Wind boss Graham Brown turns a tidy profit

Entrepreneur Graham Brown has invested about £200,000 in private equity deals through Hotbed, the private investor network, since 2005.
The 51-year-old, who lives near Banbury, Oxfordshire, has ploughed money into businesses including Sphere Medical, a technology company developing medical devices; Original Travel, a luxury adventure holiday firm; and Burcote Wind — where Brown is chairman — a renewable energy firm that will identify and secure planning permission for up to six onshore wind farm sites. He aims to achieve returns of up to 25% a year over five years.
“Money that’s been sitting on the sidelines is coming back,” said Brown.

Ravaged by drought, Madagascar feels the full effect of climate change

A 10% increase in temperature and a 10% decrease in rainfall sees Indian Ocean island struggle to feed its children
David Smith
guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 October 2009 19.09 BST
Remanonjona Feroce founded the village of Anjamahavelo – meaning At the Lucky Baobab – in Madagascar a generation ago. With memories of a flood still fresh, he chose a spot far from the nearest river. He cleared the wild forest and sacrificed a sheep in the hope that it would make the owls, lemurs and snakes go away.
“Animals can’t live together with little children and young girls,” explained Feroce, an 85-year-old great-grandfather. “They don’t want snakes to be here because they have bad spirits. They strangle children by curling around the neck. Owls are bad birds. If one hoots, it means somebody will die.”
The animals did go away, but so did the luck of Anjamahavelo, a cluster of wooden houses. Southern Madagascar has had three years of crop failure in five years, resulting in chronic hunger for tens of thousands of families and soaring rates of malnutrition, stunted growth and death among children.
Three forces are combining with deadly effect on the Indian Ocean island, which is incalculably rich in wildlife but impoverished in basic infrastructure. Climate change is widely blamed for playing havoc with the seasons and destroying agricultural harvests. This is exacerbated by local deforestation, which has altered the microclimate and reduced rainfall.
Finally, a bloody political coup earlier this year paralysed essential services and led to the crippling suspension of several foreign aid programmes. The UN says that nearly half of households in the south have severe food shortages.
To feed her five children in Anjamahavelo, Tinalisy – her only name – works as a prostitute at the end of each month, when the local men, mostly in the police, have been paid. The unmarried 27-year-old has slept with men for sex since she was 17. “If the men don’t want to marry, that is not really a problem. We have to survive.”
Tinalisy says her 20-month-old daughter, Vany Lentine, suffers a fever each evening. “We eat once or twice a day – always cassava. I’m worried but what I can do? There is no money. People here are unhappy because their children do not eat. There is nothing to be happy about.”
Other villagers say that the fierce competition for dwindling resources has led to lawlessness and violence. Valiotaky, 56, the village chief, supplies an explanation for the drought. “When we plant trees we don’t have rain and nothing grows,” he said. “I think God is angry. Young people don’t respect the traditions.”
Perversely, people in the south are so starved of water that they crave the increasingly fierce cyclones that pound the north three times a year. Two separate dry seasons have progressively expanded until they meet to form one long hot season, hitting crops such as maize, manioc and sweet potato.
Tovoheryzo Raobijaona, director of a food insecurity early warning system in nearby Ambovombe, said: “Before, people spoke about the cycle of drought every 10 years. Now it’s every five years, or every three years. After a bad year like 2009, people need two to three years to get back to standard.”
Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, said that in the past six months 8,632 children had been treated for severe acute malnutrition in three southern regions – more than double the expected number. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warns that 150,000 children could be affected this year.
There are reports of people resorting to eating lemurs and turtles, even though these are culturally taboo. They have also resumed cutting down trees for firewood or to make space for rice fields, inadvertently adding to the drought problem by reducing the capacity of forests to capture water that will evaporate into clouds and become rain.
The added impact of global climate change is difficult to quantify. The World Bank says that only one thing is certain: in the past half century Madagascar has seen a 10% increase in temperature and 10% decrease in rainfall. Experts say it is not a question of whether this trend will continue, but by how much.
Silvia Caruso, deputy country director of the WFP, said: “Environmental degradation and climate change are building on each other. The results are dramatic in Madagascar.”
This has been compounded by political instability. In March Andry Rajoelina, a city mayor, businessman and former DJ, seized power from president Marc Ravalomanana after clashes that left dozens dead. The fallout has been political deadlock, economic downturn, job losses, price inflation, collapsing public services, a flight of investors and international sanctions on a country that relies on foreign aid for half its budget.
Caruso added: “The coup has paralysed services that we need to work with in the provinces. It has made the response to drought more complex. We had to fill the gaps at regional level.”
Bruno Maes, Unicef’s representative for Madagascar, described the coup as “a disaster for children”, adding: “Madagascar was on the road to take-off. They understood it was time to make reforms in health and education, so that all children can have access. Now all this is frozen. Nothing is moving.”
Unicef has provided medicine and training to all regional health clinics for acute malnutrition cases, supported food distribution and worked to improve sanitation. The WFP has begun programmes to provide school meals to 215,000 children, help 8,000 households mitigate against environmental change and supply supplementary feeding to around 70,000 children under two and pregnant and lactating women.
Maes said Unicef was also negotiating with the World Bank to directly administer money earmarked for teachers’ salaries. “Children’s rights should be addressed in any situation – whatever the crisis.”
Case-study: ‘Lack of food is eating us up’
Zanasoa Relais Anjado, 38, has 11 children. Her husband, a former plantation worker, is unemployed. They live in Anjado village in southern Madagascar.
“Lack of food is eating us up every day. We often go through very hard moments – in the most difficult we ate only tamarinds [fruit] mixed with ashes. We were hungry and tired and had to beg for something to eat. We were like famine victims … I have 11 children and I don’t know how to feed them. Sometimes we have one meal a day, sometimes two. One of my children was sick. He managed to survive and recover, but I know people in the community who are still very weak. The river is 5km from here and we walk for hours to get there … With rainwater we would cook food and diversify agriculture. We’d plant cabbages, green leaves, corn and beans. What we planted so far dried and failed … It will be really difficult and we will suffer. That is why I am asking the government for help, directly and immediately. Without it, we risk dying here. I don’t care about the political situation in the country. The only thing that concerns me is that I’m eating.”

Americans go cool on global warming

The number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming because of pollution is at its lowest point in three years, according to a survey.

Published: 7:00AM BST 23 Oct 2009
The poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 57 per cent believe there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has become warmer over the past few decades, and as a result, people are viewing the problem as less serious - down from 77 per cent in 2006.
The steepest drop occurred during the last year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time. The drop also was seen during a time of mounting scientific evidence of climate change – from melting ice caps to the world’s oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.

The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organisations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming.
“The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things,” said Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. “When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave.”
Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still said they supported limits on greenhouse gases, even if it could lead to higher energy prices. But many of those supporters have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week.

Egypt News Update: Swine Flu Risk For Cairo’s Overcrowded Schools

EGYPT: Swine flu risk for Cairo’s overcrowded schools

IRINnews,Thu 22 Oct 2009

Egyptian students left their school exam wearing surgical masks outside their school in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, June 13, 2009. A student dorm at the American University in Cairo was placed under quarantine after seven Americans, six students and one faculty member, were diagnosed with swine flu.
——————————————————————————————-
CAIRO, 22 October 2009 (IRIN) - The Egyptian ministries of health and education have ordered all schools in Cairo to halve the number of children in each class to mitigate the possible spread of H1N1 influenza - no small challenge in this overcrowded city of 20 million.

The resulting uncertainty has led schoolchildren to attend classes on three alternate days a week instead of six under a long-running double-shift system designed to ease overcrowding.

“I go to school on the second shift on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday now,” Toqa Ali, 13, a student at Abdullah Ibn Rawaha School in the Imbaba area of Cairo, told IRIN. She said she used to have up to 80 children in her class but there were now around 25 as children were attending on alternate days and some were staying at home for fear of catching H1N1.

Toqa said she and many other children wore surgical masks in play time but tended to take them off in classrooms, which now have the windows open and fans on most of the time.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in conjunction with the Health Ministry, has run an extensive awareness campaign with TV advertisements, public service announcements and awareness kits.

“We are distributing awareness kits in all schools in Egypt on avian flu and H1N1. In fact, we already had a distribution network set up for avian flu so now we are just adding H1N1,”said Hala Abu Khatwa, chief of communications for UNICEF in Egypt.

A World Health Organization (WHO) briefing note in September for schools said schools could serve as a vector for spreading the virus.

It recommends hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, proper cleaning, good ventilation, isolation of staff or students who fall ill and measures to reduce overcrowding.

“Decisions about if and when schools should be closed during the pandemic are complex and highly context-specific. WHO cannot provide specific recommendations for or against school closure that are applicable to all settings.”

However, it said that the timing of school closures was critically important and that “modelling studies suggest that school closure has its greatest benefits when schools are closed very early in an outbreak, ideally before 1 percent of the population fall ill.”

To close or not to close?

“While slowing the speed of spread of H1N1 by schools’ closure can buy some time as countries intensify preparedness measures, there are a lot of discrepancies about it, as school closure is associated with social and economic impacts,”said Rana Zaqout, head of the Pandemic Influenza Contigency (PIC) unit for the Middle East and North Africa, which is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The main issue is that people do not trust the government or the Health Ministry. They don’t feel they are transparent. “As a parent, while I am concerned about the academic year, I believe that school closure should reduce the transmission of the disease if accompanied by policies that include measures that limit congregation of students outside schools,” she added.

On 14 October, Education Minister Youssri el-Gamal told the Middle East News Agency: “There is no intention of closing schools at the beginning of the winter season.” He said only 10 children out of 20 million primary and secondary students in the country had been infected.

Two days later, La Mère de Dieu girls’ school in Cairo became the first school in Egypt to be closed after three H1N1 cases were discovered. The 1,200 pupils were ordered to stay at home for two weeks.

On 22 October, four private schools in the greater Cairo area were closed for two weeks.

“The main issue is that people do not trust the government or the Health Ministry. They don’t feel they are transparent,” Abu Khatwa of UNICEF told IRIN.

A number of classrooms in schools in Cairo and Alexandria have also been closed for two weeks on orders from their respective city governors.

Ahmed Ali, a teacher at Youssri al-Gamal School in Imbaba (Cairo), felt that overcrowding was the enduring problem. While he was happy to see his 70-children classes more than halved this term, he still had concerns:

“I can’t teach them the same curriculum in half the time. The Education Ministry will have to delay exams this semester so the students will have a chance to pass,” Ali said.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Health Ministry said it would be receiving its first batch of H1N1 vaccinations - some 80,000 doses - on 23 October.

“Priority will be given to pilgrims going on Hajj, doctors treating H1N1 cases, people who work in public transport and public services, journalists, and school and university students with chronic illnesses, health complications or a weak immune system,” Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali said in a statement.

As of 17 October, WHO reported 14,739 laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1 in its 22-country Eastern Mediterranean Region. Egypt had the fourth highest number of cases - 1,053 - and two deaths.

This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the Pan-African News Wire

Police Raid MDC-T Offices in Zimbabwe

Published on France 24 (http://www.france24.com/en)

Police raid prime minister’s party’s property, MDC source says

24/10/2009 - 20:35

AFP - Armed police raided a house belonging to Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party in a new threat to the country’s faltering unity government, a top official said on Saturday.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) secretary-general Tendai Biti told a news conference police officers claiming they were searching for weapons ransacked the property used for the temporary accommodation of party officials.

“Last night armed police numbering over 50 raided this residence on the pretext that they were looking for arms stolen from the police or the army,” Biti said.

The raid came just over a week after the MDC suspended contact with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF over a battery of issues they said should be ironed out for their unity government to work.

Saturday’s edition of the state-owned Herald newspaper said Mugabe vowed not to give in to the MDC’s demands.

“The matters the people are complaining about in the MDC-T are that we should now, voluntarily you see, give away aspects of our authority,” Mugabe was quoted as saying.

“We will not do that. They can go to any summit, any part of the world to appeal. That will not happen.”

The raid came as Tsvangirai was rounding off a tour to persuade regional leaders to intervene in the stand-off.

Biti said the police descended on the property in the western suburb of Highlands and “ransacked every room and took a bunch of valuable party material from a room occupied by our organising secretary Morgan Komichi.

“They beat up the wife and sister of the caretaker before they started digging part of the garden ostensibly in search of weapons.

“The decision we took last week and the efforts we are making in government to protect public funds all have to do with these acts of frustration.”

Party leaders such as Tsvangirai’s deputy Thokozani Khupe, chairman Lovemore Ncube and youth leader Thamsanqa Ncube used to occupy the house until they were given official state residences, Biti said.

Biti said the raid was the work of members of ZANU-PF and security forces opposed to the country’s power-sharing government.

There were fears the police may have “planted” weapons during the raid, he added.

The MDC and ZANU-PF have been trading accusations with the former saying ZANU-PF was steeped in its past and does not recognise the MDC as an equal partner in the unity government.

ZANU-PF blames the MDC for the slow progress of the power-sharing government, saying it should appeal for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Mugabe and his inner circle by Western governments.

Biti said: “We regard this as further evidence of lack of a paradigm shift on the part of ZANU-PF to treat us as an equal partner.

“We regard it as serious evidence of a few in ZANU-PF and securocrats who want us out of the government.

“On our part, this is nothing new. They will continue to plant arms and attempt to kill us but we will look the dictatorship in the eye.”

Zimbabwe’s three main political rivals formed an inclusive government in February to tackle a chronic economic crisis and ease political tensions in the aftermath of a bloody presidential run-off election.

But the work of the compromise government has been stalled by unresolved issues including the appointment of provincial governors, the case of Tsvangirai’s top aide Roy Bennett and the unilateral re-appointment of central bank chief Gideon Gono and attorney-general Johannes Tomana.

Bennett, a white farmer Tsvangirai wants as deputy agriculture minister, was arrested on terrorism charges in February as the unity government was being sworn in.

Released on bail, his rearrest last week ahead of his trial sparked Tsvangirai’s decision to suspend the MDC’s involvement in government. He was later released on bail by the high court and his trial set for November 9.

Business Fights Back

Tom Donohue By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
‘One thing I can tell you: They can go out and chase me and chase the Chamber and put stuff in the newspaper. It only . . . drives more and more support. . . . You think we are going to blink because a couple of people are out shooting at us? Tell ‘em to put their damn helmets on.”
Them’s fighting words, all the more so when delivered in the feisty, New York accent of U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue. The 71-year-old was recruited 12 years ago in order to revitalize a drifting business lobby. And the gregarious chief hasn’t disappointed: He’s grown the Chamber’s membership, tripled its budget, transformed its lobby shop, and increasingly thrust it into the political fray. Most recently he’s ginned up opposition to union “card check,” the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plans to regulate carbon emissions, and parts of the proposed financial overhaul.
The Obama administration’s response has been to treat the Chamber like it has Fox News Channel: with brass knuckles. It has launched a campaign to undermine the organization by making CEOs think twice about associating with it. President Obama has openly criticized the Chamber, while adviser Valerie Jarrett has dismissed it as “old school” and acknowledged that the White House is bypassing it to work individually with CEOs.
When several major companies—including Exelon, Apple and Nike—ostentatiously quit the Chamber several weeks ago, provoking a flurry of unflattering headlines, it seemed no coincidence. Mr. Obama’s allies in the unions, the trial bar and green lobbies have targeted the Chamber, some of its members, and Mr. Donohue personally.
For a man who prides himself on working both sides of the aisle, the Chamber these days is not a fun place for Mr. Donohue. Then again, he has an Irish temper and doesn’t shrink from a brawl. At least for now, he’s showing no signs of muting the Chamber’s message.
“I did an interview a couple of week ago, and somebody said, ‘Well, the White House says that you’ve become Dr. No and you are going to lose your seat at the table.’ And I said, ‘The White House doesn’t give out the seats at the table. The seats at the table go to the people who have a rational policy, who have strong people to advance that policy, that have a strong grass-roots system, that have the assets to support their program, and that are willing to play in the political process,” Mr. Donohue remarks, sitting in his office, which looks across Lafayette Park to the White House.
“The bottom line is you can’t do this job if you are squeaky about all that stuff. My job is to represent the American business community in an honorable way, to present their interests in a way that I really think is good for them and good for this country. And,” he adds with a pointed look, “I plan to keep doing it.”
One irony of the Obama administration’s demonization campaign is that Mr. Donohue is hardly a right-wing ideologue. There was a day, in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Chamber fought for limited government. But starting in the 1990s, the group became more interested in using Washington to forward a narrower corporate self-interest.
Mr. Donohue, who spent 13 years at the head of the American Trucking Association, also points out that the Chamber has done plenty to help the current administration. It supported last year’s bailout funds (”we had to stabilize the banks”); the stimulus (”we could have gone into a real depression if there wasn’t some confidence, some belief we could get over the next hump”); the auto bailouts (”this was a bellwether of the American company”), and even cash for clunkers.
The Chamber, Mr. Donohue says unapologetically, has “built a great deal of goodwill . . . by representing companies on the broad issues that we have defined, and working real hard to come to a common benefit where most people benefit more than 80%.” He continues: “People have criticized us for helping industries or individual companies. What the hell do you think we do? That’s our business!” If health-care and climate-change legislation do pass, Mr. Donohue argues, they will be “much, much, much better than they ever would have been if we had sat here on our hands.”

What really seems to bother the White House is less Chamber ideology than its effectiveness. “They are going to have to go after somebody, right? Of course they are going after the individual ones, the bankers, and the insurers—and that’s after they made deals with them. But who would you go after? Companies can’t do this themselves . . . When it gets tougher, we get in.”
Going after the Chamber is nonetheless a risk. The lobby works with a lot of Congressional Democrats from swing districts. Those pols face tough races next year, and Chamber support can help them raise money and protect against GOP attacks. The White House campaign gives GOP candidates an opening to point out how much Democrats dislike business.
The Obama team has already had one bruising experience with the Chamber’s power over card check, Big Labor’s priority of getting rid of secret ballots in union elections. The Chamber launched a full-scale campaign against the union-backed bill with the Orwellian name, the “Employee Free Choice Act.”
Mr. Donohue is blunt, singling out the SEIU, the Teamsters and other unions: “What they are trying to do is change the rules.” Why? “They want a hell of a lot more members, so they can have a hell of a lot more political influence, so they can change the way this country runs.”
He takes some credit for the fact that swing-state Democrats have backed away from that vote. “The labor unions spent $240 million . . . and they figured, well, we got the Senate, and we got the House, and we got the presidency, let’s go do this thing. What they forgot were 300 million Americans and all kinds of people in this town who represent them, and that a lot of members were elected in red states as Democrats and have got to go back and run again there. So we got into this deal, spent some money—by the way, good manners, high integrity, very aggressive—and it’s stuck against the wall right now. Some people are walking around about a compromise. There ain’t gonna be a compromise! There’s not the votes for that thing.”
The Chamber has also irked the White House with its ads against the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, taking on the proposed agency’s powers to regulate any business that extends credit to consumers—including butchers and bakers. Mr. Obama denounced the Chamber by name and called the ads “false.”
Mr. Donohue says he recently talked to Mr. Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers in Colorado, who was upset about the ads as well. “I looked at those ads, they weren’t disingenuous. Maybe they picked out a few things here and highlighted them that weren’t the most important things. But those things are gone out of the bill now. When you are in a debate you don’t always like what the other guy says.”
Where the fight has become especially rough is over climate change. While supporting cap-and-trade legislation, the Chamber opposes the EPA’s “endangerment” finding, which would allow the agency to unilaterally regulatecarbon.
The Chamber thinks it bad precedent to allow the EPA to stretch the Clean Air Act to encompass carbon. “It would put them in charge of every major construction and rehab project, every road, every bridge, every port, every big building. I mean, you wanna put people out of work?” Mr. Donohue says. “They’d have to hire an army—which they’d probably unionize—to do the permits.”
Last year, the Chamber asked the EPA to hold a hearing on “endangerment.” The goal was not to debate overall climate science, but to force the EPA to demonstrate, as a matter of law, that carbon is dangerous. Then in September, the Chamber’s senior vice president for environment, Bill Kovacs, made the mistake of suggesting the hearing might be like a “Scopes monkey trial” on the science.
“My first inclination was to cut his head off, but then I remembered that I run my mouth on a regular basis. So I said, we owe you a few, forget it, now shut up and don’t say that again. Because we lost the focus on why we are doing this.”
The comment gave several companies an excuse to bail. Does he worry others will leave? “Give me a break, will you? We have 300,000 members. We can legally represent three million people,” he retorts. “Now, I’ve been here for 12 years, and we lose four members every week! And we sign up six.”
He also notes that the idea that every member is always going to agree on every policy is ludicrous. “Bring 10 people to Thanksgiving dinner. Can you agree on anything? You try to take, let’s just say for the hell of it, one thousand core members. Let’s get them to agree on where to go to lunch, what day it is, how we should approach global warming or medical care. Holy (bleep)! So we have a system here and it works. And sometimes people aren’t always happy, but most companies look at this and say ‘Okay, I’ve got seven major issues. So I have a little disagreement on this one, but I’m getting along well on those.’”
He doesn’t dwell on it, but Mr. Donohue has himself been a target, including by the National Resources Defense Council, which has accused him of a conflict of interest because of his seat on the board of directors of Union Pacific, a company that would be affected by climate-change legislation. He thinks “personal attacks” are out of order, vowing “I won’t do it to them. We could. I won’t.”
The White House’s war on the Chamber has come just as the group is launching a new $100 million campaign promoting free enterprise.
“We want to encourage and promote and educate and get a bunch of enthusiasm behind . . . the free enterprise system with free capital markets and free trade and the ability to fail and fall right on your ass and get up and do it again!” he says.
The belief in that system, Mr. Donohue says, has been eroded by the recession and subsequent criticism of the free market. “The purpose of this is to get out of the doldrums! Quit sulking and worrying.” He hopes the campaign will remind Americans that “We created 20 million jobs in the ’90s, we can do it again. We don’t have to do it exactly like that—Adam Smith didn’t have a BlackBerry—but we ought to pay attention to what made it work.”

Some Democrats who have been demagoguing business view the campaign as a poke in the eye, and the White House’s Ms. Jarrett has criticized it. “It’s not an attack on anyone,” he insists. “We’re just asking Americans of every form, shape, size, weight and responsibility to take a look at it. If this . . . system works so well, why don’t we think about how we could use it to our benefit now.”
The Chamber is three years away from its 100th anniversary, and the “Dream Big” campaign is aimed in part at ensuring that birthday is worth celebrating. “The people that started this thing and came here and did it, they left a legacy that can be seen in the American economy and American achievement and I’m not going to screw it up.”
He ends our meeting with a grin and cheerful warning: “This is a great place. If you walk on our lawn, we’re going to turn on the sprinklers.” —Ms. Strassel writes the Journal’s Potomac Watch column.

Critical habitat in Alaska is proposed for polar bears

A family looks at a stuffed polar bear at the Fairbanks International Airport in Fairbanks, Alaska. (John Wagner,Associated Press, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government on Thursday, October 22, 2009 proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears and include barrier islands along Alaska’s coast, sea ice habitat, land and rivers near the coast where the bears make their dens.

“Proposing critical habitat for this iconic species is one step in the right direction to help this species stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change,” Interior Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Tom Strickland said in a statement announcing the move.

Officials said the designation was not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears: the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change.

Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in Congress through proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions, said Tom Strickland.

“We recognize that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of sea ice. We also recognize that the Endangered Species Act is not the tool to directly address carbon emissions, which are the root cause of climate change,” Strickland told reporters in a conference call from Washington.

The critical habitat, proposed after conservationists filed suit demanding it, follows warnings that the polar bear could disappear from U.S. waters within the next century.

The melting of sea ice has left the bears with a dramatic reduction in the ice floes they need for breeding, resting and hunting for seals and other food.

Increasingly, bears have been driven to land, where food is harder to come by and conflicts with residents of native villages of Alaska’s North Slope, who are legally entitled to hunt polar bears for subsistence, have become more common.

The proposed critical habitat covers three distinct areas along the northern and northwestern coasts of Alaska: the coastal barrier islands and spits along the coast; sea ice over the continental shelf in waters less than 980 feet deep; and terrestrial denning habitat from five miles to about 20 miles inland.

Conservationists have warned that proposals for major new offshore oil and gas development in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas could impair efforts to protect the bear. Although the proposed habitat designation includes most of the current and planned energy development zones, Strickland said new oil and gas activities already were being scrutinized after polar bears were listed as a threatened species in May 2008.

Strickland said the proposed designation would provide “added emphasis to the plight of the bear.” He added, “We do not believe that it will be a significant additional burden upon the industry.”

Conservation groups said the habitat designation was a step forward, but it did not achieve significant strides to protect the bear without addressing the major threats to the species.

“They can say that all they want, but they can’t change the plain language of the [Endangered Species Act]. The law says federal agencies cannot ‘adversely modify’ critical habitat. Hard to see how putting an oil rig in the heart of polar bear habitat does not adversely modify it,” said Brendan Cummings, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which is one of several groups suing to win heightened protections for the bears.

“As for climate change, again, how do approvals of large-scale projects that will contribute substantial greenhouse emissions not contribute to the ultimate loss of sea ice?” he said.

Andrew Wetzler, wildlife conservation project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said federal officials now would have to consider the effects of new drilling activity not just on existing polar dens, but also on places in the habitat area that might be used as a den, even if no polar bears are there.

Alaskan officials this week stepped up their legal fight to cancel the Endangered Species Act designation, filing two new legal briefs in a federal court case pending in Washington that ultimately could decide some of the larger questions over greenhouse gas emissions, oil and gas development, and protection of the sea ice.

“There are two competing visions of the future of Alaska,” state Atty. Gen. Dan Sullivan said in a statement. “Ours is one in which responsible resource development proceeds apace and protections remain in place for wildlife, including polar bears, which we treasure. The other vision is one in which Alaska’s resources are locked up, our economy languishes, we lose population and we lack the capacity to maintain schools, roads, bridges, harbors and airports, or to provide for public safety.”

The state’s motion argues that scientific predictions of a decline in sea ice, and the probable effects of climate change on bear populations, are too uncertain to support listing the bears under the Endangered Species Act.

About 1,500 bears are believed to reside in the southern Beaufort Sea. The Chukchi Sea population hasn’t been comprehensively counted since 20 years ago, when it numbered about 2,000.

Cindy Shogan of the Alaskan Wilderness League said the critical habitat designation should set the stage for a “timeout” on all major new development until its effect on polar bears can be assessed.

“Today’s announcement . . . acknowledges that some of the most sensitive areas on land and in the offshore waters of America’s Arctic — including much of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — are key to the species’ survival,” she said.

Source,
LA Times, “Critical habitat in Alaska is proposed for polar bears“, accessed October 23, 2009

California: ‘First Failed US State’?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009
00:41 Mecca time, 21:41 GMT

California ‘first failed US state’?

By Rob Reynolds in Los Angeles

More Californians rely on food handouts amid rising unemployment and state benefit cuts

On Sunday mornings at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in the rough-edged Tenderloin district of San Francisco, the sanctuary is always rocking to old-school gospel music.

“It’s so good to come together,” Pastor Cecil Williams declares. His is a diverse congregation - white and African-American, gay and straight, young and elderly.

For four decades Pastor Williams has been an outspoken advocate for the city’s poor and marginalised. On one bright October Sunday recently, he preached a sermon on compassion and the need for social justice.

“You affirm who you are when you stand up for others in need,” Williams told his flock. “And you can say, we are going to change this old world to a new world.”

But it is a harsh new world in California these days. A state once synonymous with opportunity and prosperity, sunshine and surf, Hollywood and Disneyland have fallen on bitterly hard times.

‘Land of opportunity’

The evidence is no further away than the church basement, where free meals are prepared for homeless and hungry people such as Robert Shirley. He’s been homeless, on and off, for months, he says.

“California was the land of opportunity. You could make it out here,” Shirley says. “Hey, I’m sorry, but California is not that way any more.”

The number of meals served here has jumped 21 per cent since last year. Williams says the free kitchen’s clientele has changed drastically.

“They were people who were carrying briefcases, people who were dressed in suits, people who were dressed up very nicely and people who had been a part of the middle class,” he says.

“And we were seeing them come through the lines. And that, of course, was shocking.”

California is the world’s eighth-largest economy, but its unemployment rate is over 12 per cent - the highest in 70 years.

Millions of people lost their homes when the housing bubble burst. Millions more have been thrust into poverty by the recession.

In July, the state legislature haggled for weeks over how to close a $26bn budget gap. Instead of increasing taxes for corporations or the wealthy, the budget deal that emerged to be signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s Republican governor, ordered deep spending cuts, laying off tens of thousands of state workers.

Reduced funding for education, coupled with big tuition increases, sparked a student and faculty strike at California’s public universities. Programmes for ex-prison inmates and parolees have been slashed.

And the social safety net of healthcare and services for the poor, children and elderly - the least powerful and least vocal members of society - has been systematically shredded.

“The people that are going to be effected first and foremost will be the poor, those who are in great need,” Williams says sadly. “They are not considered to be human beings.”

State ‘abandoning its poorest’

In Pleasant Hill, a suburb outside San Francisco, I met a remarkable young woman named Amy Fedeli. Only 24-years old, she has deferred her dream of college and a career in nursing to support her 75-year-old grandmother, Margaret, and seven-year-old niece, Emilia.

She’s keeping faith with her loved ones in a state that is systematically abandoning its poorest and least powerful people.

Margaret, who suffers from a neurological disorder and mild dementia, is too frail to be left home alone while Amy goes to her job at a medical-records company.

So she attends a state-funded adult day-care programme where she gets physical and occupational therapy, health checkups, and a chance to interact with other people and keep her mental faculties sharp.

But as part of the effort to pare down the budget deficit, California has cut many programmes for the elderly poor.

New rules would limit seniors to three days a week in adult day care. That is a big problem for the Fedeli family. Without the daily care she gets at the senior centre, Amy says, Margaret might not survive for long.

“She would probably end up in a nursing home,” Amy says. “She would probably pass. She would probably die, God forbid.”

To care for Margaret, Amy would have to quit her job, leaving the little family without any income. Why has she accepted so much responsibility at such a young age?

“It’s family, that’s all I can say,” Amy says. “Your family, you stick with them - that’s all.”

State politics ‘deadlocked’

A legal challenge has temporarily halted some of the cuts to elderly care. But Schwarzenegger is trying to overturn the court ruling and re-institute the cuts.

Donna Calame, who runs a state programme that provides in-home care for seniors, told me the attitude of Schwarzenegger and the legislature makes her livid.

“For me, it’s really obscene,” she said in an interview.

“We are a rich state. I think it is because of the wealth in California that, to me, makes the choices that have been made this year so morally reprehensible.”

Critics say California’s politics are so deadlocked, its government so dysfunctional, it may become the US’s first failed state.

The state legislature is hamstrung by a law requiring a two-thirds majority vote to raise taxes and pass a budget. That makes compromise practically impossible.

I asked political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the University of Southern California what’s wrong with California.

“What is the matter with California is, that we have become politically so polarised that we can’t agree on something that will make this state work,” Bebitch Jeffe laments.

“Somewhere, somehow, the public good, as a concept of governance, has disappeared in this state.”

The failure of California’s government has bred profound cynicism among its people.

Back at the soup kitchen, Robert Shirley has some blunt advice for the people in charge of the Golden State.

“If our politicians don’t get their heads out of their asses, this state is going to be - let’s put it this way: some of those Third World countries are going to look a lot better than California.”

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera