Equatorial Guinea Elections Set to Extend Rule of Obiang Nguema; MannMakes Claims on Coup Attempt

Obiang Nguema set to extend rule

Reuters

MALABO. Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema looked to extend his 30-year rule over the Central African oil nation yesterday in a poll widely criticised for falling short of democratic standards.

Obiang himself was quoted before the election as boasting he would better his 2002 score of 97,1 percent.

He is seen pursuing his goal of transforming the tiny country of 650 000 into an energy major despite mounting human rights concerns.

“In recent weeks it (the government) has stifled and harassed the country’s beleaguered political opposition . . . (and) imposed serious constraints on international observers,” New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

“There is no credible opposition to speak of,” IHS Global Insight analyst Kissy Agyeman-Togobo said of the lack of serious rivals to Obiang’s ruling PDGE party in the election. First results were due yesterday.

“Obiang is assured victory, perhaps even increasing upon his 2002 win,” Agyeman-Togobo added in a commentary. An eyewitness in the capital Malabo said turnout appeared weak. Soldiers guarded polling stations, some of which had not seen any voters by late morning. Many streets were empty after a temporary ban on car travel was imposed this week.

In Malabo, a source close to the international observation mission noted that few if any foreign media had been allowed into the country to cover the election.

Obiang came to power in a 1979 palace coup and has faced growing criticism that the country’s vast oil wealth has not improved the lot of its citizens.

The country was ranked 12th from bottom in this year’s survey of perceptions of corruption in 180 countries published by Berlin-based Transparency International.

While oil production has slipped from peaks of over 350 000 barrels per day as some fields mature, Obiang’s drive to turn Equatorial Guinea into a major energy player has met some degree of success.

US firms such as Exxon Mobil have dominated the sector, but it has caught the eye of European energy firms such as Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas and Spain’s Union Fenosa with plans to double natural gas exports in five years.

Despite his firm grip of the country, Obiang has faced several threats from abroad, including a 2004 coup attempt by mercenaries led by former British special forces officer Simon Mann. Earlier this year seaborne gunmen attacked his palace. — Reuters.

Mann says South Africa backed coup plot

Reuters

LONDON. Simon Mann, a British mercenary jailed for plotting against the government of Equatorial Guinea, has said South Africa tacitly supported a failed 2004 coup in the oil-rich African nation.

Mann, who was released from prison earlier this month, told the BBC he believed that the operation had the unwritten consent of South African intelligence.

“South Africa wanted to be in,” he said, according to extracts of an interview to be broadcast tomorrow. “In fact, I was told: ‘Get on with it.’”

“Because, if they are very good friends of the new government, it would be of great benefit to South Africa because they know perfectly well that billions of dollars are at stake,” 57-year-old Mann said.

Educated at Eton, Britain’s top private school, the ex-special forces officer was arrested in Zimbabwe along with 70 other mercenaries en route to Equatorial Guinea aboard a plane.

Extradited to Equatorial Guinea, he was sentenced in July 2008 for conspiring to topple President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. He was pardoned on health grounds, having served just over one year of a 34-year sentence.

During his trial, Mann portrayed himself as a pawn of international businessmen he said were trying to seize power and named the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as being involved — an allegation Mark Thatcher has denied.

In the BBC interview, Mann said he got on well with Mark Thatcher, at one point his neighbour in South Africa, describing how Margaret Thatcher would come and stay in a cottage in the garden of her son’s house.

“I always sat next to her at dinner parties,” he said.

“She liked me. We even went on holiday together.”

Mann, who said that from his point of view the purpose of the coup was to make money from the oil-rich country, said he wanted Mark Thatcher as an investor in the plot, and that he had told him precisely what the operation was.

Discussing some of his early plans for the coup, Mann said he had also considered an assassination and a guerrilla war, but these options had been discarded.

He said had been unhappy with aspects of the final plan but was under pressure from unnamed backers to get the coup over.

“I thought there was quite a good chance I was going to die, because I knew that far too many people knew about the operation,” he said, adding that he should have had the courage to halt the plans but failed to. — Reuters.

Australia And U.S. To Discuss Climate

By IAIN MCDONALD
SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will meet President Barack Obama in Washington on Monday to discuss climate-change strategies and the war in Afghanistan — two thorny issues on which the Australian leader is unlikely to be able to offer much help despite the close relationship between the two men.

Mr. Rudd’s plan to cut carbon emissions is stuck in the country’s Senate as an unruly opposition fights within itself to decide whether to support the proposal. On Afghanistan, Australia has indicated that it isn’t willing to offer more troops.
The White House said the U.S. president will meet Mr. Rudd to “confer on a range of issues including Afghanistan and climate change” in the run-up to a global U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen next month. Both leaders are struggling to put in place programs to reduce carbon emissions at home, complicating any plans to present a united front on the issue.
Mr. Obama said he will pledge in Copenhagen that the U.S. will plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. But a U.S. climate plan, having passed the House of Representatives, is stalled in the Senate.
In Australia, Mr. Rudd reached an agreement last Tuesday with leaders of the main opposition Liberal Party to support an amended carbon reduction proposal that includes billions of dollars in compensation for affected industries.
But the amended proposal has since split the Liberal Party, with party leader Malcolm Turnbull — a supporter — under fire from conservatives and now facing a vote on his leadership position set for Tuesday. If he loses and is ousted as party leader, the government’s greenhouse-gas emissions plan would likely be derailed.
Australia’s ruling center-left Labor government needs extra votes in the Senate, where it lacks a majority, to pass laws. It had hoped that by amending its carbon plan with loan guarantees and other compensation for industry, it would win enough opposition support to push it through.
If the Senate, which rejected an earlier emissions plan in August, votes it down a second time, Mr. Rudd could use the double rejection as a trigger to call an early election. The government plan, if passed, would see Australia introduce in July 2011 a market-based carbon-trading program similar to one operating in Europe since 2005, forcing the biggest local polluters to pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions.
On Afghanistan, Australia says it hasn’t received a request for more troops from the U.S. Its prime minister has consistently said he believes Australia’s troop contribution of around 1,550 is about right.
Write to Iain McDonald at iain.mcdonald@dowjones.com

Wanted: new merchants of light

Modern problems of climate and ageing will only be solved if we value young talent in science
Martin Rees

Science is an unending quest. It is often overlooked, but it is always — metaphorically and actually — lighting our way. Isaac Newton famously said: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This simple statement captures the essence of scientific endeavour.
Today, the Royal Society launches a year of activities to mark its 350th anniversary. We shall be highlighting how science, technology and engineering can help to meet the challenges of the coming decades, as well as their role in education and culture. We shall mainly be looking forward, but we shall also celebrate our history by widening access to our fascinating archives. A new online resource called Trailblazing will enable people across the world to dip into some of the great scientific achievements of the past 350 years, as chronicled in the society’s journals.
The scientists who published these journals back in the 17th and 18th centuries were, in their motives and attitudes, very like their present-day counterparts. They were breaking new ground. They were not afraid to challenge the status quo and they were often driven by a desire to improve the plight of mankind. But whereas modern scientific literature is generally specialised and technical, the personality of these pioneers shines through more clearly, and their writing is more individual and anecdotal.
Some breakthroughs have become so familiar to us today that we take them for granted: Volta’s first electric battery; Talbot’s early work in photography; and Edward Stone, the vicar who wrote to the Royal Society detailing his experiments using dried, powdered willow bark to cure fevers, which led to the production of aspirin. Are there many houses in the UK that do not contain batteries, photographs or aspirin?
There are those who challenged the orthodoxy of their era: Benjamin Franklin flying his kite in a storm to prove that lightning is electricity rather than a supernatural force; and William Buckland’s fossils, which showed that life had existed on Earth for millions of years — challenging the generally held views of creation at the time.
Other papers describe work that has fundamentally changed the lifespan of modern Man: Boyle’s 1666 paper on an early blood transfusion from one dog to another; Sloane and Birch’s earliest accounts of inoculations for diseases such as smallpox. And, more recently, the work of Howard Florey and his team who, in the 1940s, made the breakthrough that led penicillin to become the mass-produced antibiotic that goes on saving lives today.
Then there are those whose work has raised possibilities that are still opening out before us. Newton’s theory on light and colours continues to provide the basis for theoretical physics. We have only begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities for improving human health that will be facilitated by Crick and Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA.
Stephen Hawking’s paper on black holes, each hundreds of millions of times more massive than the Sun, asks as many questions as it answers. James Lovelock explored the need for geoengineering our planet to save it from the threat of climate change.
Celebrating the history of science reminds us how crucial its achievements have been in our everyday lives. Science helps to feed and clothe us, keep us warm and healthy, and it helps us to communicate and travel. Often the most important advances are unpredictable outcomes of scientific curiosity, where the discoverers could not conceive how their work would eventually be applied. We have no crystal ball that allows us to predict the detailed course of scientific discovery. However, we can be sure that young people today will live their lives in a world where science — and the way it is applied — will loom ever larger. Issues such as ageing, genetics, health, climate change, biodiversity, communications and the exploration of space will present opportunities and challenges that we must be ready to meet.
We in the UK are second only to the US in terms of scientific output; on some measures, we lead the world. But the research base is a complex and vulnerable ecosystem, and we must not lose our global standing. The Far East is developing fast and President Obama has given America’s already world-leading scientific community a massive boost — in substance and not just in rhetoric. Our success in attracting and retaining mobile talent will be at risk unless we raise our game.
We should celebrate science both for what it has done and what it can do. What could inspire young people more than the challenge of finding treatments and cures for debilitating or deadly diseases, or clean energy for the developed and the developing world? The “ingenious and curious gentlemen” who established the Royal Society in 1660 enjoyed speculation and sought enlightenment — they were, in Francis Bacon’s phrase, “merchants of light”.
Isaac Newton “saw further” because of the scientific enthusiasm that surrounded him. Now, as the Royal Society celebrates its 350th anniversary, it is more important than ever for the UK to value new knowledge — and to apply it optimally, for our country’s sake and that of the world.
Lord Rees of Ludlow is President of the Royal Society

Sea level rise could cost port cities $28 trillion

A possible rise in sea levels by 0.5 meters by 2050 could put at risk more than $28 trillion worth of assets in the world’s largest coastal cities, according to a report compiled for the insurance industry.

The value of infrastructure exposed in so-called “port mega-cities,” urban conurbations with more than 10 million people, is just $3 trillion at present.

The rise in potential losses would be a result of expected greater urbanization and increased exposure of this greater population to catastrophic surge events occurring once every 100 years caused by rising sea levels and higher temperatures. (Right: Boliva glaciers melting)

The report, released on Monday by WWF and financial services Allianz, concludes that the world’s diverse regions and ecosystems are close to temperature thresholds — or “tipping points.”

Any one of these surge events could unleash devastating environmental, social and economic changes amid a higher urban population.

According to the report, carried out by the UK-based Tyndall Center, the impacts of passing “Tipping Points” on the livelihoods of people and economic assets have been underestimated.

Global temperatures have already risen by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius and the report says a further rise by 2-3 degrees in the second half of the century is likely unless deep cuts in emissions are put in place before 2015. (Left: Inland glaciers are the source for fresh water for many communities throughout the world)

The consequent melting of the Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Shield could lead to one such tipping point scenario, possibly a sea level rise of up to 0.5 meters by 2050.

The report focuses on regions and phenomena where such events might be expected to cause significant environmental impacts within the first half of the century. (Right: reduced amounts of fresh water and the increase in temperatures will make farming much more difficult and less successful).

For example a hurricane in New York, which could cost $1 trillion now, would mean a $5 trillion insurance bill by the middle of the century, the report adds.

“If we don’t take immediate action against climate change, we are in grave danger of disruptive and devastating changes,” said Kim Carstensen, the Head of WWF Global Climate Initiative.

“Reaching a tipping point means losing something forever. This must be a strong argument for world leaders to agree a strong and binding climate deal in Copenhagen in December.”

Source:
Cable Network News, “Sea level rise could cost port cities $28 trillion“, accessed November 23, 2009

GPs ’should offer climate change advice to patients’

Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed.

Nick BrittenPublished: 11:53AM GMT 29 Nov 2009
The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.
Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.
The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.
It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our political representatives to take the necessary action”.
The Council has been recently formed to study the health benefits of tackling climate change and promotes a range of ideas from reducing your carbon footprint by driving less and walking more to eating local, less processed food.
It wants to raise ‘health’ on the agenda of December’s UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.
They believe that offering patients advice on how to lower their carbon footprint can be just as easy and achievable as helping them to stop smoking or eat a healthier diet.
Other proposals include for all developed nations to pay an extra five dollars a barrel on oil and a tax on airline tickets. This would go into a special fund to develop low-carbon alternatives to existing technologies, they say.
Prof Mike Gill, from the University of Surrey, who co-chairs the Climate and Health Council, outlined the plans for the medical journal The Lancet last week.
He said: “Climate change already affects human health, creating problems that will increase if no action is taken.
“Overall, what is good for tackling climate change is good for health. Who better to spell out this message than health professionals? “We have the evidence, a good story to tell that dramatically shifts the lens through which climate change is perceived, and we have public trust.”
He said the health service was often “muted” on the subject of climate change and needed to make its voice heard more.
He added: “To maximise our influence, we must be much clearer than we have been to the public, to patients, and to politicians about the risks of doing nothing and the benefits to individual and global health of effective action.”
Vivienne Nathanson, British Medical Association director of professional activities said the report “clearly shows that taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can have positive impacts for health.”
She said the BMA was disappointed health had not so far figured significantly on the agenda for the Copenhagen summit and called on world leaders to seek solutions that benefit the environment and individuals.
Andy Burnham, the Health minister, in support of the Lancet report said: “Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat [however] the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger. Health ministers across the globe must act now to highlight the risk global warning poses to the health of our communities.”

Rigging a Climate ‘Consensus’

The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science. They’re ignoring the damage they’ve done to public confidence in the arbiters of climate science.
“What they’ve done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world,” Penn State’s Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made “something innocent into something nefarious.”
Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate hymnal. “My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues,” he said this week.
We don’t doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He’s right that it doesn’t look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.’s Fourth Assessment Report said “Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?” Mr. Mann says he didn’t delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.
The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.
According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the “peer-review” process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.
This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: “Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.” Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.
As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal “Climate Research” published a paper not to Mr. Mann’s liking, that “This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the ‘peer-reviewed literature’. Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal!”
Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.” In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.
A more thoughtful response to the emails comes from Mike Hulme, another climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, as reported by a New York Times blogger:
“This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It’s the best, we’re told, because it’s the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim.

Snake spits out new species of chameleon at scientist’s feet

The latest find in natural world was the result of a reptile coughing up a lizard as conservationists studied monkeys in the jungle. The “find” was so nearly known as dinner. Instead, a small and not terribly impressive chameleon has become the newest discovery of the natural world, after a startled Tanzanian snake spat a still-undigested specimen at the feet of a British scientist, who identified it as a previously unknown species.

Dr Andrew Marshall, a conservationist from York University, was surveying monkeys in the Magombera forest in Tanzania, when he stumbled across a twig snake which, frightened, coughed up the chameleon and fled. Though a colleague persuaded him not to touch it because of the risk from venom, Marshall suspected it might be a new species, and took a photograph to send to colleagues, who confirmed his suspicions.

Kinyongia magomberae, literally “the chameleon from Magombera”, is the result, though Marshall told the Guardian today the fact it wasn’t easy to identify is precisely what made it unique.

One of the largest chameleons in the world, Oustalet’s chameleon (Furcifer oustaleti)

“The thing is, colour isn’t the best thing for telling chameleons apart, since they can change colour for camouflage. They are usually identified based on the patterning and shape of the head, and the arrangement of scales. In this case it’s the bulge of scales on its nose.”

Happily for Marshall, shortly afterwards he spotted a second chameleon, this time alive, and was able to photograph it. The two creatures were found about six miles apart, which he believes may be the full extent of the area colonized by the extremely rare species. Though he found the specimen in 2005, his paper on the discovery, published this week, puts the find formally on record. “It takes quite a long time to convince the authorities that you have a new species,” he said.

Had Marshall hoped it might be named after him? “Oh crumbs, no. The thing is, if you work in an area of conservation importance and you can give a species the name of that area it can really highlight that area. By giving it the name Magombera it raises the importance of the forest.” The tiny area of jungle is currently unprotected, he said, and he hopes the find will persuade the Tanzanian authorities to extend protection.

“When we presented our findings to the local village people they were just amazed that the world now knows an animal by the Swahili name Magombera,” he said

Source:
The Guardian, “Snake spits out new species of chameleon at scientist’s feet“, accessed November 25, 2009

Banking on a green industrial revolution

Idea of a national investment bank to steer economy towards low carbon future gains ground

Larry Elliott
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009
George Osborne is floating the idea of a green investment bank to get new technologies out of the lab and into new wealth-creating businesses. Vince Cable wants a national investment bank for infrastructure, financed with a blend of public and private money.
Both ideas are heartily welcome. Britain needs urgent remedial action to harness a wave of environmental technologies if it is to arrest long-term industrial decline. Billions will have to be spent on expensive capital projects – in the energy and transport sectors in particular – if the transition to a low-carbon economy is to be achieved.
Why, though, has it been left to the opposition parties rather than the Treasury to come up with these eminently sensible suggestions? The short answer is that there is one rule for the City and one rule for everybody else.
Desperately unbalanced
Alistair Darling would vehemently deny it, but there has been institutional capture of the Treasury by the financial sector, exemplified by the decision to ask a City grandee, Sir David Walker, to look at bankers’ pay. That’s a bit like asking David Beckham to lead a commission into whether footballers are paid too much or picking Jeremy Clarkson to head a top-level study into whether to cut the speed limit.
The dismal reality is as follows: Britain went into this slump with its economy in a desperately unbalanced state. As Richard Jeffrey, economist at Cazenove Capital Management, rightly noted: “One of the very clear early-warning signals that the UK was on an unsustainable growth path prior to the recession was the relentless expansion in the trade deficit.”
Over the course of the decade, the gap between what Britain produced and what it consumed grew wider. It was considered a “good” month when the shortfall in manufactured goods dipped below £7bn. The government assured us that this did not matter because the City, the knowledge economy and the creative industries would help us pay our way. Britain was supposedly at the cutting edge of financial innovation and well placed to exploit its comparative advantage in hi-tech manufacturing. Total fantasy, the lot of it.
Somewhat surprisingly, Britain remains the sixth biggest manufacturing nation in the world, despite three severe industrial recessions in the past three decades. The trend is clear: output is lower than it was when Labour came to power in 1997. If things don’t change, Britain will be a post-industrial nation.
The crisis was supposed to have led to a rethink, and to an extent it has. Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, rarely wastes an opportunity to say that the shape of the UK should rely less on consumption and government spending and more on manufacturing, investment and exports. That was precisely what happened in the wake of the recession in the early 1990s, when in five out of the next six years domestic demand grew less quickly than overall economic output. A big fall in the exchange rate boosted exports and the current account improved steadily so Labour inherited a small surplus in 1997.
A similar period of adjustment is needed now and one of the key elements in rebalancing the economy – a weaker pound – is in place. Sterling has depreciated by about 25% since the financial crisis broke. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence of any beneficial effects from this depreciation. The breakdown of the latest set of growth figures – released by the Office for National Statistics last week – showed that net trade actually made a negative contribution of 0.2 percentage points to gross domestic product in the third quarter, because imports grew more strongly than exports. A key factor was the government’s cash for clunkers scheme, which appeared to provide far more of a boost to foreign car manufacturers than producers at home. Investment – the other key component in rebalancing – has collapsed at an alarming rate over the last 18 months. Capital spending is down by a quarter, and the pace of decline has been even faster than it was during the industrial Armageddon unleashed by Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s. Household spending has also been hit by the recession, but the impact has been softened by the deep cuts in bank rate, which have boosted personal cash flow and helped compensate for weak growth in earnings. The main effects of the downturn have shown up in plunging investment and savage de-stocking.
So you are the Treasury: how do you respond? Well, clearly, one option is to carry on as before. You assume, with the century-old Whitehall disdain, that manufacturing is the past, not the future, and that the only option is to get the financial sector back to rude health as quickly as possible. You pump £12.5bn into consumption through a cut in VAT, even though you know that a large chunk of the additional demand will leak overseas and that a recovery based on a fresh burst of consumer spending would be the opposite of what is actually needed. You recapitalise the banks with only the flimsiest of strings attached. You pump £200bn of electronic money into the economy through quantitative easing and wonder why asset prices rise but the real economy continues to flounder.
Alternatively, you say enough is enough. The “economy-as-a-hedge-fund” model is dead. The assumption that the economy could grow at an underlying rate of 2.75% a year was based on a financial bubble that put the entire banking system in jeopardy. Given the damage caused to productive capacity by the recession, the trend rate of non-inflationary growth is probably about 2%. Building it up again will take time, investment and imagination.
In this context, a green investment bank, a national infrastructure bank or a national investment bank all seem like ideas whose time has come. The traditional Treasury response – the days of “picking winners” are over – has been blown out of the water by the generosity of the “picking losers” scheme for banks. Nor is it true that demand for investment has been killed off by the recession. My colleague Victor Keegan, who specialises in the technology sector, says there are plenty of companies with good ideas out there.
Closed for business
As ever, though, the problem with the British economy is not a lack of good ideas but a dearth of long-term finance. The banks are closed for business and the venture capital industry demands a short-term pay-off that is inimical to the long-term growth of a business.
It is not difficult to see why the environmental sector has welcomed Osborne’s willingness to look at a green investment bank. The Environmental Industries Commission has been lobbying tirelessly for years to get the government to recognise the potential of the move towards a cleaner, low-carbon economy. But it lacks the clout of the City. It hailed Osborne’s speech as “revolutionary” and said the green bank would help to bridge the funding gap faced by firms trying to bring innovative products to market.
Whether the green bank would ever be delivered by a future Conservative government remains to be seen. But it is a good idea nonetheless, and Darling should not hesitate in nicking the idea for next week’s pre-budget report.
There is no shame in that. The real shame is that the chancellor did not come up with the idea himself.
larry.elliott@guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk/business/economics

EU Commissioners’ golden parachutes

The Sunday Times reported on the huge payoffs the 13 EU Commissioners stepping down this week will walk away with, on top of the pretty hefty salaries they netted while in office.

Open Europe has calculated that the 13 outgoing EU Commissioners have cost taxpayer €2.7 million each.

Each one will walk away with an average of €1.3 million in ‘golden goodbyes’ alone. The total bill in ‘golden goodbyes’, including pensions, for those leaving is more than €16.6 million.

Through earnings and pay-offs, the 13 Commissioners will walk away with a total of more than €35.6 million, or €2.7 million each. Their pensions alone are expected to be worth a combined total of more than €11.6 million over their lifetimes (Assuming an average life expectancy of 16.7 years from the age of 65.)

Each Commissioner stepping down is entitled to a ‘resettlement allowance’ of a month’s salary (€19,910 or €22,122 for Vice Presidents), irrespective of how long they have served; a ‘transition allowance’ paid for 3 years worth between 40 and 65 percent of their final salary (this is a minimum of €286,703 but can rise to as much as €438,017 for a long-serving Vice-President); as well as a generous pension worth at least €51,069 a year from the age of 65, for those serving for five years. (For a breakdown see http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/entitlements/entitlements.pdf )

This is in addition to the €238,919 a Commissioner earns per year, or €1,194,595 over the full five-year term. Vice-Presidents earn €265,465 or €1,327,325 over five years. This does not include other perks such as housing allowances and entertainment allowances, worth between €43,122 and €50,757 every year.

One of the biggest winners is Polish Commissioner Pawel Samecki, who has only been in the job six months, but will walk away with a ‘golden goodbye’ of €391,898. This is in addition to the €141,020 he has made in earnings alone. Samecki replaced Danuta Hubner in July this year but has not been re-nominated for the next Commission team.

The last Commission mandate, which ran from 2004 to 2009, saw a total of 34 Commissioners in the 27 posts, who collectively earned more than €40.7 million in salaries, housing allowances and entertainment allowances alone – that’s more than €1.5 million for each of the 27 Commission jobs.

The highest earners were Margot Wallstrom and Gunter Verhuegen who each pocketed €2,991,313 for their ten years in Brussels. They will each receive annual pensions of €113,486 for the rest of their lives. The newly-appointed EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton, who took over as EU Trade Commissioner from Lord Mandelson last year, took home €282,040 in earnings for just over a year in office.

In addition to the 13 Commissioners leaving next week, 7 Commissioners have left their posts during the 2004-2009 term. As of next week, taxpayers will have contributed more than €24.3 million in ‘golden goodbyes’ for the 20 outgoing Commissioners – including €988,894 for Lord Mandelson.

All this comes on top of news last week that all EU Commissioners and the 38,000 people working in the European Commission bureaucracy are set to receive an inflation-busting 3.7% payrise - in spite of public sector pay freezes in many places around Europe.

Some other interesting background to this:

In an interview with Swedish Radio on 21 November, Swedish Europe Minister and incoming Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, conceded that the salaries and perks given to European Commissioners are “unreasonably” high. The Swedish press reported that, as a Commissioner, Malmstrom will receive a basic monthly salary of over €20,000, a transition payment of €41,000 as she takes office, and an additional €3,100 a month for living abroad. In addition, every month Malmstrom will receive €574 in family allowances, €681 in child allowances and €486 in school allowances for her two children, according to Swedish Radio. She will also qualify for the pensions and pay-offs described above when she leaves office. Malstrom said: “It is an unreasonable amount of money, but I’m not the one deciding the conditions.”

Open Europe unveiled the extent of Commissioners’ remuneration in March 2009, prompting several telling responses.

Asked by the Belgian press about Open Europe’s figures, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel exclaimed: “if that’s true, I’ll retire immediately.” Belgian daily De Standaard went on to report that, “after consulting an assistant, the message however appeared to be accurate. This was followed by Louis Michel suddenly changing his mind, saying the compensation is completely justified: ‘We are being well paid. But every morning getting up at 5 o’clock, lots of travelling, heavy files…This is a parachute but not a golden one.’”[5]

Danish Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel responded to the figures saying “I’m worth all the millions.”

Commission spokesperson Valerie Rampi said: “Open Europe didn’t discover anything new, it’s all public and online… Everyone who has worked as a commissioner is entitled to pension rights, like you and me”. She then denied that Commissioners received “golden one-off payments”.[6]

Despite this implicit confirmation that the figures were correct, EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom later said in an interview that the figures were “deliberately twisted and exaggerated data.” She went on: “Stepping in office within the European Commission (EC) does not include talks about salaries, allowances and retirement payments. It’s the Council of the European Union that decided in the matter and therefore all changes are up to it. The current rules have been around since 1967 and are open to the public.”

Renewable energy ‘could provide 6% of UK’s needs by 2020′

Friends of the Earth says solar panels and wind turbines could proliferate if government improves the incentive

Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009
Small-scale renewable energy could provide 6% of Britain’s electricity needs – equivalent to more than two Sizewell B nuclear stations or the Drax coal-fired plant – by 2020 if the government improves the terms of a new deal for producers due to be launched next April, Friends of the Earth says today.
The environmental campaign group used figures obtained from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and prepared by consultants Poyry and Element Energy to show that introducing a more ambitious scheme than that currently proposed would add only an average £2.37 a year to household electricity bills over the next four years – just £1.20 a year more than the government is already proposing to add to fund the scheme.
The Guardian revealed last week that decisions on the final levels of the “feed-in tariff” (FIT) – which would offer guaranteed, above-market payments for electricity produced from technologies such as solar panels or wind turbines – have been delayed until January by wrangling between DECC, the Treasury and the regulator Ofgem.
Britain lags other countries in introducing FITs which have proved successful in kick-starting renewable energy sectors around Europe.
But the Treasury and Ofgem are worried about the potential cost and have also been lobbied by the nuclear industry which dislikes renewable energy because it sees it as a direct competitor.
FoE and other critics, such as the Renewable Energy Association (REA), worry that the government’s proposed return on investment of 5-8% is far too low to stimulate mass take-up of the technologies by the public and businesses.
Indeed, the government is only aiming for 2% of the country’s electricity to be generated from small-scale renewables by 2020. FoE says that if the return on investment were raised to 10%, that share would treble to 6% and lower the average cost of the electricity generated.
“Small-scale green energy systems such as solar panels on homes and businesses and community-owned wind turbines could play a crucial role in cutting UK emissions and speeding us towards the development of a low carbon economy,” said FoE energy campaigner Dave Timms.
“A tiny addition to UK electricity bills would kick-start a world class scheme that would allow homes, businesses and communities to play their part in tackling climate change, increasing energy security and creating thousands of new green jobs.
“As the world prepares for crucial climate talks in Copenhagen, the government must show that it is taking this issue seriously.”
The DECC figures show that a more ambitious FIT offering a 10% return on investment would lead to the generation of 25 terawatt hours of electricity by 2020 and cut UK carbon emissions by 10 million tonnes a year by then. It would also help reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels and increase energy security.
The figures are published as 30 organisations and businesses – including FoE, the REA, the TUC, the British Retail Consortium, the Co-operative Group, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), the Federation of Small Businesses, Unison and WWF – have written to MPs urging them to support an Early Day Motion (EDM 276) tabled by Alan Simpson MP calling for a much greater level of ambition for small-scale renewable electricity generation than the government scheme proposes.