Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. If we do nothing to stop it, climate change will cause severe water shortages, rising sea levels will swallow cities, and pest outbreaks will sicken people and kill crops. One of the early signs we are already experiencing is an increase in extreme weather events such as destructive storms, drought and floods.
SmashingApps and FileBanker are teaming up to do their part for the environment. Average American consumes more than 700 pounds of paper per year, highest compared to anywhere else in the world. Hundreds of thousands of trees are cut down per day to support the consumption of paper that can be easily avoided.
SmashingApps believes that we can change that by helping people save and share their documents electronically instead of printing them out each time. We do not want you to print so much so we are offering 500 GB file hosting accounts for free at FileBanker. You will need to enter “smashingapps” in the promo code field. You can use these accounts to share all your documents without ever having to print anything.
Climate Change is a global issue and adapting green habits is good for the environment, but who knew it can get us great deals too. Here are some great environmental benefits for us if we always remember these to follow in our daily life.
Turn off lights, computers and other appliances when not in use.
Use compact fluorescent light bulbs to save money and energy.
Plant trees to shade your home.
Use solar power for home and water heating.
Ask your employer to consider flexible work schedules or telecommuting.
Install a low-flow shower head.
Copy and print on both sides of paper.
Unplug seldom used appliances.
Use e-mail instead of paper correspondence.
Buy products that you can reuse.
Buy rechargeable batteries for devices used frequently.
Buy the right amount of paint for the job.
Use a ceramic coffee mug instead of a disposable cup.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
10 Revealing Infographics about the Web
September 20th, 2009 by Jacob Gube | 19 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious
The use of graphics as a tool for educating viewers is a great approach to sharing information. It’s an effective way of composing otherwise boring information and data into an easy-to-consume and fascinating way.
In this article, you’ll discover a variety of infographics and visualizations associated with the internet. You might just learn a thing or two about the web by looking at these awesome artworks!
Click on the image to go to the larger version of each graphic.
1. Web Trend Map is a graphical representation of the top domains and personalities on the web. It maps websites and notable persons onto the Tokyo subway system as train stations with their popularity and success represented by their position and size.
Web Trend Map
2. Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online is an infographic by BusinessWeek that shows who’s online and what they’re doing. The graphic reveals that the most popular demographic on the internet include persons between the ages of 18-26.
Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online
3. Internet Traffic shows the sources of internet activity in 2008. It illustrates that China, constituting 17% of the world’s web users, is the largest source of traffic, with the United States as the second (this may change in 2012 based on growth projections).
Internet Traffic
4. Online Communities is a satirical portrayal of the communities you can find online, published in xkcd. Communities are represented as countries, with their membership size denoted by how big its country is. Take this information with a grain of salt!
Online Communities
5. Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter reveals how information dissemination is changing with the advent of Twitter, which breaks news and events almost instantaneously, versus up to 2 hours for more conventional news sources.
Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter
Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter
6. World Map of Social Networks depicts the most used social networking site of each country based on data gathered from Alexa and Google Trends. Facebook is the most popular in the U.S. while Orkut (by Google) is the most prevalent in Brazil.
World Map of Social Networks
7. The Life Cycle of a Blog Post is an interactive graphical flowchart on Wired that demonstrates the pathways of how a blog post makes its way from the blogger to the reader, and the intermediary stops along the way.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post
8. Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused keywords, readability and other tidbits of incriminating numbers in website introductions based on the sites on this article.
Repetitive Website Intros Examined
9. Mobile Web 2.0 is a PDF on Stanford’s site that charts development and usage trends concerning the convergence of Web 2.0 applications and mobile devices, showing a timeline between 1980 to 2010 and important events in the Mobile Web 2.0 evolution.
Mobile Web 2.0
10. Submarine cables is a map of underwater cable systems around the world, uncovering how much the internet has grown to the point that it warrants a vast quantity of cable systems (98 of them to be exact), and expansion of 28 more of such systems by 2011.
Submarine cables
About the Author
Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in distance-learning education, front-end development, and web accessibility.
The use of graphics as a tool for educating viewers is a great approach to sharing information. It’s an effective way of composing otherwise boring information and data into an easy-to-consume and fascinating way.
In this article, you’ll discover a variety of infographics and visualizations associated with the internet. You might just learn a thing or two about the web by looking at these awesome artworks!
Click on the image to go to the larger version of each graphic.
1. Web Trend Map is a graphical representation of the top domains and personalities on the web. It maps websites and notable persons onto the Tokyo subway system as train stations with their popularity and success represented by their position and size.
Web Trend Map
2. Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online is an infographic by BusinessWeek that shows who’s online and what they’re doing. The graphic reveals that the most popular demographic on the internet include persons between the ages of 18-26.
Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online
3. Internet Traffic shows the sources of internet activity in 2008. It illustrates that China, constituting 17% of the world’s web users, is the largest source of traffic, with the United States as the second (this may change in 2012 based on growth projections).
Internet Traffic
4. Online Communities is a satirical portrayal of the communities you can find online, published in xkcd. Communities are represented as countries, with their membership size denoted by how big its country is. Take this information with a grain of salt!
Online Communities
5. Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter reveals how information dissemination is changing with the advent of Twitter, which breaks news and events almost instantaneously, versus up to 2 hours for more conventional news sources.
Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter
Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter
6. World Map of Social Networks depicts the most used social networking site of each country based on data gathered from Alexa and Google Trends. Facebook is the most popular in the U.S. while Orkut (by Google) is the most prevalent in Brazil.
World Map of Social Networks
7. The Life Cycle of a Blog Post is an interactive graphical flowchart on Wired that demonstrates the pathways of how a blog post makes its way from the blogger to the reader, and the intermediary stops along the way.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post
8. Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused keywords, readability and other tidbits of incriminating numbers in website introductions based on the sites on this article.
Repetitive Website Intros Examined
9. Mobile Web 2.0 is a PDF on Stanford’s site that charts development and usage trends concerning the convergence of Web 2.0 applications and mobile devices, showing a timeline between 1980 to 2010 and important events in the Mobile Web 2.0 evolution.
Mobile Web 2.0
10. Submarine cables is a map of underwater cable systems around the world, uncovering how much the internet has grown to the point that it warrants a vast quantity of cable systems (98 of them to be exact), and expansion of 28 more of such systems by 2011.
Submarine cables
About the Author
Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in distance-learning education, front-end development, and web accessibility.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Cambodia inflation down for sixth consecutive month
www.chinaview.cn 2009-09-15 12:35:50
PHNOM PENH, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- The price of consumer goods dropped in August by 2.9 percent compared to the same month last year, marking the sixth consecutive month that inflation decreased compared to figures from last year, local media reported on Tuesday, citing the August Consumer Price Index.
The reduction in prices follows record-high inflation that reached a peak of 25.7 percent in May 2008, the local English newspaper the Cambodia Daily reported.
The figures released Monday show that in June inflation was in negative territory at minus 5.7 percent compared to the same month last year, and in July it fell to minus 3.9 percent, according to the CPI, which is published by the Planning Ministry's National Institute of Statistics.
The Monday report shows major decreases in fuel prices, including a 37.5 percent decrease in cooking gas prices and a 25.4 percent drop in gasoline costs, comparing August 2008 to August 2009. Overall prices, however, increased from July to August by 0.7 percent.
"Prices this year are quite stable and the inflation just reflects peak prices last year," the Cambodia Daily quoted Chan Sophal, president of the Cambodia Economic Association, as saying.
With global food and oil prices stable compared to a year ago, the problem consumers face the most is falling incomes, he said, adding that fewer jobs and lower profits have restricted the ability of Cambodians to spend.
TaI Nay Im, director general of the National Bank of Cambodia, said without last year's high inflation to explain August's figures there might be cause for concern, but there is nothing to worry about in the falling prices.
"It's not a concern because last year there was very high inflation and this year this inflation is normal," she said.
PHNOM PENH, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- The price of consumer goods dropped in August by 2.9 percent compared to the same month last year, marking the sixth consecutive month that inflation decreased compared to figures from last year, local media reported on Tuesday, citing the August Consumer Price Index.
The reduction in prices follows record-high inflation that reached a peak of 25.7 percent in May 2008, the local English newspaper the Cambodia Daily reported.
The figures released Monday show that in June inflation was in negative territory at minus 5.7 percent compared to the same month last year, and in July it fell to minus 3.9 percent, according to the CPI, which is published by the Planning Ministry's National Institute of Statistics.
The Monday report shows major decreases in fuel prices, including a 37.5 percent decrease in cooking gas prices and a 25.4 percent drop in gasoline costs, comparing August 2008 to August 2009. Overall prices, however, increased from July to August by 0.7 percent.
"Prices this year are quite stable and the inflation just reflects peak prices last year," the Cambodia Daily quoted Chan Sophal, president of the Cambodia Economic Association, as saying.
With global food and oil prices stable compared to a year ago, the problem consumers face the most is falling incomes, he said, adding that fewer jobs and lower profits have restricted the ability of Cambodians to spend.
TaI Nay Im, director general of the National Bank of Cambodia, said without last year's high inflation to explain August's figures there might be cause for concern, but there is nothing to worry about in the falling prices.
"It's not a concern because last year there was very high inflation and this year this inflation is normal," she said.
Monday, August 17, 2009
100 Best Blogs for Librarians of the Future
August 3rd, 2009
By Donna Scott
As a modern day library student, you’re probably excited about discovering and experimenting with the new tools and systems that have changed the way we find, receive and catalog information. But with all of the new technology out there, it can be hard to keep track of everything beyond your own niche field of study. This collection of library and information technology blogs have changed that, and now you’ll be able to learn about all of the trends, developments, tools and resources available to librarians in every niche.
Technology and Education
Discover how technology is changing the way we learn in the classroom and in libraries.
- Wired Librarian: Karen Kliegman is the Library Media Specialist at her elementary school and shares thoughts on library conventions, blogging, information literacy, and more.
- Free Range Librarian: K.G. Schneider is Community Librarian for Evergreen open-source library software, and she blogs about writing, tech toys, and more.
- Information Wants to Be Free: Meredith Farkas is the distance learning librarian at Norwich University. Learn about how libraries work in a distance learning environment from her posts.
- Librarians Matter: This blog discusses how new technology systems can be used in libraries.
- Libraryman: This young librarian likes stirring up new ideas and controversial new technology systems and trends for libraries.
- LibrarianInBlack: Here, tech librarians will find all kinds of resources and discussions about keeping up with technology trends and developments.
- ALA TechSource Blog: This multi-author blog contains information about ways to bring your library into the 21st century and beyond.
- LITA Blog: The Library and Information Technology Association blogs here.
- info-fetishist: Anne-Marie Deitering is the Franklin McEdward Professor for Undergraduate Learning Initiatives at Oregon State University Libraries, and she blogs about emerging web technologies and systems.
- Theoretical Librarian: This blog reports on new technology systems and how they may or may not be able to be used in libraries.
- iLibrarian: The OEDb’s Library blog is full of tech tips for librarians.
- MichaelZimmer.org: For news and analysis on privacy, surveillance, new media, ethics and technology, check out this blog.
- Peter Scott’s Library Blog: Peter Scott blogs about Google books, e-learning, web archiving, and more.
- The Handheld Librarian: Librarians submit articles about computers and technology to this blog.
- Blog without a library: Learn about library and tech news and trends from Blog without a library.
- The Ubiquitous Librarian: Brian Mathews blogs about media, design, the future of libraries, and more.
- Hey Jude: Follow this blog if you want to discover more about "learning in an online world."
- Social Networking Librarian: Find out if social networking is something you want to encourage in your library or not.
- Connie Crosby: This Canadian law librarian is up-to-date on social media, e-commerce and more.
- Tame the Web: On Tame the Web, Michael Stephens and his guest bloggers cover library 2.0, librarians and leadership, and more.
- Library clips: Here, a librarian blogs about wikis, blogging, and social media.
- The Uncommon Commons: Visit this blog for "library and IT-related commentary" from an information commons "hub" librarian.
- Disruptive Library Technology Jester: This blog comes from a library technologist who loves straddling the line between traditional librarianship and technology.
- What I Learned Today: Librarians learn valuable web 2.0 and programming tips from this blog.
School and Academic Librarians
Librarians who work in schools and at colleges and universities will find plenty of resources for developing new programs from these blogs.
- The Kept-Up Academic Librarian: Academic librarians visit this blog to keep up with the news and developments in higher education and libraries.
- ALSC Blog: The Association for Library Service to Children blogs about children’s literature, technology, the Internet and children, and more.
- YALSA: Get podcasts, technology posts and more from the Young Adult Library Services Association blog.
- How the University Works: Academic librarians can better understand the changing landscape of the needs and demands of higher education here.
- copy this blog: This blog tackles a range of issues relevant to higher education librarians including copyright, censorship, critical information theory, library policies, privacy, and more.
- The Gypsy Librarian: The Gypsy Librarian covers topics relevant to wandering spirits and academic librarians.
- Academic Librarian: Check out this blog from the Philosophy & Religion Librarian at Princeton University.
- Library Grits: Dianne McKenzie is a lifelong learner and school librarian who shares tips for getting students involved in reading, research and technology.
Library Issues and Advocacy
From unions to the Library Bill of Rights to copyright issues to privacy and surveillance, these blogs cover important developments in the future of librarianship and information.
- Ben’s Bytes: Ben is a public librarian in Wichita, KS, who blogs about the future of libraries.
- Library Juice: Check out this intriguing blog for analysis and commentary "on the intersection of libraries, politics, and culture."
- banned librarian: Librarians who support social activist groups and causes can find information, resources and allies here.
- Librarian Activist: Keep up with the business and social trends impacting librarians.
- Librarian.net: This blog covers everything from information developments, Library Bill of Rights, a day in the life of a librarian, book burning, and more.
- collectanea: Learn about copyright issues, intellectual property and more.
- Concerned Librarians of British Columbia: Stay current on the issues and crises affecting librarianship in Canada and beyond.
- In the Library With the Lead Pipe: Six librarians from different niche industries maintain this blog to talk about the future of libraries, their jobs, and more.
- The Green Library: Learn ways to make your library more energy efficient, user-friendly and generally green.
- Library of Congress Blog: In addition to posts about Library of Congress news and exhibits, this blog has lots of great resources and stories about information literacy, technology, and the future of libraries.
- Closed Stacks: Closed Stacks is a multi-author blog about library school, librarianship, technology, academic libraries, and more.
- Designing Better Libraries: Find out how innovative design and new media can change the way your library operates.
- The Society for Librarians Who Say Motherfucker: This community blog will help you stay in touch with the rants and ravings of librarians, patrons, technicians, library school students and more.
- Resource Shelf: Librarians, journalists, educators and other information professionals can turn to this blog for news about their industries.
- Library Law Blog: Learn about issues like privacy, public domain, new library technologies, and more.
- Union Librarian: Librarians passionate about labor rights and the union should follow this blog.
- Library Garden: Librarians with different perspectives blog about the future of libraries and the need to make them relevant again.
Research and Reference
These blogs serve as resources for reference and research librarians, as well as for librarians who want to learn about being published.
- ACRL Insider: This is the blog from the Association of College and Research Libraries.
- A Library Writer’s Blog: This blog contains resources for librarians who want to publish articles and network with the greater librarian community.
- Blogging@NYPL: The New York Public Library blog highlights how libraries are sources of information and reference.
Innovation and Information
The future of libraries depends on the innovation of educators, librarians and technology professionals. Read all about what’s next from the people who are planning for the future.
- Virtual Dave…Real Blog: This blog comes from Dave Lankes, associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies.
- The Googlization of Everything: Find out how Google has impacted the way we retrieve information.
- if:book: Discover the future of the book from this blog.
- The Travelin’ Librarian: Michael Sauers is the Technology Innovation Librarian for the Nebraska Library Commission and has written books and articles about technology and education.
- Derivative Work: Laura Quilter is a librarian and information activist. Read her blog for news and developments about authority, autonomy and more.
- Open Access News: Keep up with open information and open source by following this blog.
- The Other Librarian: This blog comes from a regarded library innovator, Ryan Deschamps, e-Learning Services Manager at the Halifax Public Libraries.
- DIY Librarian: Tara Murra is a blogging librarian who promotes "librarianship for the people" and covers topics like open source, alternative information systems, and more.
- Musings about librarianship: Follow this blog to keep up with the new methods libraries can use to help patrons find information.
- From the Library Director’s Desk: This tenured public library director helps other librarians learn how to harness the power of technology.
- Stephen’s Lighthouse: Stephen is the SirsiDynix Vice President of Innovation, and he blogs about how libraries can embrace technology, the Internet and social media.
- Open Sesame: This blog is all about open source and information.
- No Shelf Required: Find out how the ebook movement impacts your library and your patrons.
- jandawson.net: Recent posts from this blog cover the information age, innovation, and more.
- The Brewin’ Librarian: Matt Hamilton writes about emerging technologies, next generation libraries, and more.
- in forming thoughts: This young librarian writes about web tools and sites for librarians, library camp, and other new library trends and developments.
- Information Literacy Weblog: This blog brings readers all the information literacy news from around the world.
- The Keyword Blog: Become more fluent in the language of the information age when you visit The Keyword Blog.
- Planet Cataloging: This aggregated blog network shares news about cataloging and metadata.
- Extensible Librarian: This blog comes from the Assessment Librarian for the University of Pittsburgh.
- Library Bazaar: Learn about library issues like social media and technology from Library Bazaar.
Reading and Literature Blogs
Keep up with new literature and get ideas for encouraging your patrons to read from these bloggers.
- Booklist: The Booklist blog contains resources and reviews for audiobooks, book awards, book lists, and more.
- book/daddy: Jerome Weeks is an experienced book critic and arts producer for the NPR/PBS station in Dallas-Fort Worth.
- Critical Mass: Critical Mass is the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors.
- Blogs on Criticas Magazine: Librarians, educators and booksellers connect on this blog to learn about Spanish-language and Hispanic interest books, authors and more.
- Welcome to my Tweendom: Young adult librarians can learn about new books and children’s authors here.
- So Many Books: Get reviews of entire archives and collections from this blog, with a few posts about librarianship sprinkled in.
- Bookslut: Bookslut is a popular blog that features interviews and book reviews.
- Paper Cuts: The New York Times book blog is a great resource for keeping up with new authors.
- Ready Steady Blog: Get book reviews, author interviews and more.
- Bryan’s Book Blog: This book blog covers a range of genres, and relates classics to worthwhile movie versions.
- The Book Lady’s Blog: This young bookkeeper reviews fiction, memoirs, nonfiction and other books.
- Sammy and Beckett’s Book Blog: Learn about modern and contemporary authors, genres and trends from Sammy and Beckett’s Book Blog.
- Mark’s Contemporary Literature Blog: Become well-versed in the contemporary literature your library needs to stock by following this blog from Mark Flanagan.
Media and Communication
Learn how librarians can collaborate with media and other communication tools and methods from these blogs.
- Connectivism: Learn about networking and social media in an education and library context here.
- Public Knowledge: Learn how to prepare for the future of digital media and communications by checking out this blog.
- TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: This blog covers publishing, media and e-books.
Professional Blogs
Follow these library association and librarian blogs for official information and to find out what it’s like to work as a modern day librarian.
- Librarian’s Rant: This reference librarian attempts to keep up with the changing library landscape.
- The LibVocate: This blog promotes librarianship and information literacy.
- ALA Weblog Service: The American Library Association blog covers news in politics, libraries, education, and from all other ALA blogs.
- AL Inside Scoop: Follow the blog from the American Libraries magazine here.
- The Days and Nights of the Lipstick Librarian!: This hip librarian is anything but the stuffy old stereotype.
- Lauren’s Library Blog: Lauren Pressly is the author of So You Want to Be a Librarian and blogs about the future of libraries.
- Accidentally Curious: This young librarian discusses modernizing your library and making it more appealing to a new generation of readers and researchers.
- Attempting Elegance: Jenica Rogers-Urbanek is a library director and self-proclaimed geek who likes sharing what it’s like to work as a librarian.
- 025.431 The Dewey blog: Brush up on your Dewey Decimal classification knowledge here.
- Bilingual Librarian: Read this blog to learn about the collections and systems that make the world’s top libraries so special.
- Head Tale: This librarian blogs about everything from library science to writing to the "spirit of librarianship."
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Their crisis, our challenge
15 March 2009
In a far reaching interview with Red Pepper, David Harvey argues that the current financial crisis and bank bail-outs could lead to a massive consolidation of the banking system and a return to capitalist ‘business as usual’ – unless there is sustained revolt and pressure for a dramatic redistribution and socialisation of wealth
Does this crisis signal the end of neoliberalism? My answer is that it depends what you mean by neoliberalism. My interpretation is that it’s a class project, now masked by a lot of rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatisation and the free market. That rhetoric was a means towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neoliberal project has been fairly successful.
One of its basic principles that was set up in the 1970s was that state power should protect financial institutions at all costs. This is the principle that was worked out in the New York City crisis in the mid-1970s, and was first defined internationally when Mexico threatened to go bankrupt in 1982. That would have destroyed the New York investment banks, so the US Treasury and the IMF combined to bail Mexico out. But in so doing they mandated austerity for the Mexican population. In other words, they protected the banks and destroyed the people – and this has been the standard practice in the IMF ever since. The current bailout is the same old story, one more time, except bigger.
What happened in the US was that eight men gave us a three-page document, which pointed a gun at everybody and said ‘give us $700 billion or else’. This to me was like a financial coup against the government and the population of the US. Which means you’re not going to come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you’re going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the capitalist class than there has been in the past. We’re going to end up with four or five major banking institutions in the United States and nothing else.
Many on Wall Street are thriving right now. Lazard’s, because it specialises in mergers and acquisitions, is making megabucks. Some people are going to be burned, but overall it’s a massive consolidation of financial power. There’s a great line from Andrew Mellon (US banker, secretary of the treasury 1921-32), who said that in a crisis assets return to their rightful owners. A financial crisis is a way of rationalising what is irrational – for example, the immense crash in Asia in 1997-98 resulted in a new model of capitalist development. Disruptions lead to a reconfiguration, a new form of class power. It could go wrong, politically. The bank bailout was fought over in the US senate, so the political class may not entirely go along – they can put roadblocks in it, but in the end they caved in.
But this can lead to a deeper political struggle: there is a strong sense of questioning why we are empowering all the people who got us into this mess. Questions are being asked about Obama’s choice of economic advisers – for example Larry Summers, who was secretary of the treasury at the key moment when a lot of things started to go really wrong, at the end of the Clinton administration. Why would you now bring in so many of the characters who are pro-Wall Street, pro-finance capital, who did the bidding of finance capital back then? Which is not to say that they aren’t going to redesign the financial architecture because I think they know it’s got to be redesigned, but who are they going to redesign it for? People are really discontented about Obama’s economic team, even in the mainstream press.
A new state financial architecture is required. I don’t think that all existing institutions, like the Bank of International Settlements or even the IMF, should be abolished. I think we will need them, but they have to be revolutionarily transformed. The big question is who will control them and what their architecture will be. We will need people, experts with some sort of understanding of how those institutions do work and can work. And this is very dangerous because, as we can see right now, when the state looks to see who can help it understand what is going on in Wall Street, they think the only people who can understand it are those on the inside of Wall Street.
Disempowerment of labour: enough is enough
Whether we can get out of this crisis in a different way depends very much upon the balance of class forces. It depends upon the degree to which the entire population says ‘enough is enough, let’s change this system’. Right now, when you look at what’s been happening to workers over the last 50 years, they have got almost nothing out of this system. But they haven’t risen up in revolt. In the US over the last seven or eight years, the condition of the working classes in general has deteriorated, but there has been no mass movement against this. Finance capitalism could survive the crisis, but whether it does depends entirely upon the degree to which there is going to be popular revolt against what is happening, and a real push to try to reconfigure how the economy works.
One of the major barriers to continuous capital accumulation back in the 1960s and early 1970s was the labour question. There were scarcities of labour both in Europe and the US, and labour was well-organised, with political clout. So one of the big barriers to capital accumulation during that period was: how can capital get access to cheaper and more docile labour supplies? There were a number of answers.
One was to encourage more immigration. In the United States there was a major revision of the immigration laws in 1965 that in effect allowed the US access to the global surplus population (before that only Europeans and Caucasians were privileged). In the late 1960s the French government was subsidising the import of Maghrebian labour, the Germans were bringing in the Turks, the Swedes were bringing in the Yugoslavs, the British were drawing upon their empire. So a pro-immigrant policy emerged, which was one attempt to deal with the labour problem.
The second thing you go for is rapid technological change, which throws people out of work. Thirdly, you had people like Reagan and Thatcher and Pinochet to crush organised labour. And finally capital goes to where the surplus labour is by off-shoring. This was facilitated by technical reorganisation of the transport systems: one of the biggest revolutions that happened during this period is containerisation, which allowed you to make auto parts in Brazil and ship them for very low cost to Detroit or wherever. And the new communications systems allowed the tight organisation of commodity chain production.
All of these solved the labour problem for capital, so by 1985 capital has no labour problem any more. It may have specific problems in particular areas but globally it has plenty of labour available to it. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of much of China added something like two billion people to the global proletariat in 20 years. So labour availability is no problem now and the result of that is that labour has been disempowered for the last 30 years. But when labour is disempowered it gets low wages, and if you engage in wage repression this limits markets. So capital was beginning to face problems with its market, and there were two things that happened then.
The first was the gap between what labour was earning and what it was spending was covered by the rise of the credit card industry and increasing indebtedness of households. In the US in 1980 the average household owed around $40,000; now it’s about $130,000 for every household, including mortgages.
So household debt sky-rockets and that brings you to financialisation, and that was about getting the financial institutions to support the household debts of working class people whose earnings are not increasing. You start with the respectable working class, but by the time you get to the year 2000 you begin to find these sub-prime mortgages circulating. You are looking to create a market. And so finance starts to support the debt-financing of people who have almost no income. But if you hadn’t done that what would have happened to the property developers who are building the houses? So you try to stabilise the market by funding that indebtedness.
Crises of asset values
The second thing that happened was that from the 1980s onwards the rich are getting far richer because of that wage repression. The story we are told is that they will invest in new activity, but they don’t; most of them start to invest in assets i.e. they put money in the stock market, the stock market goes up, so they think it is a good investment, so they put more money in the stock market, and you get these stock market bubbles. They bid up asset values, including stocks, property, and leisure property. So the investment is in the process of financialisation. But as you bid up asset values this carries over to the whole economy. To live in Manhattan, for example, became all but impossible unless you went incredibly into debt. Everyone was caught in this inflation of asset values. And now we’ve got a collapse of asset values; the housing market is down, the stock market is down.
There has always been the problem of the relationship between representation and reality. Debt is about the assumed future value of goods and services, so it assumes the economy is going to continue to grow over the next 20 or 30 years. It always involves a guess, which is then set by the interest rate, discounting into the future. This growth of the financial area after the 1970s has a lot to do with what I think is another key problem: what I would call the capitalist surplus absorption problem.
As surplus theory tells us, capitalists produce a surplus, which they then have to take a part of, recapitalise it, and reinvest it in expansion. Which means they always have to find somewhere else to expand into. In an article I wrote for the New Left Review (Sept-Oct 2008) called ‘The right to the City’, I pointed out that in the last 30 years an immense amount of the capital surplus has been absorbed into urbanisation: urban restructuring, expansion and speculation. Every city I go to is a huge building site for capitalist surplus absorption. This way of absorbing capital surpluses has got more and more problematic over time. In 1750 the global value of the total output of goods and services was around $135 billion, in constant values. By 1950, it’s $4 trillion. By 2000, it’s $40 trillion. It’s now around $50 trillion. And if Gordon Brown is right it’s going to double over the next 20 years, to $100 trillion by 2030.
Throughout the history of capitalism, the general rate of growth has been close to 2.5 per cent per annum, compound basis. That would mean that in 2030 you’d need to find profitable outlets for $3 trillion dollars. That’s a very tall order. I think there has been a serious problem, particularly since 1970, about how to absorb greater and greater amounts of surplus into real production. Less and less of it is going into real production, and more and more into speculation on asset values, which accounts for the increasing frequency and depth of the financial crises we’ve been having; they are all crises of asset value.
My argument would be that even if we came out of this crisis right now, and there’s going to be capital accumulation at a 3 per cent rate of growth, we’ve got a hell of a lot of problems on our hands. Capitalism is running into serious environmental constraints, as well as market constraints, profitability constraints. The recent turn to financialisation is a turn of necessity, as a way of dealing with the surplus absorption problem; but one that cannot possibly work without periodic devaluations. That’s what’s happening now, with the losses of several trillion dollars of asset value.
The term ‘national bail-out’ is therefore inaccurate, because they’re not bailing out the whole of the existing financial system – they’re bailing out the banks, the capitalist class, forgiving them their debts, their transgressions, and only theirs.
The money goes to the banks, but not to the homeowners who’ve been foreclosed on, which is beginning to create anger. And the banks are using the money not to lend to anybody but to buy other banks. They are consolidating their power.
The collapse of credit
The collapse of credit for the working class spells the end of financialisation as the solution for the crisis of the market. As a consequence of this we will see a major crisis of unemployment and the collapse of many industries unless there is effective action to change that. Now this is where you get the current discussion about returning to a Keynesian economic model, and Obama’s plan to invest in a vast public works programme and in green technologies, in a sense going back to a New Deal type of solution.
To understand the current situation we need to go beyond what goes on in the labour process and production to the complex of relationships around the state and finance. We need to understand how the national debt and credit system have from the beginning been major vehicles for primitive accumulation, or what I now call accumulation by dispossession – as you can see from the building industry.
In my ‘Right to the City’ article I looked at how capitalism was revived in second-empire Paris because the state along with the bankers put together a new nexus of state-finance capital to rebuild Paris. That provided full employment – and the boulevards, the water systems and sewage systems, new transport systems. It was through those types of mechanisms that people built the Suez Canal. A lot of this was debt financed. Now that nexus has undergone a massive transformation since the 1970s. It’s become far more international, it’s opened itself to all types of financial innovations. including derivative markets and speculative markets and so on. A new financial architecture has been designed.
What I think is happening at the moment is that they are looking for a new financial set-up that can solve the problem not for working people but for the capitalist class. I think they are going to find a solution for the capitalist class and if the rest of us get screwed, too bad. The only thing they would care about is if we rose up in revolt. And until we rise up in revolt they are going to redesign the system according to their own class interests.
I don’t know what this new financial architecture will look like. If we look closely at what happened during the New York fiscal crisis I don’t think the bankers or the financiers knew what to do at all. What they did was bit by bit arrive at a ‘bricolage’; they pieced it together in a new way and eventually they came up with a new construction. But whatever solution they may arrive at, it will suit them unless we get in there and start saying that we want something that is suitable for us. There’s a crucial role for people like us to raise the questions and challenge the legitimacy of the decisions being made at present, and to have very clear analyses of what the nature of the problem has been, and what the possible exits are.
We need, in fact, to begin to exercise our right to the city. We have to ask the question: which is more important, the value of the banks or the value of humanity? The banking system should serve the people, not live off the people. And the only way in which we are really going to be able to exert the right to the city is to take command of the capitalist surplus absorption problem. We have to socialise the capital surplus, and to get out of the problem of 3 per cent accumulation forever. We are now at a point where a 3 per cent growth rate forever is going to exert such tremendous environmental costs and such tremendous pressure on social situations that we are going to go from one crisis to another.
Alternatives
The core problem is how you are going to absorb capitalist surpluses in a productive and profitable way. My view is that social movements must coalesce around the idea that they want more control over the surplus product. And while I don’t support a return to the Keynesian model of the sort we had in the 1960s, I do think there was much greater social and political control over the production, utilisation and distribution of the surplus then.
The circulating surplus was put into building schools, hospitals and infrastructure. This was what upset the capitalist class and caused a counter movement towards the end of the 1960s – that they were not getting enough control over the surplus. However, if you look at the data the proportion of the surplus being absorbed by the state has not shifted very much since 1970. What the capitalist class did was to stop the further socialisation of the surplus. They also managed to transform the word government into the word ‘governance’, making governmental and corporate activities porous, which enables the situation we have in Iraq.
I think we are headed into a legitimation crisis. Over the past 30 years we have been told, to quote Margaret Thatcher, that ‘there is no alternative’ to a neoliberal free market, privatised world, and that if we didn’t succeed in that world it’s our own fault. I think it’s very difficult to say that when faced with a foreclosure crisis you support the banks but not the people who are being foreclosed upon.
You can accuse the people being foreclosed upon of irresponsibility, and in the US there is a strong racist element in this argument. When the first wave of foreclosures hit places like Cleveland and Ohio they were devastating to the black communities there, but some people’s response was basically ‘Well, what do you expect, black people are irresponsible.’ We are seeing right-wing explanations of the crisis that explain it in terms of the personal greed of those who borrowed money to buy houses. So they attempt to blame the crisis on the victims. One of our tasks must be to say ‘no, you absolutely cannot do that’ and to try to create a consolidated explanation of this crisis as a class event in which a certain structure of exploitation broke down and is about to be displaced by an even deeper structure of exploitation. It’s very important this alternative explanation of the crisis is discussed and conveyed publicly.
One of the big ideological configurations we are going to have is what is going to be the role of home ownership in the future once we start saying things like you’ve got to socialise much more of the housing stock, as since the 1930s we have had huge pressures towards individualised home ownership as a way of securing people’s rights and position. We’ve got to socialise and recapitalise public education and medicine.
Radical politics beyond class divides
There is another point we have to consider, which is that labour, and particularly organised labour, is only one small piece of this whole problem, and it’s only going to have a partial role in what is going on. And this is for a very simple reason, which goes back to the failure of Marx and how he set up the problem. If you say to yourself the formation of the state-finance complex is absolutely crucial to the dynamics of capitalism, and you ask yourself what social forces are at work in contesting that or setting it up, labour has never been at the forefront. Labour has been at the forefront of the labour market and the labour process, which are important moments in the circulation process, but most of the struggles that have gone on over the state-finance nexus are populist struggles.
For example, many of the struggles going on in Latin America are more populist than labour-led. Labour always has a very important role to play but I don’t think we are in a position right now where the conventional view of the proletariat being the vanguard of the struggle is very helpful. There may be times where proletarian movements may be highly significant – for example, in China, where I envisage it playing a critical part that I do not see it having in the US (although it still has an important role there). What is interesting in the US is that the car workers and automobile companies are in alliance right now in relation to the state-finance nexus, so in a way the grand dividing line of class struggle that has always been there in Detroit isn’t there anymore. We have a completely different kind of class politics going on. So I think some of the conventional Marxist ways of viewing these things get in the way of a real radical politics.
There is also the big problem on the left that many think the capturing of state power has no role to play in political transformations. I think they’re crazy. Incredible power is located there and you can’t walk away from it as though it doesn’t matter. I am profoundly sceptical of the belief that NGOs and civil society organisations are going to change the world – not because NGOs can’t do anything at all, but it takes a different kind of political movement and conception if we are going to do anything about the main crisis. In the United States the political instinct is very anarchist, and I am very sympathetic to a lot of anarchist views but not all of them – for example, their perpetual complaints about the state.
I don’t think we are in a position to define who the agents of change will be. In the United States right now there are signs that elements of the managerial class, which has lived off the earnings of finance capital all these years, are getting annoyed and may turn a bit radical. A lot of people have been laid off in the financial services, in some instances they have even had their mortgages foreclosed. In the 1960s art schools were the centre of political radicalism in the US. You might find something like that re-emerging. Or cross-border organisation with groups affected in Mexico by reductions in the amounts migrants can send home to them.
Social movements have to define what strategies and policies they want to adopt. We academics should never view ourselves as having some missionary role in relation to social movements; what we should do is get into conversation. Having said that, I would want us to propose ideas. An interesting idea in the US right now is to get municipal governments to pass anti-eviction ordinances. I think there are a couple of places in France which have done that. Then we could set up a municipal housing corporation which would assume the mortgage and pay off the bank at a partial rate – the banks have been given a lot of money to supposedly deal with this, but they’re not.
Another key question is that of citizenship and rights. I think the rights of the city should be guaranteed by the rights of residency no matter what your citizenship is. Currently people are denied any political rights to the city unless they happen to be citizens. So if you’re an immigrant you don’t have any rights. I think there are struggles to be launched around the rights to the city. In the Brazilian constitution they have a ‘rights to the city’ clause which is about the right to consultation, participation and budgetary procedures. Again I think there is a politics which can come out of that.
A reconfiguration of urbanisation
In the US there is the capacity to act at a local level, with a lot going on about environmental questions, and over the past 15 to 20 years municipal governments have often been more progressive than federal government. There’s a crisis in municipal finance right now and there is likely to be significant agitation and pressure on Obama to recapitalise a lot of municipal government. He has said this is one of the things he is concerned about, especially since a lot of the issues are local ones – for instance, the sub-prime mortgage crisis. As I have been arguing, the foreclosure stuff must be understood as an urban crisis, not just a financial crisis; it is a financial crisis of urbanisation.
Another important question is to think strategically about how the social economy in some alliance with labour and the municipal-based movements could also be a component in a strategy. This relates to the question of technological development – for example, I see no reason why you couldn’t have a municipal-based support system for the development of productive systems such as solar power, to create more decentralised employment apparatuses and possibilities.
If I could develop an idealised system now, I would say in the US we should create a national redevelopment bank and take $500 billion out of that $700 billion they voted for. The bank should work with municipalities to deal with neighbourhoods which have been hit by the foreclosure wave, because it has been like a financial Katrina in many ways; it has wiped out whole communities, usually poor black or Hispanic communities.
You could go into those neighbourhoods and bring back the people who used to live in those communities and rehouse them on a different basis of tenure, residency rights, and with a different kind of financing. And green those neighbourhoods, creating local employment opportunities in those fields.
So I could imagine a reconfiguration of urbanisation. To do anything on global warming we need to totally reconfigure how American cities work; to think about a completely new pattern of urbanisation, with new patterns of living and working. There are a lot of possibilities the left should be paying attention to – this is a real opportunity.
But I also have a problem with some Marxists, who seem to think, ‘Yes! It’s a crisis; the contradictions of capitalism will now be solved somehow!’ This is not a moment for triumphalism, this is a moment for problematising. First of all, I think there are problems with the way Marx set up those problems. Marxists are not very good at understanding the state-financial complex or urbanisation, although they are terrific at understanding some other things. We have to rethink our theoretical posture and political possibilities.
David Harvey was talking to Marco Berlinguer and Hilary Wainwright. Transcribed by Kate Ferguson. This article will feature in the April/May print edition of Red Pepper.
David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the author of various books, articles, and lectures.
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Their-crisis-our-challenge
Friday, August 14, 2009
How Youth Alleviate Global Warming !
By Vanny Hong
Dhurakij Pundit University August 27th, 2009
Good Morning and Welcome all of you here!
My name is Vanny Hong, a second year student from
Today, I am here to strongly agree that Thai Youth Can Play an Important Role In Alleviating the Global Warming. First, I would like to emphasize the word Global Warming to all of you once again. It is a greatest single environmental challenge facing our planet. Of course, we are all living in the same planet named the earth, I am pretty sure that we are all involve in speeding up the Global Warming by our daily activities lead to leave some consequences on the Planetary Eco-system which result in Natural Disasters causing more powerful and harmful to the living things on earth.
Let’s me remind you some consequences that already happened in
Now we are facing the new form of Virus like H1N1 known as Swine Flu and we have already experienced H5N1 known as Bird Flu. All these are the result of deadly virus together with other disasters such as Heat Weaves, Droughts, Hurricanes, Floods that occurring with greater Frequency and Intensity.
Those are just the Warning Signs!
All of us are surviving in the same planet and we are also facing the similar issues which cannot be resolved by any single country or person unless all of us join hands together.
That’s true, Youth as us is not just a student but the next generation for the future who have to decide what should do and what should not do. That’s why it is important to understand the challenge of our planetary ecosystem to alleviating the Global Warming.
The question is, what should we do if the largest contributor to the Global Warming is the Electricity Generation followed by the Transportation, Industry, Agricultural, Commercial and Residential Developments.
So now let’s me tell you how Thai Youth can alleviate the Global Warming. Simply by trying to spread out the word of Global Warming from one person to another person, to your friends, your family and the whole society. Thai Youth can join a Local Eco-group to create the Poster on the theme of Global Warming and Climate Change to remind that the disaster is still existing and joining the Local Protesters to protest the harmful effect of the Industry Operations.
If possible try to use the public transportation instead of driving your own car alone. You can also walk or cycling for any short distances, can be a great exercise and reduce the harmful effect of the fuel emissions too.
Otherwise, you can just say no to free plastic bags in order to reduce the amount of waste. Try to Reuse, Recycle and Repair something instead of throwing it away.
If not necessary, you just switch off the light, Monitor, and Unplug and Turning off the Air-Con when you left the room.
Now my time is up and it is the Time to stop talking but Being Acting.
Thank You!
Monday, August 10, 2009
Speech - Global Warming: a Time to Act
Speech at Town Hall Los Angeles
Delivered on 25 October 2006.
Today, I am here to discuss global warming -- the single greatest environmental challenge facing our planet. So let me explain the gravity of the situation station. The fuel we use to power our homes, our cars, and our businesses is causing the earth to warm faster than anyone expected.
The first seven months of this year, and the last three decades, were the warmest in the United States since national record-keeping began in 1895. And the Earth’s temperature has climbed to the highest point it has been in the past 12,000 years.
A scientific consensus has been forged. There is broad agreement that the Earth will only get hotter. The question is how hot and why?
First, how hot?
If we act now and further temperature increases are kept to 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, the damages – though significant – will be manageable. But if we don’t act, and warming increases by 5 to 9 degrees by the end of this century, the damage will be catastrophic and irreversible.
So we must act now.
Each of us is confronted with a choice: a choice that will impact not only our future, but the futures of our children and grandchildren. Do we continue with a business-as-usual attitude? Or do we make the changes necessary to prevent catastrophe?
Now for the question, why?
Quite simply, because we are addicted to fossil fuels. And it is the burning of these fuels – coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas and the greenhouse gases they produce – that is the primary cause of global warming.
Carbon dioxide is produced by power plants, cars, manufacturing, and to power residential and commercial buildings. And here is the key: Carbon dioxide doesn’t dissipate. It stays in the atmosphere for five decades or more – causing the Earth’s temperature to rise.
That means that the carbon dioxide produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is still in the atmosphere today. And the carbon dioxide produced today will still be in the atmosphere in 2050 and beyond.
And there will be serious consequences for our planet unless we make major changes. Leading scientists say that to stabilize the planet’s climate by the end of the century, we need a 70 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2050.
So the goal should be to stabilize carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million by 2050. This could contain further warming to 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Earth has warmed 1 degree in the past century, and we are now seeing the dramatic effects:
Oceans are rising; coral reefs are dying; species are disappearing; glaciers are melting.
We learned just last week that Greenland is now losing 20% more mass than it receives from new snowfall each year. And it will shrink further as the planet warms.
Extreme weather patterns have emerged – heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, floods – and they are occurring with greater frequency and greater intensity.
In 2003, heat waves caused 20,000 deaths in Europe and 1,500 deaths in India.
And the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled since the 1970’s. Katrina alone is testament to that.
The first seven months of this year, and the last three decades, were the warmest in the United States since national record-keeping began in 1895. And the Earth’s temperature has climbed to the highest point it has been in the past 12,000 years.
A scientific consensus has been forged. There is broad agreement that the Earth will only get hotter. The question is how hot and why?
First, how hot?
If we act now and further temperature increases are kept to 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, the damages – though significant – will be manageable. But if we don’t act, and warming increases by 5 to 9 degrees by the end of this century, the damage will be catastrophic and irreversible.
So we must act now.
Each of us is confronted with a choice: a choice that will impact not only our future, but the futures of our children and grandchildren. Do we continue with a business-as-usual attitude? Or do we make the changes necessary to prevent catastrophe?
Now for the question, why?
Quite simply, because we are addicted to fossil fuels. And it is the burning of these fuels – coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas and the greenhouse gases they produce – that is the primary cause of global warming.
Carbon dioxide is produced by power plants, cars, manufacturing, and to power residential and commercial buildings. And here is the key: Carbon dioxide doesn’t dissipate. It stays in the atmosphere for five decades or more – causing the Earth’s temperature to rise.
That means that the carbon dioxide produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is still in the atmosphere today. And the carbon dioxide produced today will still be in the atmosphere in 2050 and beyond.
And there will be serious consequences for our planet unless we make major changes. Leading scientists say that to stabilize the planet’s climate by the end of the century, we need a 70 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2050.
So the goal should be to stabilize carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million by 2050. This could contain further warming to 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Earth has warmed 1 degree in the past century, and we are now seeing the dramatic effects:
Oceans are rising; coral reefs are dying; species are disappearing; glaciers are melting.
We learned just last week that Greenland is now losing 20% more mass than it receives from new snowfall each year. And it will shrink further as the planet warms.
Extreme weather patterns have emerged – heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, floods – and they are occurring with greater frequency and greater intensity.
In 2003, heat waves caused 20,000 deaths in Europe and 1,500 deaths in India.
And the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled since the 1970’s. Katrina alone is testament to that.
And things will only get worse as Earth’s temperature rises. The question is: how much will the increase be?
If nothing is done…if the Earth warms 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, the face of our planet will change forever.
The Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets would melt completely. These two ice sheets currently hold 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh water.
Sea levels could well rise by 20 feet. Think about the damage that would cause to coastal areas around the world.
Additionally, hurricanes, tornadoes and other severe weather would become more volatile than ever. Malaria would spread.
Here in California: More than half of the Sierra snowpack would disappear. This is equal to the water supply for the 16 million people in the Los Angeles basin.
The rise in sea levels would cause catastrophic flooding – and the Los Angeles basin would be especially vulnerable.
Catastrophic wildfires would more than double.
We had a mild taste of that future in July. Here in Los Angeles, temperatures spiked to well above 100 degrees. And it was far worse in other areas of the State.
I met recently with scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
And they said to me that if they have erred, it has been because their climate projections are too conservative and the Earth may be much closer to a tipping point than science has shown thus far.
And if we move beyond that tipping point, catastrophe becomes a certainty. You can’t go back, because the carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for so long.
That’s why we must act soon and decisively.
The question is: what should we do?
The United States emits some 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, and we’re 4 percent of the world’s population. So we are the big producer.
The largest contributor to global warming is electricity generation -- 33 percent – followed by transportation -- 28 percent. These two sectors combine to make up 61 percent of the problem.
The remaining contributors are:
-Industry – 20 percent
-Agriculture – 7 percent
-Commercial – 6.5 percent
-Residential – 6.5 percent
Let me be clear: there is no silver bullet. There is no one thing that we can do to solve the problem. Every business, home, and industry must do its share. So what can be done?
Let me begin with electricity generation. This is the single largest piece of the global warming puzzle --responsible for 33 percent of global warming gases in the United States . And the biggest culprit here is pulverized coal, which is the major source of energy in 40 of the 50 states.
Coal, alone, produces 27 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, or 2.1 billion tons every year.
Globally, coal produces 9.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year – or one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. So it’s critical that we find ways to clean up coal.
Earlier this year, the Senate Energy Committee held a symposium on global warming. The consensus was that a mandatory cap-and-trade program would be the most effective way forward. And so we are working to create such a program.
We would begin with two bills – one for electricity and one for industry.
Here’s how it would work: we would cap the amount of global warming gases – including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide – and that cap would be established on all major emitters.
In all likelihood, the cap would remain at present levels for a few years to give the industry the opportunity to make the changes necessary. Gradually, these caps would be tightened, and emissions reduced.
Electricity producers would have two ways to meet the cap:
Either implement new technologies, or
Purchase credits from other companies that have reduced their emissions below the target cap. (A credit essentially is an allowance to emit a ton of greenhouse gases.)
So, the cap would be met—and carbon dioxide would be reduced over time.
One of the key elements of our program is to put agriculture in the system. We would allow farmers and foresters to earn credits for moving to greener farming practices.
These include:
-Tilling land less frequently;
-Planting trees on vacant land; and
-Converting crops to those that can be used for bio-fuels.
-Farmers and growers would be able to earn dollars for acres converted to carbon sequestration and reduction.
Next we need to include other major industrial producers of carbon dioxide in a similar regime.
The fact of the matter is that cap and trade has worked before. It’s not a revolutionary concept. Using the Clean Air Act, a cap-and-trade regime was implemented in the 1980s to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from electric utility plants in the northeast. These are the primary culprits of acid rain.
In the 16 years, this scheme has been in place, sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by about 34 percent (5 million tons) and nitrogen oxide emissions have been reduced by 43 percent (3 million tons). So cap and trade can be effective.
And, the governors of seven northeastern states are instituting a cap-and trade system known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. It will become effective in 2008.
The plan is to cap carbon dioxide emissions from electricity plants at current levels until 2015; and then begin reducing emissions incrementally to achieve a 10% reduction by 2019.
And last week, Governor Schwarzenegger announced that California may well join the Northeast regional system in the trading of credits.
At the same time, I am pleased to announce that I am very close to reaching agreement with the Clean Energy Group of utilities on a cap a trade regime for electricity.
The Clean Energy Group consists of PG&E, Florida Power and Light, Exelon, Entergy, Calpine, and Public Service Enterprise group.
These companies produce 15 percent of the energy consumed in the United States today – 150,000 megawatts out of the 1 million megawatts produced nationwide. This is enough energy to power 150 million homes.
I will be introducing the legislation in the new session of Congress.
Let me take up transportation -- cars, trucks, planes, and cargo ships, which represents 28 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
And passenger vehicles alone – cars, light-trucks, and SUVs – make up 20 percent of all U.S. emissions (1.2 tons).
Fundamentally, there are two ways to reduce these emissions.
1. Improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles.
2. Move away from oil and gasoline-based fuels and toward alternatives.
I believe we need to do both.
The good news is that the technology exists to significantly improve the fuel economy of these vehicles. The bad news is that Detroit and many foreign auto makers refuse to utilize the technologies.
So Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and I have offered legislation that would require the mileage for all cars, pick-up trucks, and SUVs to be increased from 25 to 35 miles per gallon over the next 10 years.
We call it the “ten-by-ten” bill.
If this bill becomes law:
We would save 420 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2025. That is the equivalent of taking 90 million cars off the road in one year.
And we would save 2.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2025. By coincidence, this is the amount of oil imported daily from the Persian Gulf.
This is a simple solution, and it can be accomplished.
The other side of the transportation coin is new technologies and alternative fuels. As long as our nation continues its addiction to oil, we cannot sufficiently slow the warming trend. That’s why we need to develop new, clean technologies and alternative fuels.
This includes the electric plug-in hybrid, biofuels, E-85 using cellulosic ethanol, and fuel cells.
The good news is that substantial venture capital funding is available today for clean energy projects. Here are just a few of the most promising:
Last week I visited a Silicon Valley start-up -- Bloom Energy -- that is developing clean fuel cells that will produce both electricity and hydrogen to fuel our vehicles.
The fuel cell has cathode ink on one side, anode ink on the other, separated by zirconia sand covered plastic, which becomes the catalyst. The size is about 4 inches by 4 inches. It alone can power a 30 watt light bulb for 5 years.
Together these fuel cells can be combined to fit in a parking space, and can power a 20,000 square foot building.
The electricity is produced -- with no carbon dioxide emissions – only water and hydrogen.
This is the future, and this is what we ought to be supporting.
It is also my understanding that Bill Gates has joined with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to spearhead investment efforts in ethanol plants which, when completed, will produce 220 million gallons by 2009.
Others are investing in new ideas – inexpensive solar panels, windmills that can be built in your backyard for $10,000, and geothermal energy that harnesses the heat of the Earth.
Chevron has formed a strategic research alliance with the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado to advance the development of biofuels. It is also working with scientists at UC Davis to develop cellulosic ethanol.
And Los Angeles has become a “Climate Action Leader” and has registered its greenhouse gases and will be seeking to reduce its emissions.
These efforts are so important, and I want to encourage you to support them.
So that’s the electricity and transportation sectors. But America needs to become much more energy efficient as well – both in terms of green building codes and individual conservation and energy use.
An aggressive energy national efficiency program could prevent a substantial amount of carbon dioxide going into the air.
This is the third prong of my proposal.
This would come from the incorporation of energy efficient building materials in construction – such as insulation, more efficient windows, and renewable technologies like solar or wind.
Green construction is also cost-effective. An initial $100,000 investment can result in a savings of $1 million or more over the life of a building of 20,000 square feet – that’s about the size of a Safeway or Borders bookstore.
And the bigger the building, the greater the potential savings.
Individuals can also make a difference. This means carpooling, using energy efficient light bulbs, and choosing ENERGY STAR appliances.
ENERGY STAR home products, such as air conditioners, furnaces, refrigerators, dishwashers, phones, DVD players, and televisions, must become standard for all Americans.
In 2005, these products saved consumers $12 billion, and reduced emissions by nearly 5 percent.
These are easy to do, and they can really make a major difference.
So early on in the 110th Congress, I plan to introduce a series of bills to meet these goals:
1. A mandatory cap-and-trade program for electricity.
A mandatory cap-and-trade program for industry.
2. Then “ten-by-ten bill,” requiring increased mileage of 10 miles per gallon within the next 10 years. That means mileage would go from 25 to 35 miles per gallon.
3. An alternative fuels bill that requires 70 percent of all vehicles produced after 2014 to be flex-fuel capable. The cost is small, $100 per vehicle.
These vehicles would be required to have a green gas cap to show the owner that the car can accept other fuels.
We would also require that gas stations owned and operated by major oil companies have at least one pump that provides alternative fuels at every station.
4. The fourth bill will be a national energy efficiency program -- including strict appliance and building standards and requiring utilities to use energy efficiency measures to meet a portion of their demand.
5. Elimination of the protectionist tariff (54 cents per gallon) placed on Brazilian ethanol. This was done at the behest of the corn industry – to make imported ethanol non-competitive. It is estimated that Brazilian produced E-85 will be cheaper and work better.
And Senator Craig Thomas and I are working on a plan to use Wyoming Powder River Coal to produce cleaner electricity by sequestering carbon dioxide. The power will then be sold to Western States including California.
These bills are just the beginning.
Additionally, the U.S. must make addressing global warming a top priority and join the European Union and other nations in reducing emissions. We can, and must lead. But this won’t solve the problem.
Here’s why: the United States certainly leads in the production of greenhouse gases, but we are closely followed by China, Europe, Russia, Japan, and India. So all countries must participate.
The Kyoto Protocol is certainly not perfect, and it will expire in 2012. So the U.S. needs to gear up and be a leader.
At the same time, the United States should also lead an effort with China to create a public-private partnership fund to prioritize bilateral global warming projects.
China’s coal use outpaces that of the United States, EU, and Japan combined. Coal accounts for 70 percent of China’s energy needs. China is building a new pulverized coal power plant every week. China will soon pass the United States as the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. If China continues its course, it could cause carbon dioxide levels to quadruple. So it’s vital to engage China.
That is why a private/public partnership that funds key carbon dioxide reduction projects on a bilateral basis is so important.
The business community should consider investing in joint ventures to develop clean power quickly in China, as well as the United States.
Bottom line: now is the time to act.
And here’s what I’d like to ask you to do. Please support these bills.
Let the members of the House and the Senate you support them.
Right now, the mentality of the congress is do-nothing, and it won’t work.
The choice is clear. It is time to stop talking and to begin acting.
Thank you.
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