penulis John Steinbeck dan Henry Miller katanya punya garis tangan seperti ini. Namun disisi lain lagi, banyak tokoh radikal yang dilahirkan dunia dari kalangan pemilik garis tangan simian lines, termasuk diantaranya para pencandu narkoba kelas berat dan juga pembunuh. Sayang saya tidak menemukan nama orang yang masuk kategori radikal ini. Ya mungkin karena tidak ada yang berani memeriksa garis tangan seorang radikal hahaha
Namun, mungkin ini pula alasan mengapa ada beberapa orang yang mengaku punya kemampuan membaca garis tangan, menasihati saya agar jangan menggunakan tangan kiri saya untuk memukul orang. Soalnya sakit hehehe..
- Versi kedua dari sisi medis.
Ya, mungkin.. ini mungkin lho.. mungkin karena orang dengan garis simian line ini hidupnya cenderung ekstrim, sehingga nasibnya pun cenderung ekstrim. Sekali apes, apes banget, sekali bagus, bagus banget. sekalinya baik, baik banget, sekalinya jahat, jahat banget, sekalinya pinter, ya di atas rata2. sekalinya bego ya bego banget
Kelebihan garis tangan simian adalah :
----> cuma ada 3% di dunia yang punya garis tangan itu
----> jika fokus pada satu hal, maka dia akan lebih sukses dibanding pemilik garis tangan lain
----> orang2 simian termasuk tabah menjalani cobaan hidup
----> tapi hati2 konon kabarnya mudah terkena penyakit jantung
----> garis tangan ini spesial, banyak orang2 sukses dengan garis tangan seperti ini, contoh : habibie, moh ali,leon theremin (pencipta alat musik theremin), tony blair, dan masih banyak lagi
----> ya, orang simian mempunyai intuisi lebih bagus dibanding lainnya
----> garis tangan simian ini turunan..
Garis tangan simian berbentuk lurus, karena garis itu merupakan perpaduan dari garis hati dan garis kepala di telapak tangan. Orang2 normal selalu punya dua garis major horizontal terpisah, nah itu adalah garis kepala dan garis hati. Orang2 simian menyatukan garis2 itu.Jadi orang2 ini akan sangat sangat sangat sukses jika dia bekerja atau berkarir di bidang yang hatinya senangi. Kalo sebaliknya, dia akan terpuruk banget.
orang simian kebanyakan menyukai hal2 unik dan beda dari yang lain.Orang simian secara intuitif pasti akan ketemu orang simian lainnya, entah itu hubungan keluarga, teman, pacar, rekan bisnis. Kalau mereka dah ketemu, kebanyakan hubungan mereka langgeng dan positif .Garis tangan Simian Line,jadi kurang lebih karekteristik garis tangan ini adalah Nakal,Keras Kepala & Suka suasana yang tenang .Tapi menurut kepercayaan bangsa Yunani,Simian Line adalah prajurit terbaik & terkuat dalam pasukan perang Spartan Yunani .Tidak heran jika,sebagain orang di dunia yang mempunyai Simian Line adalah orang yang banyak berpengaruh di dunia selama mereka hidup dalam bidang yang mereka gelut.Seperti contohnya :
1. Tony Blair
2. Thom Yorke
3. Robert De Niro’s
4. Mahatma Gandhi
5. Bill Clinton
6. Hillary Clinton
7. Barrack Obama
8. Muhammad Ali
9. Nikita Krusev
Bagi orang yang memiliki gari tangan Simian Line,menurut kepercayaan Jawa kuno memiliki hidup yang berkecukupan dalam kehidupannya kelak.Bahkan banyak yang yang meramal kalau tipe Simian Line adalah jenis yang sangat setia terhadap pasangannya di kemudian hari.
kalau saya sih percaya gak percaya..ya di buat asyik-asyik aja deh,tapi apa di katakan artikel yang saya tulisan dan saya kutip dari berbagai sumber,memang benar apa adanya karena saya cenderung memiliki sifat seperti itu.
jadi,periksa apakah anda memilki garis tangan seperti saya.???dan bergabunglah menjadi komunitas orang langkah.hahahah...
salam damai..
SUMBER
Mantan Menteri Dalam Negeri (Mendagri) Hari Sabarno mengaku galau menghadapi kasus dugaan korupsi pengadaan mobil pemadam kebakaran (damkar) di Departemen Dalam Negeri tahun 2003-2005.
"Saya memang merasa galau. Saya tidak bertanggung jawab secara hukum," ujar Hari Sabarno dalam pemeriksaan terdakwa di Pengadilan Tipikor, Jakarta, Senin, 5 Desember 2011.
Sampai saat ini, Hari tidak merasa bersalah terkait dakwaan Jaksa Penuntut Umum (JPU) yang menyebut bahwa ia telah memperkaya diri sendiri dengan menerbitkan surat edaran berbentuk radiogram yang isinya memerintahkan kepada para Gubernur, Bupati atau Walikota untuk melaksanakan pengadaan mobil pemadam kebakaran melalui PT Istana Sarana Raya milik Hengky Samuel Daud dengan tipe V 80 ASM.
Meski demikian purnawirawan TNI itu mengakui dalam proyek tersebut ia kurang teliti dalam melakukan pengawasan terhadap anak buahnya.
"Tentu itu karena tugas yang sedemikian banyak akhirnya saya kurang teliti di dalam pengawasan," ucapnya.
Dengan selesainya pemeriksaan terdakwa, maka pemeriksaan terhadap kasus ini pun dinyatakan berakhir. Ketua Majelis Hakim Suhartoyo memutuskan, sidang dilanjutkan pada Jumat, 9 Desember 2011 mendatang, dengan agenda pembacaan tuntutan JPU.Dalam perkara ini, Hari didakwa melakukan korupsi bersama-sama dengan mantan Direktur Jenderal Otonomi Daerah Oentarto Sindung Mawardi karena memperkaya diri sendiri, orang lain, atau korporasi, yang mengakibatkan negara rugi Rp97,026 miliar. Perbuatan memperkaya diri sendiri dilakukan Hari dengan cara mengarahkan gubernur, bupati, dan Walikota, mengadakan mobil damkar dengan spesifikasi yang hanya diproduksi PT Istana Sarana Raya. (adi)
Sejumlah wanita pernah dikabarkan dekat dengan Pangeran Harry. Namun, pangeran asal Inggris ini tak pernah menanggapinya dengan serius. Ia selalu kembali kepada satu wanita, yakni mantan pacarnya, Chelsy Davy.Setelah kembali ke negaranya, usai menjalani latihan militer di Amerika Serikat, Harry memilih untuk bersantai. Ia mengunjungi Klub Brompton di Chelsea, London. Di sana, ia bertemu dengan Chelsy. Para orang yang berada di klub tersebut melihat keduanya duduk bersama. Sebelum masuk ke klub, Harry dan Chelsy saling berpelukan. Chelsy mengenakan gaun merah sedangkan Harry memakai pakaian rapi. Mereka berpesta hingga dini hari.
Kedekatan itu menimbulkan spekulasi jika Harry dan Chelsy kembali bersama. Namun, sejauh ini belum ada komentar soal tersebut baik dari Harry maupun Chelsy.
Paangan ini sempat menjalin cinta selama lima tahun. Hubungan mereka berakhir pada tahun 2009 lalu. Namun, keduanya sepakat untuk tetap berteman baik. Bahkan, saat pernikahan Pangeran William dan Kate Middleton, Harry menggandeng Chelsy sebagai teman kencannya.
Hubungan Harry dan Chelsy memang selalu putus sambung. Namun, dia adalah satu-satunya wanita yang selalu berada di hati pangeran tampan tersebut. Chelsy berhasil menjadi wanita yang selalu berada dalam kehidupan Harry dalam waktu yang lama.
Sumber : Klik DISINI
Tanpa sengaja di saat senggang saya melihat dan memperhatikan beterai laptop Hp compaq saya yang tidak terpakai lagi tanpa sadar saya memperhatikan tulisan yang terdapat di laptop yakni tulisan C E. saya pun berpikir apa arti tulisan tesebut dan karena penasaran saya mencoba googling dan bertanya-tanya tentang apa arti dan kegunaan simbol C E tersebut.setelah lama saya cari-cari akhirnya saya mendapatkan pengertian arti simbol C E tersebut.
Simbol C E adalah standart keamanan yang di pakai khusus di kawasan Eropa Timur (EEA) tentang barang-barang elektronik ekpor luar negeri yang mengartikakan bahwa barang tersebut aman untuk di pakai.
Jika Tidak ada simbol C E pada barang-barang elektronik tersebut,maka produk tersebut tidak boleh di biarkan beredar di pasaran.
Produk-Produk yang biasa di Tandai simbol C E:
Penandaan CE bukan tanda kualitas produk. Pertama, itu ditunjukkan untuk keamanan daripada kualitas suatu produk. Kedua, Penandaan CE adalah perintah untuk ditandai di produk itu mengingat banyak penandaan kualitas dengan sengaja.
#akhirnya saya pun tahu...
Simbol C E adalah standart keamanan yang di pakai khusus di kawasan Eropa Timur (EEA) tentang barang-barang elektronik ekpor luar negeri yang mengartikakan bahwa barang tersebut aman untuk di pakai.
Jika Tidak ada simbol C E pada barang-barang elektronik tersebut,maka produk tersebut tidak boleh di biarkan beredar di pasaran.
Produk-Produk yang biasa di Tandai simbol C E:
- Peralatan Medis.
- Mesin.
- Instalasi industri.
- Mainan.
- Perlengkapan Tekanan.
- Peralatan Perlindungan Pribadi.
- Alat Rekreasi.
- Kulkas.
Penandaan CE bukan tanda kualitas produk. Pertama, itu ditunjukkan untuk keamanan daripada kualitas suatu produk. Kedua, Penandaan CE adalah perintah untuk ditandai di produk itu mengingat banyak penandaan kualitas dengan sengaja.
#akhirnya saya pun tahu...
Cinta ditolak, air keras bertindak. Kiranya ini adalah ungkapan yang tepat digunakan untuk kasus yang terjadi di provinsi Kundus, Afganistan.
sebuah keluarga di provinsi ini disiram wajahnya dengan air keras oleh geng bersenjata. Peristiwa ini terjadi setelah si ayah menolak menikahkan putrinya, Mumtaz, yang berusia 18 tahun dengan salah seorang anggota geng yang usianya jauh lebih tua.
Diberitakan Reuters, Kamis 1 Desember 2011, setelah menolak pinangan tersebut, Mumtaz bertunangan dengan seorang lelaki yang masih merupakan kerabatnya.
Lelaki yang ditolak bersama dengan gerombolannya yang berjumlah enam atau tujuh orang langsung menyerbu rumah keluarga Mumtaz. Menurut kesaksian ibu Mumtaz, gerombolan ini memukuli si ayah dan menyiramnya dengan air keras. Tindakan serupa juga dilakukan terhadapnya dan ketiga putrinya.
"Ayah dan putri sulungnya (Mumtaz) berada dalam kondisi kritis karena seluruh tubuh mereka tersiram air keras. Sementara si ibu dan dua putrinya yang masih berusia 14 dan 13 tahun hanya mengalami sedikit luka di tangan dan wajah," kata Abdul Shokor Rahimi, kepala rumah sakit Kunduz tempat ke lima korban dirawat.
Polisi Afganistan hingga kini masih memburu pelaku penyiraman yang mereka sebut tak bermoral dan tak bertanggungjawab. "Kami telah memulai penyelidikan, dan semua yang terlibat akan diadili," tegasnya.
Kerabat Mumtaz mengatakan, pinangan pelaku tidak diterima karena keluarga tersebut tahu kalau lelaki itu adalah anggota geng kriminal. "Polisi harus menangkapnya, karena kejahatan yang dilakukan pria ini serius," kata seorang kerabat, seperti dimuat kantor berita BBC.
sumber Klik Disini
sebuah keluarga di provinsi ini disiram wajahnya dengan air keras oleh geng bersenjata. Peristiwa ini terjadi setelah si ayah menolak menikahkan putrinya, Mumtaz, yang berusia 18 tahun dengan salah seorang anggota geng yang usianya jauh lebih tua. Diberitakan Reuters, Kamis 1 Desember 2011, setelah menolak pinangan tersebut, Mumtaz bertunangan dengan seorang lelaki yang masih merupakan kerabatnya.
Lelaki yang ditolak bersama dengan gerombolannya yang berjumlah enam atau tujuh orang langsung menyerbu rumah keluarga Mumtaz. Menurut kesaksian ibu Mumtaz, gerombolan ini memukuli si ayah dan menyiramnya dengan air keras. Tindakan serupa juga dilakukan terhadapnya dan ketiga putrinya.
"Ayah dan putri sulungnya (Mumtaz) berada dalam kondisi kritis karena seluruh tubuh mereka tersiram air keras. Sementara si ibu dan dua putrinya yang masih berusia 14 dan 13 tahun hanya mengalami sedikit luka di tangan dan wajah," kata Abdul Shokor Rahimi, kepala rumah sakit Kunduz tempat ke lima korban dirawat.
Polisi Afganistan hingga kini masih memburu pelaku penyiraman yang mereka sebut tak bermoral dan tak bertanggungjawab. "Kami telah memulai penyelidikan, dan semua yang terlibat akan diadili," tegasnya.
Kerabat Mumtaz mengatakan, pinangan pelaku tidak diterima karena keluarga tersebut tahu kalau lelaki itu adalah anggota geng kriminal. "Polisi harus menangkapnya, karena kejahatan yang dilakukan pria ini serius," kata seorang kerabat, seperti dimuat kantor berita BBC.
sumber Klik Disini
Taekwondoin putri Indonesia, Fransisca Valentina langsung berlari memeluk erat pelatihnya, Mr Lee usai dinyatakan menang 8-2 atas Taekwondoin Malaysia, Nurul Asfahlina. Tangis gadis 24 tahun tersebut langsung pecah seiring gemuruh sorak-sorai dan tepuk tangan pendukungnya yang memadati Gedung Olahraga POPKI Cibubur, Jakarta Timur.Sisca siang itu menyabet medali emas Taekwondo SEA Games XXVI di nomor -46 kg putri. Seolah tak merasakan nyeri di kaki kirinya akibat operasi tulang kering yang belum lama ini dijalaninya, Sisca kemudian berlari mengitari lapangan sambil membentangkan bendera Merah Putih, menyapa pendukungnya. Matanya masih basah menahan haru. Inilah emas pertamanya di ajang SEA Games.
"Saya sama sekali tidak menyangka mendapatkan emas. Kondisi saya sebetulnya tidak memungkinkan untuk menang di final. Kaki kiri saya sama sekali tidak bisa digerakkan beberapa saat sebelum bertanding," ujar dara manis kelahiran Klaten, Jawa Tengah, 23 Maret 1987 ini.
Peraih medali perunggu Asian Games 2010 itu mengakui kondisi kaki kirinya sempat membuatnya ragu dapat meraih emas di partai final. Namun, sepenggal bait lagu 'Padamu Negeri' yang didengarnya saat mengencangkan sabuk, bersiap untuk bertarung, diakui Sisca membuat jiwanya bergetar. Kecemasan akan kaki kirinya mendadak sirna berganti kekuatan yang menggelora.
"Saat saya mendengar suporter menyanyikan, 'padamu negeri, jiwa raga kami' saya langsung merinding. Entah kenapa semangat saya untuk menang tiba-tiba datang berlipat-lipat. Saat itu saya pasrah kepada Tuhan, berharap hasil terbaik dari apa yang bisa saya lakukan," ujarnya sambil berbinar.
Peraih medali perak SEA Games 2009 di Thailand tersebut mengatakan, medali emas pertama SEA Games itu ingin ia dedikasikan untuk orang tuanya. Bagi mahasiswi Universitas 17 Agustus Semarang itu, dukungan ibu dan ayahnya merupakan bahan bakar utama yang menyulut api juara di dalam dadanya. Medali emas di tangannya tersebut tak sabar untuk segera diperlihatkan kepada mereka.
"Saya ingin ketemu mama saya. Beliau datang langsung untuk memberi dukungan," ujar peraih gelar juara Hwarang Festival di Korea tahun 2005 tersebut.
Jalan Fransisca meraih emas di SEA Games memang sangat berat. Selain cedera kaki, ia mengaku hampir dikalahkan usus buntu.
Dua minggu sebelum SEA Games digelar, dokter memberinya vonis tidak bisa membela Merah Putih. Usus buntu yang dideritanya memaksa untuk segera dilakukan operasi. Sempat empat hari dirawat, Sisca nekat ingin tetap terjun di SEA Games.
"Ini jawaban kenekatan saya. Sejak kecil saya memang keras jika punya keinginan. Saya menolak operasi itu. Saya percaya bisa mengatasinya selama ikut SEA Games. Sekarang tidak hanya kaki kiri saya yang banyak menyumbang poin tadi. Semangat mengalahkan usus buntu juga membuat saya makin kuat," ujar dara yang mengaku bakal segera berobat usai meraih emas SEA Games ini.
CONGRATULATIONS..._^
buat INDONESIA dan BUAT TAEKWONDOIN INDONESIA
buat INDONESIA dan BUAT TAEKWONDOIN INDONESIA
Setelah dua kali ditunda, Presiden Barack Obama akhirnya berkunjung juga ke Australia pada 16-17 November 2011. Salah satu pihak yang gembira atas kunjungan Presiden Amerika Serikat itu adalah Perdana Menteri Australia, Julia Gillard.
Gillard tampak selalu ceria berada di dekat Obama. Bahkan, seolah-olah ingin menunjukkan begitu eratnya hubungan antara AS dan Australia, kedua pemimpin itu tidak segan-segan berperilaku seperti dua orang yang sudah punya hubungan sangat dekat.
Di depan bidikan lensa kamera, Obama dan Gillard tidak canggung saling mencium pipi dalam beberapa kesempatan. Bahkan, dalam suatu momen, Gillard mendekatkan tangannya ke arah belakang Obama.
#ciiiyee.....ciiyyeee.......
sumber : KLIK DISINI
Gillard tampak selalu ceria berada di dekat Obama. Bahkan, seolah-olah ingin menunjukkan begitu eratnya hubungan antara AS dan Australia, kedua pemimpin itu tidak segan-segan berperilaku seperti dua orang yang sudah punya hubungan sangat dekat.
Di depan bidikan lensa kamera, Obama dan Gillard tidak canggung saling mencium pipi dalam beberapa kesempatan. Bahkan, dalam suatu momen, Gillard mendekatkan tangannya ke arah belakang Obama.
#ciiiyee.....ciiyyeee.......
sumber : KLIK DISINI
- Tahun 1997
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- Salah satu teknologi termuda yang hadir saat ini adalah Near Field Communication (NFC) yang memungkinkan penggunanya saling mengirimkan file tanpa bantuan kabel dan bermain game dengan tingkat sekuriti selevel di atas pendahulunya. NFC dikembangkan oleh NXP Semiconductors dan Sony pada tahun 2002 yang awalnya digunakan sebagai sistem perantara pembayaran di Amerika Serikat. Penggunaan NFC bisa digabungkan dengan Wi-Fi atau Bluetooth sesuai dengan fungsi dan kecepatan yang dibutuhkan. Pada level praktis, Nokia 700 sudah menanam chip NFC untuk koneksi gaming dan file sharing dengan hanya menyentuhkannya ke sesama perangkat NFC.
sumber : http://yahoo.co.id (news slider)
Richmond Hill Mayor Dave Barrow is fed up with the Ontario Municipal Board and is encouraging Richmond Hill residents to call local MPPs to defend their town from the provincial agency and developers.
He later described this plea he made at Monday’s committee meeting as “more of a rant”, but one that reflected an underlying feeling of frustration and concern for Richmond Hill, as more local development matters head to the provincial land tribunal for a ruling.
The mayor’s outspoken comments came following an OMB decision that will allow Haulover Investments Ltd. to build a two-tower apartment complex, with a base of six storeys and towers of 28 and 24 storeys each, on the southeast corner of Yonge Street and 16th Avenue.
According to the town’s new official plan, that height and density is reserved for development farther south around Hwy. 7, in what is regarded as a regional centre in the town’s new official plan.
However, it appears the town can’t defend such building restrictions, as its official plan is also before the OMB, following York Region’s failure to formally approve the plan during the allotted 180 days.
This resulted in developers working together to take the town’s plan to the board, placing years of work by town staff and input from residents into limbo.
According to the yet-to-be-approved official plan, 28 storeys is eight storeys higher than what is permitted in the proposed location, across from Hillcrest Mall.
According to the town’s old official plan, the proposed Haulover development would be 20 storeys more than permitted in that spot.
“I find, if you read the OMB decision (allowing the development), it goes back and forth with what the new and old plans can allow, through this is ridiculous cherry picking by the board,” Mr. Barrow said Tuesday.
The OMB decision states certain strengths of the new official plan can’t apply to the application because it’s not approved, but then the new plan is referenced to allow certain aspects of the same development bid, he complains.
“It becomes very frustrating and now I’m afraid we are subject to any outcome at OMB, as there is no sense that anything we have done as a council or a community, is remotely considered,” Mr. Barrow said.
“While 20 storeys may have been arrived at as a result of public consultation, the board seriously doubts if many of those being consulted recognize the fact that 20 storeys represents a variable measurement, OMB member Sylvia Sutherland stated in the board’s report on the Haulover site application. “A metre is a metre is a metre. A storey in one building isn’t necessarily a storey in another. It is an arbitrary and variable measurement.”
But based on the decision, it’s appears as if the town didn’t participate in the hearing, Mr. Barrow said.
Ontario Bill 51 was instituted in 2006 to strengthen the position of municipalities before the OMB.
With this bill still in place, Mr. Barrow describes the OMB’s Haulover approval as an error in logic.
The mayor sent the decision to Richmond Hill MPP Reza Moridi and Oak Ridges-Markham MPP Helena Jaczek, urging them to take action.
He is also calling on you to lobby elected officials with e-mail, letters, Twitter and Facebook messages, to seek some kind of OMB reform.
Mr. Moridi said he has spoken with Mr. Barrow on the issue and understands the mayor’s frustration.
“The mayor is in charge and wants to protect the town, so when the decision doesn’t conform to either (official) plan, I know that is upsetting,” Mr. Moridi said yesterday.
The MPP said he will raise the concerns with Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Kathleen Wynne and the Attorney General John Gerretsen, both of whom he said, oversee the provincial board.
He later described this plea he made at Monday’s committee meeting as “more of a rant”, but one that reflected an underlying feeling of frustration and concern for Richmond Hill, as more local development matters head to the provincial land tribunal for a ruling.
The mayor’s outspoken comments came following an OMB decision that will allow Haulover Investments Ltd. to build a two-tower apartment complex, with a base of six storeys and towers of 28 and 24 storeys each, on the southeast corner of Yonge Street and 16th Avenue.
According to the town’s new official plan, that height and density is reserved for development farther south around Hwy. 7, in what is regarded as a regional centre in the town’s new official plan.
However, it appears the town can’t defend such building restrictions, as its official plan is also before the OMB, following York Region’s failure to formally approve the plan during the allotted 180 days.
This resulted in developers working together to take the town’s plan to the board, placing years of work by town staff and input from residents into limbo.
According to the yet-to-be-approved official plan, 28 storeys is eight storeys higher than what is permitted in the proposed location, across from Hillcrest Mall.
According to the town’s old official plan, the proposed Haulover development would be 20 storeys more than permitted in that spot.
“I find, if you read the OMB decision (allowing the development), it goes back and forth with what the new and old plans can allow, through this is ridiculous cherry picking by the board,” Mr. Barrow said Tuesday.
The OMB decision states certain strengths of the new official plan can’t apply to the application because it’s not approved, but then the new plan is referenced to allow certain aspects of the same development bid, he complains.
“It becomes very frustrating and now I’m afraid we are subject to any outcome at OMB, as there is no sense that anything we have done as a council or a community, is remotely considered,” Mr. Barrow said.
“While 20 storeys may have been arrived at as a result of public consultation, the board seriously doubts if many of those being consulted recognize the fact that 20 storeys represents a variable measurement, OMB member Sylvia Sutherland stated in the board’s report on the Haulover site application. “A metre is a metre is a metre. A storey in one building isn’t necessarily a storey in another. It is an arbitrary and variable measurement.”
But based on the decision, it’s appears as if the town didn’t participate in the hearing, Mr. Barrow said.
Ontario Bill 51 was instituted in 2006 to strengthen the position of municipalities before the OMB.
With this bill still in place, Mr. Barrow describes the OMB’s Haulover approval as an error in logic.
The mayor sent the decision to Richmond Hill MPP Reza Moridi and Oak Ridges-Markham MPP Helena Jaczek, urging them to take action.
He is also calling on you to lobby elected officials with e-mail, letters, Twitter and Facebook messages, to seek some kind of OMB reform.
Mr. Moridi said he has spoken with Mr. Barrow on the issue and understands the mayor’s frustration.
“The mayor is in charge and wants to protect the town, so when the decision doesn’t conform to either (official) plan, I know that is upsetting,” Mr. Moridi said yesterday.
The MPP said he will raise the concerns with Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Kathleen Wynne and the Attorney General John Gerretsen, both of whom he said, oversee the provincial board.
Rosemary Lamont and her York Region Community and Health Services colleagues want you to not quit quitting.
The syntax is fun, but the message is serious: Tobacco is addictive and it kills. Kicking the habit often takes many attempts.
The clinical nurse specialist, in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is preparing for, and inviting smokers to participate in, the STOP on the road research study. STOP, an acronym for stop smoking therapy for Ontario patients, measures the effectiveness of providing nicotine replacement therapy to those who want to quit smoking. Eligible participants will be provided five weeks of nicotine replacement therapy patches at no cost.
A brief telephone screening questionnaire will determine if you qualify for the Nov. 16 sessions in Georgina and Newmarket. Each location can accommodate up to 50 people. Registering early is advised, Ms Lamont said.
If approved, you’ll be given the location. Sessions will be in Georgina, noon to 3 p.m. and Newmarket 6 to 9 p.m. Exact sites are kept under wraps to avoid unregistered drop-ins.
The confidential session is an opportunity for people ready to quit smoking and want to learn about strategies and supports to help them butt out, Ms Lamont said.
The workshop, follow-up supports and nicotine replacement therapy increases your chances of being successful. If you joined the sessions in the past and failed to quit, you’re welcome again, she said.
“We recognize it takes several attempts,” she said, adding the average is between five and seven times.
The program employs two proven strategies: Nicotine replacement therapy doubles your chances of quitting and behavioral change techniques add to the success rate, she said.
Getting the tobacco monkey off your back is no easy task, health experts agree. The addictive nature of nicotine is insidious and more habit forming than heroin.
The nicotine in inhaled tobacco smoke moves from the lungs, into the bloodstream and up to the smoker’s brain within 7 to 10 seconds, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health research scientist Dr. Laurie Zawertailo said.
Once there, nicotine triggers chemical reactions that create temporary feelings of pleasure.
“Nicotine from a cigarette versus a patch enters the brain in a way that’s very reinforcing,” she said. “It attaches to the receptors and releases dopamine and a cascade of events occur.”
Nicotine activates the same reward pathways in the brain as other drugs, such as cocaine or amphetamines, although to a lesser degree.
Research has shown nicotine increases the level of dopamine in the brain, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for feelings of pleasure and well-being. The acute effects of nicotine wear off within minutes, so people must continue dosing themselves frequently throughout the day to maintain the pleasurable effects and to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
The upcoming sessions provides participants with patches, one of four standard nicotine replacement methods. The others are gum, lozenges and inhalers.
These products deliver nicotine without the additional “harmful poisons and chemicals” in cigarettes, Dr. Zawertailo said.
The syntax is fun, but the message is serious: Tobacco is addictive and it kills. Kicking the habit often takes many attempts.
The clinical nurse specialist, in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is preparing for, and inviting smokers to participate in, the STOP on the road research study. STOP, an acronym for stop smoking therapy for Ontario patients, measures the effectiveness of providing nicotine replacement therapy to those who want to quit smoking. Eligible participants will be provided five weeks of nicotine replacement therapy patches at no cost.
A brief telephone screening questionnaire will determine if you qualify for the Nov. 16 sessions in Georgina and Newmarket. Each location can accommodate up to 50 people. Registering early is advised, Ms Lamont said.
If approved, you’ll be given the location. Sessions will be in Georgina, noon to 3 p.m. and Newmarket 6 to 9 p.m. Exact sites are kept under wraps to avoid unregistered drop-ins.
The confidential session is an opportunity for people ready to quit smoking and want to learn about strategies and supports to help them butt out, Ms Lamont said.
The workshop, follow-up supports and nicotine replacement therapy increases your chances of being successful. If you joined the sessions in the past and failed to quit, you’re welcome again, she said.
“We recognize it takes several attempts,” she said, adding the average is between five and seven times.
The program employs two proven strategies: Nicotine replacement therapy doubles your chances of quitting and behavioral change techniques add to the success rate, she said.
Getting the tobacco monkey off your back is no easy task, health experts agree. The addictive nature of nicotine is insidious and more habit forming than heroin.
The nicotine in inhaled tobacco smoke moves from the lungs, into the bloodstream and up to the smoker’s brain within 7 to 10 seconds, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health research scientist Dr. Laurie Zawertailo said.
Once there, nicotine triggers chemical reactions that create temporary feelings of pleasure.
“Nicotine from a cigarette versus a patch enters the brain in a way that’s very reinforcing,” she said. “It attaches to the receptors and releases dopamine and a cascade of events occur.”
Nicotine activates the same reward pathways in the brain as other drugs, such as cocaine or amphetamines, although to a lesser degree.
Research has shown nicotine increases the level of dopamine in the brain, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for feelings of pleasure and well-being. The acute effects of nicotine wear off within minutes, so people must continue dosing themselves frequently throughout the day to maintain the pleasurable effects and to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
The upcoming sessions provides participants with patches, one of four standard nicotine replacement methods. The others are gum, lozenges and inhalers.
These products deliver nicotine without the additional “harmful poisons and chemicals” in cigarettes, Dr. Zawertailo said.
I encounter many long time activists in a quandary how to relate to #OccupyWallStreet. A vibrant, growing mass movement involving thousands of activists is always far more interesting and exciting than the ongoing drudgery (fundraising, event organizing, education and outreach, etc) of keeping existing grassroots organizations going. There is a strong temptation to abandon current organizing commitments to join the groundswell created by the OWS movement. While this might be the right move for some activists, it's vitally important that others use their existing roles in union, peace and justice and environmental networks to bolster and support the anti-greed movement.
All Our Single Issues Have the Same Root Cause
There are strong strategic arguments for all unions and single issue peace and justice and environmental groups to get on board, in some way, with #OccupyWallStreet. All the corporate and government abuses our single issue groups are fighting have the same root cause -- namely the corporate takeover of government. Yet many of us find it difficult to address the corporate tie-in from our single issue silos. Moreover there is already evidence that the current civil unrest in all major American cities is beginning to impact disastrous US policies in the Middle East.
How Do We Best Support OWS?
On the other hand, I question the value of long time union, antiwar, pro-democracy, peace and justice, homeless, sustainability and immigrants rights activists abandoning our existing commitments to camp out in the park. It makes more strategic sense to use our influence in the grassroots networks we have built up over decades to support and collaborate with #OccupyWallStreet. In this way we can provide inroads for younger, more militant OWS activists to sectors of society they might otherwise find difficult to access.
In my view, where existing union and community groups can best support the OWS movement is by providing logistical, material and tactical support as it expands into the productive sector. OWS can only exert real pressure on government, banks and other multinational corporations by disrupting business as usual -- with corporate-targeted sit-ins, consumer boycotts, wild cat strikes or a combination of all three. In Egypt, it was the unions' threat to shut down the Suez Canal that ultimately forced Mubarak to step down.
Many older activists, especially in the Open Source, sustainability and local democracy movements have already made significant gains in undermining corporate rule. The sustainability movement, for example, is responsible for an explosion of community-based alternatives to corporate controlled food, energy, transportation, education, health care and money. Equally impressive are the hundreds of communities in the local democracy movement which have passed ordinances restricting the right of corporations to build new hog farms, spread sewage sludge and deplete aquifers with bottled water operations.
Appealing to a Broad Base of Supporters
For their part, #OccupyWallStreet has already been remarkably effective in networking with existing groups. Good examples include the participation of OWS members in a march supporting Communication of American workers in their dispute with Verizon, an anti-eviction action OWS helped homeless advocates organize in Brooklyn, and the strong backing #OccupyWallStreet has received from organized labor. I attribute OWS coalition building success to their insistence on a broad inclusive vision (i.e. refusing to make specific demands). This enables them appeal to the widest possible base of potential supporters. I can't count the number of large coalitions I have joined in the last thirty years that were scattered to the winds the moment we decided to formulate concrete demands. The last one was the 9-11 Coalition Seattle activists formed in September 2001 to protest the impending US war in Afghanistan. Over the five weeks we spent arguing over specific demands, our numbers shrank from one hundred plus to fifteen.
The November 2 general strike called by Occupy Oakland was the first test of OWS's fragile coalition with labor. In a period of high unemployment, persuading unionists who still have work to put their own jobs on the line is no mean feat. While Occupy Oakland was unsuccessful in shutting the city itself down, a wild cat strike by Oakland longshoremen succeeded in closing down the Port of Oakland (http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/occupy-oakland-succeeds-in-shutting-down-port-4499879).
The Impact of OWS on Foreign Policy
More importantly there are already small signs that #OccupyWallStreet is impacting US foreign policy. The first major accomplishment of the antiglobalization movement was in empowering the third world WTO delegates who attended the 1999 Seattle Ministerial to refuse, for the first time, to submit to major concessions the US was trying to ram down their throats. There is already evidence -- from Iraq, Palestine, and Pakistan -- that OWS is having similar repercussions in the Middle East. This can be seen both in new boldness on the part of Iraq and Pakistan, and a major concessionary move on the part of the US and Israel.
The Iraqi Parliament Pushes Back
In October the mainstream media widely reported that Obama will withdraw all US troops from Iraq by the end of December. Only a few outlets reported the back story -- that both the Pentagon and State Department have been pushing for 10,000 US troops to remain past the December withdrawal deadline. The response, in early October, by the Iraqi government and all opposition parties was unanimous: a decision in the Iraqi parliament to withdraw legal immunity (for war crimes) for any US troops who remained after December 2011. This left Obama no choice but to withdraw them. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iraq-pm-immunity-issue-scuttled-us-troop-deal/2011/10/22/gIQAX6k26L_video.html).
Israel Releases 1,027 Palestinian Prisoners
1 | 2
http://www.stuartbramhall.com
All Our Single Issues Have the Same Root Cause
There are strong strategic arguments for all unions and single issue peace and justice and environmental groups to get on board, in some way, with #OccupyWallStreet. All the corporate and government abuses our single issue groups are fighting have the same root cause -- namely the corporate takeover of government. Yet many of us find it difficult to address the corporate tie-in from our single issue silos. Moreover there is already evidence that the current civil unrest in all major American cities is beginning to impact disastrous US policies in the Middle East.
How Do We Best Support OWS?
On the other hand, I question the value of long time union, antiwar, pro-democracy, peace and justice, homeless, sustainability and immigrants rights activists abandoning our existing commitments to camp out in the park. It makes more strategic sense to use our influence in the grassroots networks we have built up over decades to support and collaborate with #OccupyWallStreet. In this way we can provide inroads for younger, more militant OWS activists to sectors of society they might otherwise find difficult to access.
Many older activists, especially in the Open Source, sustainability and local democracy movements have already made significant gains in undermining corporate rule. The sustainability movement, for example, is responsible for an explosion of community-based alternatives to corporate controlled food, energy, transportation, education, health care and money. Equally impressive are the hundreds of communities in the local democracy movement which have passed ordinances restricting the right of corporations to build new hog farms, spread sewage sludge and deplete aquifers with bottled water operations.
Appealing to a Broad Base of Supporters
For their part, #OccupyWallStreet has already been remarkably effective in networking with existing groups. Good examples include the participation of OWS members in a march supporting Communication of American workers in their dispute with Verizon, an anti-eviction action OWS helped homeless advocates organize in Brooklyn, and the strong backing #OccupyWallStreet has received from organized labor. I attribute OWS coalition building success to their insistence on a broad inclusive vision (i.e. refusing to make specific demands). This enables them appeal to the widest possible base of potential supporters. I can't count the number of large coalitions I have joined in the last thirty years that were scattered to the winds the moment we decided to formulate concrete demands. The last one was the 9-11 Coalition Seattle activists formed in September 2001 to protest the impending US war in Afghanistan. Over the five weeks we spent arguing over specific demands, our numbers shrank from one hundred plus to fifteen.
The November 2 general strike called by Occupy Oakland was the first test of OWS's fragile coalition with labor. In a period of high unemployment, persuading unionists who still have work to put their own jobs on the line is no mean feat. While Occupy Oakland was unsuccessful in shutting the city itself down, a wild cat strike by Oakland longshoremen succeeded in closing down the Port of Oakland (http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/occupy-oakland-succeeds-in-shutting-down-port-4499879).
The Impact of OWS on Foreign Policy
More importantly there are already small signs that #OccupyWallStreet is impacting US foreign policy. The first major accomplishment of the antiglobalization movement was in empowering the third world WTO delegates who attended the 1999 Seattle Ministerial to refuse, for the first time, to submit to major concessions the US was trying to ram down their throats. There is already evidence -- from Iraq, Palestine, and Pakistan -- that OWS is having similar repercussions in the Middle East. This can be seen both in new boldness on the part of Iraq and Pakistan, and a major concessionary move on the part of the US and Israel.
The Iraqi Parliament Pushes Back
In October the mainstream media widely reported that Obama will withdraw all US troops from Iraq by the end of December. Only a few outlets reported the back story -- that both the Pentagon and State Department have been pushing for 10,000 US troops to remain past the December withdrawal deadline. The response, in early October, by the Iraqi government and all opposition parties was unanimous: a decision in the Iraqi parliament to withdraw legal immunity (for war crimes) for any US troops who remained after December 2011. This left Obama no choice but to withdraw them. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iraq-pm-immunity-issue-scuttled-us-troop-deal/2011/10/22/gIQAX6k26L_video.html).
Israel Releases 1,027 Palestinian Prisoners
1 | 2I know some of you reading along may have already seen this, but I think it bears mentioning again and also bears mentioning for those who may not have seen it: The New York Times recently published an article on the long-term effects of antibiotic usage, "In Some Cases, Even Bad Bacteria May Be Good".
After reading the above link, I found it fascinating and disturbing that antibiotics not only could contribute to obesity - the hypothesis originally being test driven by the writer - but that antibiotic use could also lead to allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and gastroesophageal reflux. These are conditions which are not only common in Lyme disease patients, but in the general population as well.
Among the astonishing findings in this article:
What sort of treatment could be available other than antimicrobial herbs?
The answer may be as close as your local wallaby.
Okay, well, for most people reading this, wallabies are hardly local to them - unless you are one of my Australian readers or you have a decent zoo nearby.
Last month, Byte Size Biology blog published an entry on the innate immune system and research on cathelicidins, specifically those peptides found within marsupials - including wallabies - which can fight off infection.
A baby kangaroo (joey) or wallaby is born in its fetal stage and must travel across its mother's abdomen and into a pouch to complete development. This can expose the fragile fetus to all sorts of germs, so what protects it? While the joey has adaptive immunity which is quite undeveloped, it can produce some killer all-purpose peptides he can use against microbes.
The same class of peptides are produced in Kanga’s milk. (Think of the idea as being similar to colostrum in cows, perhaps?) Collectively they are known as cathelicidins. Only about 30 amino acids long, these highly charged molecules kill both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.
Preliminary studies were conducted on the use of cathelicidins as antibiotics. The author of Byte Size Biology wrote:
After reading the above link, I found it fascinating and disturbing that antibiotics not only could contribute to obesity - the hypothesis originally being test driven by the writer - but that antibiotic use could also lead to allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and gastroesophageal reflux. These are conditions which are not only common in Lyme disease patients, but in the general population as well.
Among the astonishing findings in this article:
- Eradicating H. pylori infections entirely leads to the inability of ghrelin (a hunger hormone secreted in the stomach) to decrease in the stomach, thus leaving the brain to think it's always time to eat more. Therefore, lack of infection = eating more = weight gain.
- Researchers found that the ratios of various bacteria in the guts of obese mice and obese humans were significantly different from those of lean controls, suggesting that altering the stomach’s microbial balance with antibiotics might put patients at risk for gaining weight. H. pylori is not the only culprit for change.
- Less H. pylori in someone's system is associated with a greater risk of not only asthma but gastric reflux disease as well.
- The human body contains a very complex bacterial ecosystem which we don't know anywhere near as much about as we should. Knowing about it is important in understanding the cause for disease and how to prevent it.
- It's not just antibiotics that are changing the human microbiota - many aspects of modern life, including diet, smaller families, more hygienic practices and improved public sanitation, are affecting our bacterial communities.
The research cited contains sobering news and adds to the realization that as much as antibiotics have brought deadly infections under control and saved lives, they can have negative side effects and possibly more longer term consequences than at first realized.
All this said, I have been an advocate of antibiotic usage to treat Lyme disease - especially in its early stage and with a clear case of neuroborreliosis - because antibiotics have been tested and used in clinical trials for many years for their effectiveness. It's important in the case of neuroborreliosis to ensure that treatment can pass the blood-brain barrier, and so far antibiotics have been tested which are demonstrated to have this property.
So I still stand by the use of antibiotics for their effectiveness and documented record for helping patients everywhere. However, I am aware that in the future, antibiotics may not work as well as they once did due to antibiotic resistance, and this knowledge of longer term effects concerns me as well. Alternatives will need to be found that are safe and effective.
What sort of treatment could be available other than antimicrobial herbs?
The answer may be as close as your local wallaby.
Okay, well, for most people reading this, wallabies are hardly local to them - unless you are one of my Australian readers or you have a decent zoo nearby.
Last month, Byte Size Biology blog published an entry on the innate immune system and research on cathelicidins, specifically those peptides found within marsupials - including wallabies - which can fight off infection.
The same class of peptides are produced in Kanga’s milk. (Think of the idea as being similar to colostrum in cows, perhaps?) Collectively they are known as cathelicidins. Only about 30 amino acids long, these highly charged molecules kill both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.
Preliminary studies were conducted on the use of cathelicidins as antibiotics. The author of Byte Size Biology wrote:
"They used cathelicidins from wallaby and platypus to kill human pathogens: P. aeruginosa, K. pneumoniae and A. baumanii, including antibiotic resistant strains. Cathelicidins were much more effective than, well, antibiotics against those bacteria. Also, cathelicidins did not kill human red blood cells, which makes them a potential drug. Of course, immune reaction against cathelicidins as a foreign still needs to be checked, among many, many other things, but the whole idea of looking at marsupials is that, as mamals, they may be able to supply us with clues on how to synthesize a cathelicidin to be used as a drug in humans."More research is needed, obviously, but this may be one option to antibiotics sitting in your medicine cabinet of the future
Julia Gillard, Australia’s 27th Prime Minister, is apparently no Prime Minister at all. She is, as they say, ‘illegitimate’.
A case of hyper-bowl? Pic: Ray StrangeThis belief has become almost as entrenched in the national discourse as the word ‘discourse’ is entrenched in first year arts essays. To many, the circumstances surrounding Ms Gillard’s ascension to the nation’s highest office carried the complexity sufficient to completely erode its legality.
Throw in a few taxes and a handful of independents, and you have the green light for all manner of nutbags citizens to observe the ‘death of democracy’ – a ritual replete with cardboard coffins cleverly decorated with the word ‘democracy’.
A case of hyper-bowl? Pic: Ray StrangeThrow in a few taxes and a handful of independents, and you have the green light for all manner of nutbags citizens to observe the ‘death of democracy’ – a ritual replete with cardboard coffins cleverly decorated with the word ‘democracy’.
In the 24/6 Truther Movement, the line of argument is typically rooted in three points.
Firstly, Ms Gillard is completely beholden to the independents and the Greens. How appalling it is that our Prime Minister must debase herself by negotiating with other members of parliament to ensure her programme can proceed.
Compromise upon compromise. Pokies reform, carbon price, asylum seekers, and the current flavour of the month, the Mineral Resource Rent Tax. All twisted and mutated by the dark necromancy of the crossbench, or *gasp* the weight of public opinion.
Sure, the MRRT doesn’t go as far as the Rudd Government’s proposed Resource Super Profits Tax would have. The rate to be levied dropped from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, and the scope was narrowed from all extractive industry to just iron ore and coal. But it does have the support of large parts of the mining industry, a majority of the voting public and quite likely a majority of members of the House of Representatives.
Politics is the art of the possible.
However, many still yearn for the days of Howard. Things were simple, and John Winston’s word was law. An iron fist in a glove, likely bearing some kind of Wallabies logo.
Indulging in such nostalgia is to ignore his capitulation to the demands of the Democrats on the GST in 1998. Or having to wait until he controlled the Senate to enact Voluntary Student Unionism, Workchoices and the end of the Government’s controlling stake in Telstra to name but a few. As the saying goes: ‘I’d rather have 50 per cent of something than 100 per cent of nothing.’
The second point is that Ms Gillard isn’t a real Prime Minister because she first ascended to the office mid-term, without the mandate of an election. How many Australian leaders before her have so dared to grasp power so blatantly, so cunningly? Most of them, actually.
For the buffs among us, Ms Gillard’s achievement places her in the company of Messrs Watson, Reid, Fisher, Hughes, Bruce, Page, Menzies, Fadden, Curtin, Forde, Chifley, Holt, McEwen, Gorton, McMahon, Fraser and Keating. Indeed, two thirds of Australian Prime Ministers have taken the oath of office not in the warm afterglow of an election victory, but rather following a vote of no confidence in either the parliament or the party room.
When arguments arise over who was Australia’s greatest ever Prime Minister, the short list of names invariably settles on two. Robert Menzies – Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, father of the Liberal Party and avid Royal watcher – and John Curtin, who overcame alcoholism and pacifism to provide inspirational leadership through the darkest days of World War II, when Australia’s very existence was threatened.
Both these giants fail, quite spectacularly, the modern ‘legitimacy test’ that is constantly applied to Ms Gillard, yet remain our two most celebrated national leaders.
The final point in this insidious argument says Ms Gillard isn’t a real Prime Minister because she didn’t ‘win’ an election – her party never secured a stand-alone majority.
If this is democratic illegitimacy, then the West should have sanctioned us generations ago.
The following Prime Ministers, at one point, did not lead majorities in the House of Representatives: Barton, Deakin, Watson, Reid, Cook, Fisher, Menzies, Curtin, and controversially, Fraser. In fact, the first majority government in Australia only occurred a decade after Federation.
Generously ignoring the fluctuating loyalties of the Country Party, and the instability it wrought inside the anti-Labor side of politics, it wasn’t until the 1940 election that Australia again saw a minority government.
The 16th Parliament of Australia that resulted had the unusual distinction of witnessing three Prime Ministers, all hailing from different parties.
The Government was initially lead by Robert Menzies of the United Australia Party. The leader of the Country Party, Arthur Fadden, replaced him. After ’40 days and 40 nights’ in the job, John Curtin of the ALP replaced Fadden, after two independents rejected Fadden’s budget. Curtin became the 14th Prime Minister, and by that stage, the 8th PM to lead a minority government.
Democracy is something to be cherished and defended. We should continue questioning, and in some cases, mercilessly mocking all Prime Ministers.
But to label one as illegitimate is more than mockery. It is tantamount to rejecting our system of government, our democracy, and our history.
We must accept that our Australian system of Government was designed to preclude a single party from having unfettered control over the political process.
The hysterical claim that fascism has taken root in Australia does nothing but vandalise the national discourse, and make us all look just a little bit silly.
Firstly, Ms Gillard is completely beholden to the independents and the Greens. How appalling it is that our Prime Minister must debase herself by negotiating with other members of parliament to ensure her programme can proceed.
Compromise upon compromise. Pokies reform, carbon price, asylum seekers, and the current flavour of the month, the Mineral Resource Rent Tax. All twisted and mutated by the dark necromancy of the crossbench, or *gasp* the weight of public opinion.
Sure, the MRRT doesn’t go as far as the Rudd Government’s proposed Resource Super Profits Tax would have. The rate to be levied dropped from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, and the scope was narrowed from all extractive industry to just iron ore and coal. But it does have the support of large parts of the mining industry, a majority of the voting public and quite likely a majority of members of the House of Representatives.
Politics is the art of the possible.
However, many still yearn for the days of Howard. Things were simple, and John Winston’s word was law. An iron fist in a glove, likely bearing some kind of Wallabies logo.
Indulging in such nostalgia is to ignore his capitulation to the demands of the Democrats on the GST in 1998. Or having to wait until he controlled the Senate to enact Voluntary Student Unionism, Workchoices and the end of the Government’s controlling stake in Telstra to name but a few. As the saying goes: ‘I’d rather have 50 per cent of something than 100 per cent of nothing.’
The second point is that Ms Gillard isn’t a real Prime Minister because she first ascended to the office mid-term, without the mandate of an election. How many Australian leaders before her have so dared to grasp power so blatantly, so cunningly? Most of them, actually.
For the buffs among us, Ms Gillard’s achievement places her in the company of Messrs Watson, Reid, Fisher, Hughes, Bruce, Page, Menzies, Fadden, Curtin, Forde, Chifley, Holt, McEwen, Gorton, McMahon, Fraser and Keating. Indeed, two thirds of Australian Prime Ministers have taken the oath of office not in the warm afterglow of an election victory, but rather following a vote of no confidence in either the parliament or the party room.
When arguments arise over who was Australia’s greatest ever Prime Minister, the short list of names invariably settles on two. Robert Menzies – Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, father of the Liberal Party and avid Royal watcher – and John Curtin, who overcame alcoholism and pacifism to provide inspirational leadership through the darkest days of World War II, when Australia’s very existence was threatened.
Both these giants fail, quite spectacularly, the modern ‘legitimacy test’ that is constantly applied to Ms Gillard, yet remain our two most celebrated national leaders.
The final point in this insidious argument says Ms Gillard isn’t a real Prime Minister because she didn’t ‘win’ an election – her party never secured a stand-alone majority.
If this is democratic illegitimacy, then the West should have sanctioned us generations ago.
The following Prime Ministers, at one point, did not lead majorities in the House of Representatives: Barton, Deakin, Watson, Reid, Cook, Fisher, Menzies, Curtin, and controversially, Fraser. In fact, the first majority government in Australia only occurred a decade after Federation.
Generously ignoring the fluctuating loyalties of the Country Party, and the instability it wrought inside the anti-Labor side of politics, it wasn’t until the 1940 election that Australia again saw a minority government.
The 16th Parliament of Australia that resulted had the unusual distinction of witnessing three Prime Ministers, all hailing from different parties.
The Government was initially lead by Robert Menzies of the United Australia Party. The leader of the Country Party, Arthur Fadden, replaced him. After ’40 days and 40 nights’ in the job, John Curtin of the ALP replaced Fadden, after two independents rejected Fadden’s budget. Curtin became the 14th Prime Minister, and by that stage, the 8th PM to lead a minority government.
Democracy is something to be cherished and defended. We should continue questioning, and in some cases, mercilessly mocking all Prime Ministers.
But to label one as illegitimate is more than mockery. It is tantamount to rejecting our system of government, our democracy, and our history.
We must accept that our Australian system of Government was designed to preclude a single party from having unfettered control over the political process.
The hysterical claim that fascism has taken root in Australia does nothing but vandalise the national discourse, and make us all look just a little bit silly.
A star is born. And, less than a second later, it dies. On a drab science park just outside the Oxfordshire village of Culham, some of the world’s leading physicists stare at a monitor to review a video of their wondrous, yet fleeting, creation.
“Not too bad. That was quite a clean one,” observes starmaker-in-chief Professor Steve Cowley. Just a few metres away from his control room, a “mini star” not much larger than a family car has just burned, momentarily bright, at temperatures approaching 23 million degrees centigrade inside a 70-tonne steel vessel.
Cowley sips his coffee. “OK, when do we go again?”
Last year, when asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, Professors Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox both gave the same answer: producing electricity from fusion energy. The prize, they said, is enormous: a near-limitless, pollution-free, cheap source of energy that would power human development for many centuries to come. Cox is so passionate about the urgent need for fusion power that he stated that it should be scientists such as Cowley who are revered in our culture – not footballers or pop stars – because they are “literally going to save the world”. It is a “moral duty” to commercialise this technology as fast as possible, he said. Without it, our species will be in “very deep trouble indeed” by the end of this century.
If only it were that simple. Fusion energy – in essence, recreating and harnessing here on earth the process that powers the sun – has been the goal of physicists around the world for more than half a century. And yet it is perpetually described as “30 years away”. No matter how much research is done and money is spent attempting to commercialise this “saviour” technology, it always appears to be stuck at least a generation away.
Cowley hears and feels these frustrations every day. As the director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, he has spent his working life trying to shorten this exasperating delay. Fusion energy is already a scientific challenge arguably more arduous than any other we face, but recent events have only piled on further pressure: international climate-change negotiations have stalled; targets to ramp up renewable energy production seem hopelessly unrealistic; and the Fukushima disaster has cast a large shadow over the future of fusion’s nuclear cousin, fission energy, with both Germany and Italy stating that, owing to safety concerns, they now intend to turn their back on a source of energy which has been providing electricity since the 1950s.
But today Cowley seems upbeat, chipper even. After an 18-month shutdown to retile the interior of the largest of the centre’s two “tokamaks” – ring doughnut-shaped chambers where the fusion reaction takes place – he is bullish about the progress being made by the 1,000 scientists and engineers based at Culham.
“By 2014-15, we will be setting new records here. We hope to reach break-even point in five years. That will be a huge psychological moment.”
Cowley is referring to the moment of parity when the amount of energy they extract from a tokamak equals the amount of energy they put into it. At present, the best-ever “shot” – as the scientists refer to each fusion reaction attempt – came in 1997 when, for just two seconds, the JET (Joint European Torus) tokamak at Culham achieved 16MW of fusion power from an input of 25MW. For fusion to be commercially viable, however, it will need to provide a near-constant tenfold power gain.
So, what are the barriers preventing this great leap forward?
“We could produce net electricity right now, but the costs would be huge,” says Cowley. “The barrier is finding a material than can withstand the neutron bombardment inside the tokamak. We could also just say damn to the cost of the electricity required to demonstrate this. But we don’t want to do something that cannot be shown to be commercially viable. What’s the point?”
At the heart of a star, fusion occurs when hydrogen atoms fuse together under extreme heat and pressure to create a denser helium atom releasing, in the process, colossal amounts of energy. But on Earth, scientists have to try and replicate a star’s intense gravitational pressure with an artificial magnetic field that requires huge amounts of electricity to create – so much that the National Grid must tell Culham when it is OK for them to run a shot. (Namely, not in the middle of Coronation Street or a big football match.)
The fusion reaction occurs when the fuel (two types, or isotopes, of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium) combines to form a super-hot plasma which produces, alongside the helium, neutrons which have a huge amount of kinetic energy. The goal of plasma physicists such as Cowell is to harness the release of these neutrons and use their abundant energy to drive conventional turbines to generate electricity. The JET tokamak has been shut down for the past 18 months while the interior has been stripped of its 4,500 carbon tiles and replaced with new tiles made from beryllium and tungsten. The hope is that these new tiles will be far more “neutron resilient”, allowing for shots to be conducted for longer periods and at much higher temperatures.
Over lunch at the staff canteen, Francesco Romanelli, the Italian director of the European Fusion Development Agreement, the European agency that funds JET, explains why the new tiles are so crucial: “We now understand how a plasma works. We have demonstrated with JET that we can contain the reactants; we reach temperatures 20 times hotter than the sun’s core and we produce an intense magnetic field, 1,000 times that of Earth’s normal magnetic field. But the main problem we face is plasma turbulence. To compensate for this loss, we have to add more heat and energy. So we are always looking for materials that can withstand these extraordinary conditions inside the tokamak.”
Last year, bulldozers began clearing land 60km north-east of Marseille in southern France. By 2019, it is hoped that the world’s largest and most advanced experimental tokamak will be switched on. The €15bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is being funded by an unprecedented international coalition, including the EU, the US, China, India, South Korea and Russia. Everything learned at Culham will be fed into improving the design and performance of ITER which, it is hoped, will demonstrate the commercial viability of fusion by producing a tenfold power gain of 500MW during shots lasting up to an hour.
But ITER’s projected costs are already rocketing, and politicians across Europe have expressed concern, demanding that budgets be capped. Fusion energy also has its environmental detractors. When the ITER project was announced in 2005, Greenpeace said it “deplored” the project, arguing that the money could be better spent building offshore wind turbines. “Advocates of fusion research predict that the first commercial fusion electricity might be delivered in 50-80 years from now,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International’s nuclear campaigner. “But most likely, it will lead to a dead end, as the technical barriers to be overcome are enormous.” Meanwhile, there is criticism from some plasma physicists that the design of ITER is wrong and alternative designs might produce better results for much less money.
Romanelli rejects this analysis. We simply must make this investment, he says: “The prize on offer is too tantalising to ignore. Fusion doesn’t produce greenhouse gases
“Not too bad. That was quite a clean one,” observes starmaker-in-chief Professor Steve Cowley. Just a few metres away from his control room, a “mini star” not much larger than a family car has just burned, momentarily bright, at temperatures approaching 23 million degrees centigrade inside a 70-tonne steel vessel.
Cowley sips his coffee. “OK, when do we go again?”
Last year, when asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, Professors Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox both gave the same answer: producing electricity from fusion energy. The prize, they said, is enormous: a near-limitless, pollution-free, cheap source of energy that would power human development for many centuries to come. Cox is so passionate about the urgent need for fusion power that he stated that it should be scientists such as Cowley who are revered in our culture – not footballers or pop stars – because they are “literally going to save the world”. It is a “moral duty” to commercialise this technology as fast as possible, he said. Without it, our species will be in “very deep trouble indeed” by the end of this century.
If only it were that simple. Fusion energy – in essence, recreating and harnessing here on earth the process that powers the sun – has been the goal of physicists around the world for more than half a century. And yet it is perpetually described as “30 years away”. No matter how much research is done and money is spent attempting to commercialise this “saviour” technology, it always appears to be stuck at least a generation away.
Cowley hears and feels these frustrations every day. As the director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, he has spent his working life trying to shorten this exasperating delay. Fusion energy is already a scientific challenge arguably more arduous than any other we face, but recent events have only piled on further pressure: international climate-change negotiations have stalled; targets to ramp up renewable energy production seem hopelessly unrealistic; and the Fukushima disaster has cast a large shadow over the future of fusion’s nuclear cousin, fission energy, with both Germany and Italy stating that, owing to safety concerns, they now intend to turn their back on a source of energy which has been providing electricity since the 1950s.
But today Cowley seems upbeat, chipper even. After an 18-month shutdown to retile the interior of the largest of the centre’s two “tokamaks” – ring doughnut-shaped chambers where the fusion reaction takes place – he is bullish about the progress being made by the 1,000 scientists and engineers based at Culham.
“By 2014-15, we will be setting new records here. We hope to reach break-even point in five years. That will be a huge psychological moment.”
Cowley is referring to the moment of parity when the amount of energy they extract from a tokamak equals the amount of energy they put into it. At present, the best-ever “shot” – as the scientists refer to each fusion reaction attempt – came in 1997 when, for just two seconds, the JET (Joint European Torus) tokamak at Culham achieved 16MW of fusion power from an input of 25MW. For fusion to be commercially viable, however, it will need to provide a near-constant tenfold power gain.
So, what are the barriers preventing this great leap forward?
“We could produce net electricity right now, but the costs would be huge,” says Cowley. “The barrier is finding a material than can withstand the neutron bombardment inside the tokamak. We could also just say damn to the cost of the electricity required to demonstrate this. But we don’t want to do something that cannot be shown to be commercially viable. What’s the point?”
At the heart of a star, fusion occurs when hydrogen atoms fuse together under extreme heat and pressure to create a denser helium atom releasing, in the process, colossal amounts of energy. But on Earth, scientists have to try and replicate a star’s intense gravitational pressure with an artificial magnetic field that requires huge amounts of electricity to create – so much that the National Grid must tell Culham when it is OK for them to run a shot. (Namely, not in the middle of Coronation Street or a big football match.)
The fusion reaction occurs when the fuel (two types, or isotopes, of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium) combines to form a super-hot plasma which produces, alongside the helium, neutrons which have a huge amount of kinetic energy. The goal of plasma physicists such as Cowell is to harness the release of these neutrons and use their abundant energy to drive conventional turbines to generate electricity. The JET tokamak has been shut down for the past 18 months while the interior has been stripped of its 4,500 carbon tiles and replaced with new tiles made from beryllium and tungsten. The hope is that these new tiles will be far more “neutron resilient”, allowing for shots to be conducted for longer periods and at much higher temperatures.
Over lunch at the staff canteen, Francesco Romanelli, the Italian director of the European Fusion Development Agreement, the European agency that funds JET, explains why the new tiles are so crucial: “We now understand how a plasma works. We have demonstrated with JET that we can contain the reactants; we reach temperatures 20 times hotter than the sun’s core and we produce an intense magnetic field, 1,000 times that of Earth’s normal magnetic field. But the main problem we face is plasma turbulence. To compensate for this loss, we have to add more heat and energy. So we are always looking for materials that can withstand these extraordinary conditions inside the tokamak.”
Last year, bulldozers began clearing land 60km north-east of Marseille in southern France. By 2019, it is hoped that the world’s largest and most advanced experimental tokamak will be switched on. The €15bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is being funded by an unprecedented international coalition, including the EU, the US, China, India, South Korea and Russia. Everything learned at Culham will be fed into improving the design and performance of ITER which, it is hoped, will demonstrate the commercial viability of fusion by producing a tenfold power gain of 500MW during shots lasting up to an hour.
But ITER’s projected costs are already rocketing, and politicians across Europe have expressed concern, demanding that budgets be capped. Fusion energy also has its environmental detractors. When the ITER project was announced in 2005, Greenpeace said it “deplored” the project, arguing that the money could be better spent building offshore wind turbines. “Advocates of fusion research predict that the first commercial fusion electricity might be delivered in 50-80 years from now,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International’s nuclear campaigner. “But most likely, it will lead to a dead end, as the technical barriers to be overcome are enormous.” Meanwhile, there is criticism from some plasma physicists that the design of ITER is wrong and alternative designs might produce better results for much less money.
Romanelli rejects this analysis. We simply must make this investment, he says: “The prize on offer is too tantalising to ignore. Fusion doesn’t produce greenhouse gases
The world is getting warmer, countering the doubts of climate change sceptics about the validity of some of the scientific evidence, according to the most comprehensive independent review of historical temperature records to date.
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found several key issues that sceptics claim can skew global warming figures had no meaningful effect.
The Berkeley Earth project compiled more than a billion temperature records dating back to the 1800s from 15 sources around the world and found that the average global land temperature has risen by around 1C since the mid-1950s.
This figure agrees with the estimate arrived at by major groups that maintain official records on the world’s climate, including Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, with the University of East Anglia, in the UK.
“My hope is that this will win over those people who are properly sceptical,” Richard Muller, a physicist and head of the project, said.
“Some people lump the properly sceptical in with the deniers and that makes it easy to dismiss them, because the deniers pay no attention to science. But there have been people out there who have raised legitimate issues.”
Muller sought to cool the debate over climate change by creating the largest open database of temperature records, with the aim of producing a transparent and independent assessment of global warming.
The initial reluctance of government groups to release all their methods and data, and the fiasco over emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in 2009, gave the project added impetus.
The team, which includes Saul Perlmutter, joint winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate, has submitted four papers to the journal Geophysical Research Letters that describe their work to date.
Going public with results before they are peer-reviewed is not standard practice, but Muller said the decision to circulate the papers before publication was part a long-standing academic tradition of sanity-checking results with colleagues.
“We will get much more feedback from making these papers public before publication,” he said.
Climate sceptics have criticised official global warming figures on the grounds that many temperature stations are poor quality and that data are tweaked by hand.
However, the Berkeley study found that the so-called urban heat island effect, which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas, is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to average land temperature rises. This is because urban regions make up less than 1% of the Earth’s land area. And while stations considered “poor” might be less accurate, they recorded the same average warming trend.
“We have looked at these issues in a straightforward, transparent way, and based on that, I would expect legitimate sceptics to feel their issues have been addressed,” Muller said.
Nevertheless, one prominent US climate sceptic, Anthony Watts, claimed to have identified a “basic procedural error” concerning time periods used in the research, and urged the authors to revise the paper.
Jim Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue, describing him as “a top-notch physicist”. “It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming.
“Of course, presuming that he basically confirms what we have been reporting, the deniers will then decide that he is a crook or has some ulterior motive.
“As I have discussed in the past, the deniers, or contrarians, if you will, do not act as scientists, but rather as lawyers.”
As soon as they see evidence against their client (the fossil fuel industry and those people making money off business-as-usual), they trash that evidence and bring forth whatever tidbits they can find to confuse the judge and jury.”
Peter Thorne at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: “This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways.
“Openness and transparency is a must, particularly now with climate change being so politicised, but more to the point, with the huge socioeconomic decisions that rest on it.”
Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at UEA who was at the centre of the Climategate incident, said: “I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal.”
The Berkeley Earth project has been attacked by some climate bloggers, who point out that one of the funders runs Koch Industries, a company Greenpeace called a “financial kingpin of climate science denial“.
Muller points out the project is organised under the auspices of Novim, a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit organisation that uses science to find answers to the most pressing issues facing society and to publish them “without advocacy or agenda”.
Other donors include the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (funded by Bill Gates), and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The next phase of the project will focus on warming trends in the oceans.
Some scientists were critical of the project and Muller’s decision to release the papers before they had been peer reviewed.
Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at Exeter University said: “These studies seem to confirm the global warming estimated from the existing datasets, which is pleasing but not exactly a surprise to those of us who know how carefully the existing datasets are put together.
“It is surprising, however, that the authors believe that this news is so significant that they can’t wait for peer review, especially when their conclusions aren’t exactly revolutionary.”
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found several key issues that sceptics claim can skew global warming figures had no meaningful effect.
The Berkeley Earth project compiled more than a billion temperature records dating back to the 1800s from 15 sources around the world and found that the average global land temperature has risen by around 1C since the mid-1950s.
This figure agrees with the estimate arrived at by major groups that maintain official records on the world’s climate, including Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, with the University of East Anglia, in the UK.
“My hope is that this will win over those people who are properly sceptical,” Richard Muller, a physicist and head of the project, said.
“Some people lump the properly sceptical in with the deniers and that makes it easy to dismiss them, because the deniers pay no attention to science. But there have been people out there who have raised legitimate issues.”
Muller sought to cool the debate over climate change by creating the largest open database of temperature records, with the aim of producing a transparent and independent assessment of global warming.
The initial reluctance of government groups to release all their methods and data, and the fiasco over emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in 2009, gave the project added impetus.
The team, which includes Saul Perlmutter, joint winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate, has submitted four papers to the journal Geophysical Research Letters that describe their work to date.
Going public with results before they are peer-reviewed is not standard practice, but Muller said the decision to circulate the papers before publication was part a long-standing academic tradition of sanity-checking results with colleagues.
“We will get much more feedback from making these papers public before publication,” he said.
Climate sceptics have criticised official global warming figures on the grounds that many temperature stations are poor quality and that data are tweaked by hand.
However, the Berkeley study found that the so-called urban heat island effect, which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas, is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to average land temperature rises. This is because urban regions make up less than 1% of the Earth’s land area. And while stations considered “poor” might be less accurate, they recorded the same average warming trend.
“We have looked at these issues in a straightforward, transparent way, and based on that, I would expect legitimate sceptics to feel their issues have been addressed,” Muller said.
Nevertheless, one prominent US climate sceptic, Anthony Watts, claimed to have identified a “basic procedural error” concerning time periods used in the research, and urged the authors to revise the paper.
Jim Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue, describing him as “a top-notch physicist”. “It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming.
“Of course, presuming that he basically confirms what we have been reporting, the deniers will then decide that he is a crook or has some ulterior motive.
“As I have discussed in the past, the deniers, or contrarians, if you will, do not act as scientists, but rather as lawyers.”
As soon as they see evidence against their client (the fossil fuel industry and those people making money off business-as-usual), they trash that evidence and bring forth whatever tidbits they can find to confuse the judge and jury.”
Peter Thorne at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: “This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways.
“Openness and transparency is a must, particularly now with climate change being so politicised, but more to the point, with the huge socioeconomic decisions that rest on it.”
Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at UEA who was at the centre of the Climategate incident, said: “I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal.”
The Berkeley Earth project has been attacked by some climate bloggers, who point out that one of the funders runs Koch Industries, a company Greenpeace called a “financial kingpin of climate science denial“.
Muller points out the project is organised under the auspices of Novim, a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit organisation that uses science to find answers to the most pressing issues facing society and to publish them “without advocacy or agenda”.
Other donors include the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (funded by Bill Gates), and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The next phase of the project will focus on warming trends in the oceans.
Some scientists were critical of the project and Muller’s decision to release the papers before they had been peer reviewed.
Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at Exeter University said: “These studies seem to confirm the global warming estimated from the existing datasets, which is pleasing but not exactly a surprise to those of us who know how carefully the existing datasets are put together.
“It is surprising, however, that the authors believe that this news is so significant that they can’t wait for peer review, especially when their conclusions aren’t exactly revolutionary.”
Companies have been urged to give their employees more time off to procreate; shops have offered discounts for larger families; and the government has introduced child allowances to lift the birthrate.
Yet try as it may, Japan appears unable to stop its inexorable slide into long-term population decline.
With the global population forecast to reach 9 billion by the middle of the decade, Japan is bucking the trend. Instead, its low birthrate and ageing society are taking the world’s third-biggest economy to the brink of a demographic crisis to which it is struggling to find solutions.
The traditional pyramid population model is beginning to flip upside down against a backdrop of fewer, and later, marriages, while life expectancy continues to rise thanks to a traditional low-fat diet and advanced medical treatments paid for by universal health insurance.
Demographers warn that if current trends continue, Japan’s population will look much smaller and greyer in just a few decades.
Although the population increased slightly last year to just over 128 million, according to government figures, the most recent census attributes the rise to more people returning to Japan than had left.
The long-term trend points to an accelerated decline. The current population will dip below 100 million in 2046, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo, before sinking to below 45 million in 2105.
For many Japanese, coupling appears to be low on the agenda: a 2008 survey conducted by Durex found that the average Japanese couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.
The birthrate, at 1.34 – the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her child-bearing years – is below the 2.1 experts say is necessary to keep the population stable.
“Even that is a conservative estimate,” says Futoshi Ishii, a researcher in population dynamics at the institute, who adds that it is too early to gauge the impact on the birth rate of the recent introduction of allowances for children up to the age of 15.
Local authorities and the private sector have attempted to encourage couples to have more children, from offering shopping vouchers to larger families to launching officially sanctioned matchmaking websites.
The country’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, has encouraged its 1,600 member firms to allow employees to spend more time with their spouses and, so the theory goes, have more children.
Yet appeals to promote a healthier work-life balance are unlikely to produce results until corporate gimmicks such as “family weeks” – when firms send workers home by 7pm at the latest – are legally enforced.
In addition, more than 40% of men aged 35-39 still live with their parents. Many cite job instability and a culture of work that leaves them with little time to meet potential marriage partners.
As a result there were fewer marriages in 2010 than at any time since 1954, and there has been a noticeable shift towards living alone.
“People are marrying much later, and that causes an inevitable slowdown in the birthrate,” says Ishii. “That may change of course, but we believe the trend towards having fewer children will continue for the foreseeable future.”
The current government, led by the left-of-centre Democratic Party of Japan, swept to office in August 2009 armed with ambitious spending plans designed to ease the financial burden on families.
To encourage spending and, it is hoped, more procreation, families have received monthly allowances of 13,000 yen per child since April 2010.
But the initiative is one of several DPJ policies to have fallen victim to Japan’s perilous public finances and the cost – estimated at 19 trillion yen over five years – of rebuilding the region destroyed by the March earthquake and tsunami.
A doubling of the allowance planned for this year was never implemented, and the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has agreed to review child allowance and other pledges in an attempt to win opposition support for extra disaster budgets and tax reforms.
The double-whammy of a low birth rate and bigger elderly population raises the question of how Japan – which already has the highest public debt in the industrialised world – will fund state pensions and meet health and social security costs.
There has been little serious discussion about relaxing immigration laws. “One possible solution would be to bring in a large number of foreigners to perform jobs in which there are labour shortages,” says Ishii. “But Japan does not have a history of mass immigration, and the consensus is that it isn’t a desirable way forward.”
Until recently, politicians were similarly reluctant to discuss tax rises that could cost them votes. But faced with a huge post-disaster reconstruction bill and resistance to issuing new debt, Japan’s leaders are finally talking about doubling the current consumption [sales] tax to 10%, partly to help fund welfare.
The problem is being compounded by impressive longevity statistics in Japan, where more than a fifth of the population is over 65.
Women can expect to live, on average, 86.4 years, and men for 79.6 years. The country has more than 40,000 centenarians, more than triple the number a decade ago. According to one projection, more than half a million Japanese will be over 100 by the middle of the century.
By contrast, the number of 20-year-olds is expected to fall rapidly over the next 30 years, sinking to just 780,000 by 2040.
Other countries in the region are experiencing similar demographic problems. South Korea is finding that the price of a successful economy driven by youthful dynamism is a shrinking population and a potential cash crunch. Over the past four decades, it has gone from having one of the highest birthrates among OECD countries to one of the lowest.
What follows is expected to mirror Japan’s experience: labour shortages, higher public debt and soaring pension and health insurance costs.
In just seven years’ time, 14% of South Korea’s population of just under 50 million will be over 65, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute. By the middle of the century, it will have the highest proportion of senior citizens in the world, the institute adds
Yet try as it may, Japan appears unable to stop its inexorable slide into long-term population decline.
With the global population forecast to reach 9 billion by the middle of the decade, Japan is bucking the trend. Instead, its low birthrate and ageing society are taking the world’s third-biggest economy to the brink of a demographic crisis to which it is struggling to find solutions.
The traditional pyramid population model is beginning to flip upside down against a backdrop of fewer, and later, marriages, while life expectancy continues to rise thanks to a traditional low-fat diet and advanced medical treatments paid for by universal health insurance.
Demographers warn that if current trends continue, Japan’s population will look much smaller and greyer in just a few decades.
Although the population increased slightly last year to just over 128 million, according to government figures, the most recent census attributes the rise to more people returning to Japan than had left.
The long-term trend points to an accelerated decline. The current population will dip below 100 million in 2046, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo, before sinking to below 45 million in 2105.
For many Japanese, coupling appears to be low on the agenda: a 2008 survey conducted by Durex found that the average Japanese couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.
The birthrate, at 1.34 – the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her child-bearing years – is below the 2.1 experts say is necessary to keep the population stable.
“Even that is a conservative estimate,” says Futoshi Ishii, a researcher in population dynamics at the institute, who adds that it is too early to gauge the impact on the birth rate of the recent introduction of allowances for children up to the age of 15.
Local authorities and the private sector have attempted to encourage couples to have more children, from offering shopping vouchers to larger families to launching officially sanctioned matchmaking websites.
The country’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, has encouraged its 1,600 member firms to allow employees to spend more time with their spouses and, so the theory goes, have more children.
Yet appeals to promote a healthier work-life balance are unlikely to produce results until corporate gimmicks such as “family weeks” – when firms send workers home by 7pm at the latest – are legally enforced.
In addition, more than 40% of men aged 35-39 still live with their parents. Many cite job instability and a culture of work that leaves them with little time to meet potential marriage partners.
As a result there were fewer marriages in 2010 than at any time since 1954, and there has been a noticeable shift towards living alone.
“People are marrying much later, and that causes an inevitable slowdown in the birthrate,” says Ishii. “That may change of course, but we believe the trend towards having fewer children will continue for the foreseeable future.”
The current government, led by the left-of-centre Democratic Party of Japan, swept to office in August 2009 armed with ambitious spending plans designed to ease the financial burden on families.
To encourage spending and, it is hoped, more procreation, families have received monthly allowances of 13,000 yen per child since April 2010.
But the initiative is one of several DPJ policies to have fallen victim to Japan’s perilous public finances and the cost – estimated at 19 trillion yen over five years – of rebuilding the region destroyed by the March earthquake and tsunami.
A doubling of the allowance planned for this year was never implemented, and the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has agreed to review child allowance and other pledges in an attempt to win opposition support for extra disaster budgets and tax reforms.
The double-whammy of a low birth rate and bigger elderly population raises the question of how Japan – which already has the highest public debt in the industrialised world – will fund state pensions and meet health and social security costs.
There has been little serious discussion about relaxing immigration laws. “One possible solution would be to bring in a large number of foreigners to perform jobs in which there are labour shortages,” says Ishii. “But Japan does not have a history of mass immigration, and the consensus is that it isn’t a desirable way forward.”
Until recently, politicians were similarly reluctant to discuss tax rises that could cost them votes. But faced with a huge post-disaster reconstruction bill and resistance to issuing new debt, Japan’s leaders are finally talking about doubling the current consumption [sales] tax to 10%, partly to help fund welfare.
The problem is being compounded by impressive longevity statistics in Japan, where more than a fifth of the population is over 65.
Women can expect to live, on average, 86.4 years, and men for 79.6 years. The country has more than 40,000 centenarians, more than triple the number a decade ago. According to one projection, more than half a million Japanese will be over 100 by the middle of the century.
By contrast, the number of 20-year-olds is expected to fall rapidly over the next 30 years, sinking to just 780,000 by 2040.
Other countries in the region are experiencing similar demographic problems. South Korea is finding that the price of a successful economy driven by youthful dynamism is a shrinking population and a potential cash crunch. Over the past four decades, it has gone from having one of the highest birthrates among OECD countries to one of the lowest.
What follows is expected to mirror Japan’s experience: labour shortages, higher public debt and soaring pension and health insurance costs.
In just seven years’ time, 14% of South Korea’s population of just under 50 million will be over 65, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute. By the middle of the century, it will have the highest proportion of senior citizens in the world, the institute adds
The year 2001 was more eventful than most and, a decade on, we’re inundated with anniversaries. September was 9/11, this month the invasion of Afghanistan and next month the release of the first iPod. To which we could add the foot-and-mouth crisis, the Gujarat earthquake and the first ever entries on Wikipedia.
With so many significant events to look back on, one thing that few people will remember 2001 for is its entry in the UK’s Material Flow Accounts, a set of dry and largely ignored data published annually by the Office for National Statistics.
But, according to environment writer Chris Goodall, those stats tell an important story. “What the figures suggest,” Goodall says enthusiastically, “is that 2001 may turn out to be the year that the UK’s consumption of ‘stuff’ – the total weight of everything we use, from food and fuel to flat-pack furniture – reached its peak and began to decline.”
Quietly spoken but fiercely intelligent, Goodall is a consultant and author who, over the last decade or so, has established himself as a leading analyst on energy and climate issues. Probably the only Green Party parliamentary candidate who also used to work at McKinsey, his speciality is trawling through environment statistics that would send traditional eco-warriors to sleep.
“One thing that’s remarkable is the sheer speed with which our resource use has crashed since the recession,” Goodall continues. “In the space of a couple of years, we’ve dropped back to the second lowest level since we started keeping track in 1970. And although the figures aren’t yet available for 2010 and 2011, it seems highly likely that we are now using fewer materials than at any time on record.”
Goodall discovered the Material Flow Accounts while writing a research paper examining the UK’s consumption of resources. The pattern he stumbled upon caught him by surprise: time and time again, Brits seemed to be consuming fewer resources and producing less waste. What really surprised him was that consumption appears to have started dropping in the first years of the new millennium, when the economy was still rapidly growing.
In 2001, Goodall says, the UK’s consumption of paper and cardboard finally started to decline. This was followed, in 2002, by a fall in our use of primary energy: the raw heat and power generated by all fossil fuels and other energy sources. The following year, 2003, saw the start of a decline in the amount of household waste (including recycling) generated by each person in the country – a downward trend that before long could also be observed in the commercial and construction waste sectors.
In 2004, our purchases of new cars started to fall – as did our consumption of water. The next year, 2005, saw our household energy consumption starting to slump (notwithstanding an uptick last year due to the cold winter). And in 2006 we seem to have got bored with roads and railways, with a decline in the average distance travelled on private and public transport. All of this while GDP – and population – went up.
Other consumption categories have been falling for much longer, Goodall points out. Despite concerns about the increasing intensity and industrialisation of our farming, the amount of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium fertilisers being applied to British fields has been falling since the 1980s. Our consumption of cement reached a peak at a similar time.
Even our intake of food is falling. Although obesity is on the rise, the total number of calories consumed by Brits has been on a downward slope for around half a century, driven by the fact that, compared with previous generations, we do less exercise now and live in warmer homes. Perhaps more remarkably, our intake of meat – the food most regularly highlighted as an environmental concern – seems to have been falling since 2003.
Goodall’s research sends a counterintuitive message. We might expect to have been getting through less stuff since the financial crash of 2008; but surely throughout the boom years of 1990s and noughties, our rate of material consumption was steadily climbing in step with GDP?
Not according to Goodall. But do his claims stack up? One obvious counter-argument is the fact that we have “outsourced” our resource-hungry industries to China and other developing countries. After all, various reports have already made it clear that while the UK’s own use of oil, coal and gas is falling, our total carbon emissions, once you consider all Chinese factories producing our laptops, toys and clothes, continues to rise steadily.
Oddly, though, when it comes to overall resource use – everything from maize to metals – the same doesn’t seem to apply. At least, not if we believe the official figures from the Office of National Statistics. Each year, statisticians there estimate the UK’s Total Material Requirement, the grand total of all the goods we consume, plus all the materials used in the UK and overseas to produce those goods.
The numbers are head-spinningly huge. Once you add up minerals, fuels, crops, wood and animal products, the UK churns its way through roughly two billion tonnes of stuff each year. That’s more than 30 tonnes for each man, woman and child in the country – a giant stack of raw materials as heavy as four double-decker buses. (Or, more specifically, as heavy as four old- fashioned Routemaster buses. In an exception to Goodall’s theory, some of the newer, more efficient buses are almost twice as heavy as the old ones.)
Although that’s still a massive – and doubtless unsustainable – rate of consumption, Goodall’s point is that our appetite for materials may finally be on a downward curve. In particular, he’s excited by the fact that over the past couple of decades, we’ve significantly grown the economy without noticeably increasing our resource use. To use the jargon, Goodall believes that Britain has finally “decoupled” economic growth and material consumption.
If correct, this means we’ve achieved something that many green commentators believed was impossible. In his influential 2009 book, Prosperity Without Growth, academic Tim Jackson argued that while economies could become more efficient in their use of resources, genuine decoupling – resource use falling while GDP rises – remained a “myth”. This view, and the argument that we therefore should aim for zero-growth economics, has become widely accepted in environment circles.
Goodall believes that the data from the Office of National Statistics, combined with his own research, challenges this assumption. “In 2007, just before the crash,” Goodall says, “our total use of materials was almost the same as it was in 1989, despite the economy having tripled in size in the intervening years. And the peak in resource use appears to have been in 2001 – many years before the recession halted economic growth.”
Jackson welcomed Goodall’s research, describing it as “long overdue” and “exactly the kind of analysis that is sadly lacking at policy level and desperately needed as the basis for a green economy”. But he also warned against drawing simple conclusions, pointing out that – thanks to Britain’s investments in the global commodity markets – our economy was continuing to increase resource use even if we had started consuming fewer of those resources ourselves. “For those hoping desperately for stuff-free growth,” Jackson added, “there is only cold comfort in these statistics.”
Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation also doubts the significance of the UK reaching peak stuff. “Measures of our environmental impact are only meaningful when they’re related to the planet’s ability to keep up. For these findings to be significant, we’d need to be able to demonstrate that we’re on the way to being able to live within our ecological means. And on that measure we’re still a long way off target.”
Jackson and Simms are certainly right that – even if the UK has started consuming fewer resources – it’s hardly going to save the planet. Globally, resource extraction is rising, carbon emissions are climbing, rainforests are shrinking, oceans are acidifying and species are disappearing. Solving these problems will clearly take far more than stabilising resource use in mature economies like the UK.
Goodall acknowledges this. “I don’t want to suggest for a moment that the world doesn’t face massive environmental challenges. But the data I found does suggest the possibility – and it is only a possibility – that economic growth is not necessarily incompatible with addressing these challenges. If growth helps us get more efficient in our use of resources, and actually reduces our consumption of material things, then environmentalists may be very wrong to campaign for a zero-growth economy.”
Bringing the debate back to earth, he adds: “It is a trivial example but economic growth, and the innovation that comes with it, have given us the Kindle, a way of allowing us to read books without the high-energy consumption required to make paper. Digital goods generally have lower environmental impact than physical equivalents and if growth speeds up the process of ‘dematerialisation’, it has positive – not negative – environmental effects.”
The idea that the best way to get greener may be to get richer isn’t a new one. Economist Simon Kuznets argued decades ago that only when countries get to a certain level of wealth do they start to reduce their environmental impact. In green circles, however, such thinking is controversial. While environmentalists accept that poor countries need to grow economically to lift themselves out of poverty, most are thoroughly sceptical that conventional growth-focused economics is compatible with saving the planet from impending disaster.
There is, however, an emerging pro-growth seam of environmental thinking. Earlier this year, writer Mark Lynas caused a stir with his book The God Species, in which he broke a trio of green taboos by calling for environmentalists to embrace GM foods, nuclear power and growth-based capitalism. GM food would allow us to leave more of the world as wilderness, Lynas wrote; nuclear energy would help us wean ourselves off coal; and climbing economic growth would give us the best chance of combatting global poverty and funding the technical revolution required to green our production of energy and goods.
Simms says that to call for economic growth as the solution to the planet’s woes is to miss the point. “The important question is this: is your economy doing something useful, and doing it within environmental boundaries? If we want to create a happy, low-carbon world, there are better ways to do that than slavishly trying to enlarge our economies. Bear in mind that 50 years of GDP growth and increasing resource use in the UK has done nothing to increase our life satisfaction.”
Ecological and economic arguments aside, Goodall’s suggestion that the UK may have reached the point of maximum resource use throws up lots of interesting questions. Most fundamentally: is it definitely true? How can we be sure that consumption won’t soar to new, even greater, highs when the global economy eventually picks up? And if we really have reached a peak, how did we get there? Was it just a matter of shifting to a more service-based economy? Can the internet – or even decades of green campaigning – claim the credit? Or could it be that our densely packed little island is running out of space for new buildings, vehicles and bulky goods? Could eBay and Freecycle be a factor, helping to keep more goods in circulation for longer? Or the fact that more of us are living in cities?
If we can understand how we levelled off British resource use, perhaps that information could help other countries do the same. After all, in a world that may soon be home to nine billion people, there can be fewer more important messages than – when it comes to “stuff” – less can be more.
With so many significant events to look back on, one thing that few people will remember 2001 for is its entry in the UK’s Material Flow Accounts, a set of dry and largely ignored data published annually by the Office for National Statistics.
But, according to environment writer Chris Goodall, those stats tell an important story. “What the figures suggest,” Goodall says enthusiastically, “is that 2001 may turn out to be the year that the UK’s consumption of ‘stuff’ – the total weight of everything we use, from food and fuel to flat-pack furniture – reached its peak and began to decline.”
Quietly spoken but fiercely intelligent, Goodall is a consultant and author who, over the last decade or so, has established himself as a leading analyst on energy and climate issues. Probably the only Green Party parliamentary candidate who also used to work at McKinsey, his speciality is trawling through environment statistics that would send traditional eco-warriors to sleep.
“One thing that’s remarkable is the sheer speed with which our resource use has crashed since the recession,” Goodall continues. “In the space of a couple of years, we’ve dropped back to the second lowest level since we started keeping track in 1970. And although the figures aren’t yet available for 2010 and 2011, it seems highly likely that we are now using fewer materials than at any time on record.”
Goodall discovered the Material Flow Accounts while writing a research paper examining the UK’s consumption of resources. The pattern he stumbled upon caught him by surprise: time and time again, Brits seemed to be consuming fewer resources and producing less waste. What really surprised him was that consumption appears to have started dropping in the first years of the new millennium, when the economy was still rapidly growing.
In 2001, Goodall says, the UK’s consumption of paper and cardboard finally started to decline. This was followed, in 2002, by a fall in our use of primary energy: the raw heat and power generated by all fossil fuels and other energy sources. The following year, 2003, saw the start of a decline in the amount of household waste (including recycling) generated by each person in the country – a downward trend that before long could also be observed in the commercial and construction waste sectors.
In 2004, our purchases of new cars started to fall – as did our consumption of water. The next year, 2005, saw our household energy consumption starting to slump (notwithstanding an uptick last year due to the cold winter). And in 2006 we seem to have got bored with roads and railways, with a decline in the average distance travelled on private and public transport. All of this while GDP – and population – went up.
Other consumption categories have been falling for much longer, Goodall points out. Despite concerns about the increasing intensity and industrialisation of our farming, the amount of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium fertilisers being applied to British fields has been falling since the 1980s. Our consumption of cement reached a peak at a similar time.
Even our intake of food is falling. Although obesity is on the rise, the total number of calories consumed by Brits has been on a downward slope for around half a century, driven by the fact that, compared with previous generations, we do less exercise now and live in warmer homes. Perhaps more remarkably, our intake of meat – the food most regularly highlighted as an environmental concern – seems to have been falling since 2003.
Goodall’s research sends a counterintuitive message. We might expect to have been getting through less stuff since the financial crash of 2008; but surely throughout the boom years of 1990s and noughties, our rate of material consumption was steadily climbing in step with GDP?
Not according to Goodall. But do his claims stack up? One obvious counter-argument is the fact that we have “outsourced” our resource-hungry industries to China and other developing countries. After all, various reports have already made it clear that while the UK’s own use of oil, coal and gas is falling, our total carbon emissions, once you consider all Chinese factories producing our laptops, toys and clothes, continues to rise steadily.
Oddly, though, when it comes to overall resource use – everything from maize to metals – the same doesn’t seem to apply. At least, not if we believe the official figures from the Office of National Statistics. Each year, statisticians there estimate the UK’s Total Material Requirement, the grand total of all the goods we consume, plus all the materials used in the UK and overseas to produce those goods.
The numbers are head-spinningly huge. Once you add up minerals, fuels, crops, wood and animal products, the UK churns its way through roughly two billion tonnes of stuff each year. That’s more than 30 tonnes for each man, woman and child in the country – a giant stack of raw materials as heavy as four double-decker buses. (Or, more specifically, as heavy as four old- fashioned Routemaster buses. In an exception to Goodall’s theory, some of the newer, more efficient buses are almost twice as heavy as the old ones.)
Although that’s still a massive – and doubtless unsustainable – rate of consumption, Goodall’s point is that our appetite for materials may finally be on a downward curve. In particular, he’s excited by the fact that over the past couple of decades, we’ve significantly grown the economy without noticeably increasing our resource use. To use the jargon, Goodall believes that Britain has finally “decoupled” economic growth and material consumption.
If correct, this means we’ve achieved something that many green commentators believed was impossible. In his influential 2009 book, Prosperity Without Growth, academic Tim Jackson argued that while economies could become more efficient in their use of resources, genuine decoupling – resource use falling while GDP rises – remained a “myth”. This view, and the argument that we therefore should aim for zero-growth economics, has become widely accepted in environment circles.
Goodall believes that the data from the Office of National Statistics, combined with his own research, challenges this assumption. “In 2007, just before the crash,” Goodall says, “our total use of materials was almost the same as it was in 1989, despite the economy having tripled in size in the intervening years. And the peak in resource use appears to have been in 2001 – many years before the recession halted economic growth.”
Jackson welcomed Goodall’s research, describing it as “long overdue” and “exactly the kind of analysis that is sadly lacking at policy level and desperately needed as the basis for a green economy”. But he also warned against drawing simple conclusions, pointing out that – thanks to Britain’s investments in the global commodity markets – our economy was continuing to increase resource use even if we had started consuming fewer of those resources ourselves. “For those hoping desperately for stuff-free growth,” Jackson added, “there is only cold comfort in these statistics.”
Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation also doubts the significance of the UK reaching peak stuff. “Measures of our environmental impact are only meaningful when they’re related to the planet’s ability to keep up. For these findings to be significant, we’d need to be able to demonstrate that we’re on the way to being able to live within our ecological means. And on that measure we’re still a long way off target.”
Jackson and Simms are certainly right that – even if the UK has started consuming fewer resources – it’s hardly going to save the planet. Globally, resource extraction is rising, carbon emissions are climbing, rainforests are shrinking, oceans are acidifying and species are disappearing. Solving these problems will clearly take far more than stabilising resource use in mature economies like the UK.
Goodall acknowledges this. “I don’t want to suggest for a moment that the world doesn’t face massive environmental challenges. But the data I found does suggest the possibility – and it is only a possibility – that economic growth is not necessarily incompatible with addressing these challenges. If growth helps us get more efficient in our use of resources, and actually reduces our consumption of material things, then environmentalists may be very wrong to campaign for a zero-growth economy.”
Bringing the debate back to earth, he adds: “It is a trivial example but economic growth, and the innovation that comes with it, have given us the Kindle, a way of allowing us to read books without the high-energy consumption required to make paper. Digital goods generally have lower environmental impact than physical equivalents and if growth speeds up the process of ‘dematerialisation’, it has positive – not negative – environmental effects.”
The idea that the best way to get greener may be to get richer isn’t a new one. Economist Simon Kuznets argued decades ago that only when countries get to a certain level of wealth do they start to reduce their environmental impact. In green circles, however, such thinking is controversial. While environmentalists accept that poor countries need to grow economically to lift themselves out of poverty, most are thoroughly sceptical that conventional growth-focused economics is compatible with saving the planet from impending disaster.
There is, however, an emerging pro-growth seam of environmental thinking. Earlier this year, writer Mark Lynas caused a stir with his book The God Species, in which he broke a trio of green taboos by calling for environmentalists to embrace GM foods, nuclear power and growth-based capitalism. GM food would allow us to leave more of the world as wilderness, Lynas wrote; nuclear energy would help us wean ourselves off coal; and climbing economic growth would give us the best chance of combatting global poverty and funding the technical revolution required to green our production of energy and goods.
Simms says that to call for economic growth as the solution to the planet’s woes is to miss the point. “The important question is this: is your economy doing something useful, and doing it within environmental boundaries? If we want to create a happy, low-carbon world, there are better ways to do that than slavishly trying to enlarge our economies. Bear in mind that 50 years of GDP growth and increasing resource use in the UK has done nothing to increase our life satisfaction.”
Ecological and economic arguments aside, Goodall’s suggestion that the UK may have reached the point of maximum resource use throws up lots of interesting questions. Most fundamentally: is it definitely true? How can we be sure that consumption won’t soar to new, even greater, highs when the global economy eventually picks up? And if we really have reached a peak, how did we get there? Was it just a matter of shifting to a more service-based economy? Can the internet – or even decades of green campaigning – claim the credit? Or could it be that our densely packed little island is running out of space for new buildings, vehicles and bulky goods? Could eBay and Freecycle be a factor, helping to keep more goods in circulation for longer? Or the fact that more of us are living in cities?
If we can understand how we levelled off British resource use, perhaps that information could help other countries do the same. After all, in a world that may soon be home to nine billion people, there can be fewer more important messages than – when it comes to “stuff” – less can be more.
Langkah tim bulutangkis Indonesia pada SEA Games 2011 nomor beregu putra sedikit ringan. Pasalnya Taufik Hidayat dan kawan-kawan tak perlu memeras keringat di laga pertama yang digelar mulai Sabtu, 12 November 2011.
Dalam drawing yang digelar di Hotel Century, Senayan, siang tadi, Indonesia mendapat bye di babak pertama. Tim tuan rumah baru bertarung lawan Laos yang juga mendapat bye untuk memperebutkan tiket perempat final.
Bila lolos, Indonesia akan berhadapan dengan pemenang antara Thailand dan Kamboja untuk memperebutkan tiket ke final. Kedua tim ini juga mendapat bye di pertandingan pertama.
"Lawan siapapun sebetulnya peluangnya sama. Di atas kertas, dengan hasil drawing ini kami sedikit diuntungkan di langkah awal," kata Sekjen PB PBSI, Jacob Rusdianto usai mengikuti drwaing di Hotel Century, Jumat, 11 November 2011.
"Baru nanti saat bertemu Thailand yang mungkin kerepotan. Di kelompok lain yang menonjol juga Singapura dan Vietnam." Sementara itu, tim putri Indonesia harus berhadapan dengan Vietnam di laga pertama. Nomor ini hanya diikuti tujuh tim termasuk, Thailand, Filipina, Malaysia, dan Singapura.
"Putri memang langsung bertemu Vietnam. Setelah itu lawan yang menunggu adalah pemenang Malaysia lawan Filipina. Mereka tentu punya pemain bagus. Tapi saya tetap optimis anak-anak bermain bagus. Apalagi tampil di kandang."
Hasi Drawing Beregu Putra:
Dalam drawing yang digelar di Hotel Century, Senayan, siang tadi, Indonesia mendapat bye di babak pertama. Tim tuan rumah baru bertarung lawan Laos yang juga mendapat bye untuk memperebutkan tiket perempat final.
Bila lolos, Indonesia akan berhadapan dengan pemenang antara Thailand dan Kamboja untuk memperebutkan tiket ke final. Kedua tim ini juga mendapat bye di pertandingan pertama.
"Lawan siapapun sebetulnya peluangnya sama. Di atas kertas, dengan hasil drawing ini kami sedikit diuntungkan di langkah awal," kata Sekjen PB PBSI, Jacob Rusdianto usai mengikuti drwaing di Hotel Century, Jumat, 11 November 2011.
"Baru nanti saat bertemu Thailand yang mungkin kerepotan. Di kelompok lain yang menonjol juga Singapura dan Vietnam." Sementara itu, tim putri Indonesia harus berhadapan dengan Vietnam di laga pertama. Nomor ini hanya diikuti tujuh tim termasuk, Thailand, Filipina, Malaysia, dan Singapura.
"Putri memang langsung bertemu Vietnam. Setelah itu lawan yang menunggu adalah pemenang Malaysia lawan Filipina. Mereka tentu punya pemain bagus. Tapi saya tetap optimis anak-anak bermain bagus. Apalagi tampil di kandang."
Hasi Drawing Beregu Putra:
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