UN rights chief says Swiss ban on minarets ‘clearly discriminatory’

The United Nations human rights chief spoke out today against the Swiss ban on the building of new minarets, calling it a discriminatory and deeply divisive step which risks putting the county on a “collision course” with its international rights obligations.

Two Major Gatherings Assess Women’s Progress in Africa

Two Major Gatherings Assess Women’s Progress in Africa

Conferences Held in Gambia and South Africa Continue to Press for Gender Equality

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Two recent conferences held on the African continent reaffirmed the determination of women to achieve genuine equality and political empowerment. The Eighth Africa Regional Conference on Women (Beijing + 15) took place in Banjul, Gambia in West Africa between November 16-20 and featured reports on progress made towards achieving the goals adopted during the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women that was held in Beijing, China in 1995.

Another major meeting took place with convening of the annual Pan-African Women Conference 2009 which was held in Sandton, South Africa from October 21-23. This gathering is sponsored by the Pan-African Women Projects and a network of women groups and organization from all over the continent.

The Pan-African Women Conference (PAWC) meets every year and includes participation from women from the fifty four nations on the continent as well as the Diaspora. The theme of the 2009 conference was “African Women Marching Against Poverty.”

According to the organizers of the event “African women have decided to fight poverty both in homes and in the continent as from the previous conferences, it was clearly understood and unanimously agreed that the primary cause of all the problems facing the African woman and Africa in general is this ugly cankerworm called poverty.” (Pan-African Women Conference 2009)

This statement continues by pointing out that “Poverty has caused coups and wars in the nations of Africa. It has given birth to numerous ills including deaths, crime, prostitution and human trafficking, forced and early marriages, illiteracy, child labour and slavery, recruitment of child soldiers, etc.”

The conference this year was attended by over three thousand women from various regions throughout the continent and the Diaspora. The opening address was delivered by Hajia Turai Yar’Adua, First Lady-Federal Republic of Nigeria and Chairperson, Association of Wives of Heads of States/Presidents of Africa.

In addition, the keynote address was delivered by Graca Machel-Mandela, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela and a major figure in conflict mediation and child welfare on the continent. There were 18 presentations delivered at the PAWC including ministers representing women’s affairs and social development from various African states.

One of the highlights of the PAWC this year was the formal launching of the blue print for a Pan-African Women Bank that would provide credit for development projects benefiting women and girls on the continent. Also there was the unveiling of the architectural design for the Pan-African Women Projects’ headquarters by president of the Republic of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Women Meet in Banjul

In the West African state of Gambia, the Eighth Africa Regional Conference on Women (Beijing + 15) met during November to assess the progress in the ongoing struggle for gender equality and empowerment on the continent. Prior to the actual conference, experts met on November 13-14 to discuss and prepare recommendations for the ministerial gathering which was held between the 16-19.

Later on November 21, Ministers of Women and Gender Affairs convened to consider numerous African Union documents related to women and gender issues including the AU Women’s Trust Fund feasibility study, the African Union Commission Gender Action Plan and the Roadmap for the African Women’s Decade, slated for 2010-2020. The meeting on November 21 also provided reports on the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa.

In the opening ceremony of the ministerial meeting, the Director of Women, Gender and Development Directorate, Ms. Liltha Musyimi-Ogana, reiterated the political commitment of the AU to gender equality and empowerment for women. The AU has adopted the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, the AU Gender Policy and the African Women’s Decade 2010-2020.

So far 27 AU member states have ratified the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women and 30 have addressed the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa. Musyimi-Ogana, speaking on behalf of the African Union Commission Chairperson Mr. Jean Ping, reaffirmed the continental organization’s commitment to develop an African Women Trust Fund stating that “this move will pave the way for the realization of the objectives presented in the Road Map for the African Women’s Decade and in the Decade Action Plan.” (African Union Press Release, November 21, 2009)

In a speech delivered by the Political Affairs Commissioner of the African Union Commission, Julia Dolly Joiner, she placed the conference within the context of the global economic crisis. Joiner stated that “We gather at a time when the financial, economic and environmental crises that the world faces together represent no other than a human rights crisis and increasingly pose a challenge to the 12-point women’s empowerment and gender equality agenda that we had set for ourselves in Beijing in 1995.”

The AU Political Affairs Commissioner specifically addressed the particular situation in the region by emphasizing that “This reality is more apparent for Africa than any other part of the globe. The consequence for us is clear—we must respond to the voices of the marginalized who call on us to act in a situation where their human rights took a backseat to a globalization that swept the world into a frenzy of growth and environmental degradation. At this time of crisis, we are all called upon to be bold in thought and action, as we strive to move towards a system that is inclusive, sustainable and respectful of universal rights.” (Foroyaa Online, November 24)

In a major address at the Banjul conference, Ms. Monique Rakotomalala, Director of the African Centre for Gender and Social Development of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), indicated that after the Beijing +15 Conference several major objectives had been identified for action. One major area was maternal health and mortality, noting that women should not die anymore while giving birth.

Rakotomalala emphasized that “In the context of high food prices due to the impact of global warming, the meeting must act to ensure food security as a right for women. Action applies also to employment as it paves the way to empowerment.” She ended her address by pledging the UNECA’s commitment to work with the AU in implementing the outcomes of the conference and to develop young women leaders. (African Union Press Release, November 21)

Dr. Aja Isatou Njie-Saidy, the Vice-President of the host nation of the Republic of Gambia, said in her address to the conference that participants must “review progress, analyze current challenges and plan the way forward for ensuring the advancement and empowerment of women and girls, the poor and the most marginalized members of our society.”

With specific reference to the upcoming African Women’s Decade 2010-2020, she pointed out that this important period will provide “impetus for African women as it will provide them with the opportunity to consolidate gains made in the quest to attain gender equality and to close existing gaps that serve as barriers to the attainment of these laudable goals.”

Njie-Saidy continued by stating that the AU Fund for Women “will provide the much needed resources that women need to concretize their dreams and ambitions. Africa is on the move and the trend is irreversible.” (African Union Press Release, November 21)

The resolutions from the Banjul conference will be presented to the upcoming United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to be held in New York in March 2010.

Other important issues were discussed at the Banjul conference including two panels convened by Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF). One panel entitled “women’s rights implementation in Africa: what has been achieved so far” was held on November 17.

Another panel focused on “Women’s access to land: issues, challenges and expectations of West Africa rural women” took place on November 18. The panel examined issues involving women farmers and their access to land in West Africa and the need to advocate for national and local authorities to develop policies geared toward women’s sustainable access to land.

Seattle Police Kill Suspect in Officer Slayings

Seattle police kill suspect in officer slayings

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE – The man suspected of gunning down four police officers in a suburban coffee shop was shot and killed by a lone Seattle patrol officer investigating a stolen car early Tuesday, a sheriff’s
spokesman said. Four other people were arrested for allegedly helping the suspect elude authorities during a massive two-day manhunt.

A Seattle police officer came across the stolen car in a working-class
south Seattle neighborhood about 2:45 a.m., Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel said. The officer approached the car, then detected movement behind him, recognized the suspect Maurice Clemmons and ordered him to show his hands and stop.

“He wouldn’t stop,” Pugel said. “The officer fired several rounds,
took the person into custody.”

Clemmons had a serious gunshot wound from one of the four officers killed in the coffee-shop shooting. He has since died from his injuries, Pugel said. Clemmons was carrying a handgun that had
belonged one of the slain officers, Pugel said.

Police planned to arrest more people who helped Clemmons.

“We expect to have maybe six or seven people in custody by the day’s
end,” said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County sheriff. “Some are friends, some are acquaintances, some are partners in crime, some are relatives. Now they’re all partners in crime.”

Troyer didn’t immediately give the names of the four people already
arrested on suspicion of rendering criminal assistance. On Monday,
officers detained a sister of Clemmons who they think treated the
suspect’s gunshot wound.

“We believe she drove him up to Seattle and bandaged him up,” Troyer said.

Authorities say Clemmons, 37, singled out the Lakewood officers and spared employees and other customers at a coffee shop Sunday morning in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle. He then fled, but not before he was apparently shot in the torso by one of the dying officers.

“I’m surprised that he managed to get away,” Troyer said. “The officer
did a good job in Lakewood.”

Killed were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37,
Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42.

A couple dozen police officers milled around at the scene where
Clemmons was apparently shot, shaking hands and patting each other on the back later Tuesday morning.

Police said they aren’t sure what prompted Clemmons to shoot the
officers. Clemmons was described as increasingly erratic in the past
few months and had been arrested earlier this year on charges that he punched a sheriff’s deputy in the face.

Troyer told the Tacoma News-Tribune that Clemmons indicated the night before the shooting “that he was going to shoot police and watch the news.”

Police surrounded a house in a Seattle neighborhood late Sunday
following a tip Clemmons had been dropped off there. After an
all-night siege, a SWAT team entered the home and found it empty. But police said Clemmons had been there.

Police frantically chased leads on Monday, searching multiple spots in the Seattle and Tacoma area and at one point cordoning off a park
where people thought they saw Clemmons.

Authorities found a handgun carried by the killer, along with a pickup
truck belonging to the suspect with blood stains inside. They posted a $125,000 reward for information leading to Clemmons’ arrest and
alerted hospitals to be on the lookout for a man seeking treatment for
gunshot wounds.

“We need to get him into custody and we need to end this,” Troyer said Monday night.

Authorities in two states were criticized amid revelations that
Clemmons was allowed to walk the streets despite a teenage crime spree in Arkansas that landed him an 108-year prison sentence. He was released early after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence.

Huckabee cited Clemmons’ youth in granting the request. But Clemmons quickly reverted to his criminal past, violated his parole and was returned to prison. He was released again in 2004.

“This guy should have never been on the street,” said Brian D. Wurts,
president of the police union in Lakewood. “Our elected officials need
to find out why these people are out.”

Huckabee said on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night that Clemmons was allowed back on the street because prosecutors failed to file paperwork in time.

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons’ parole in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee’s comments were “red herrings.”

“My word to Mr. Huckabee is man up and own what you did,” Jegley said.

Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with
assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in
the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse.

But he was released from jail after posting bail with the assistance
of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.

Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In
one instance, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives
and forcing them to undress.

“The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus,” a Pierce County
sheriff’s report said.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Manuel
Valdes in Seattle, Rachel La Corte in Tacoma, George Tibbits in
Seattle, Andrew DeMillo and Jill Zeman Bleed in Little Rock, Ark., and
photographers Elaine Thompson in Seattle and Ted S. Warren in
Parkland, Wash.

Gordon Brown the eco-warrior might swing the green vote his way

The Copenhagen summit is not only important for the planet - it could also shape politics at home, says Mary Riddell.

Mary Riddell Published: 7:33PM GMT 30 Nov 2009

Death by motorcade is a hazard for hangers-on at diplomatic circuses. Stuck on a New York pavement some weeks ago, I watched a delegation hurtle past on its way to the UN climate change summit. While Barack Obama’s convoy stretches the length of a Manhattan block, this modest retinue comprised only five vehicles and inspired a sigh of what sounded like sympathy from the foreign negotiator standing next to me. “Sierra Leone,” he said pityingly.
Some travel even less lavishly at such events. Ed Miliband, Britain’s Climate Change Secretary, mostly goes on foot. But New York’s limo-loving leaders seemed to symbolise the summit’s gridlocked agenda: few revealed what, if anything, they might bring to the Copenhagen conference. Rarely, it sometimes seemed, had so much hot air and carbon been emitted to so little end.

This weekend the motorcades move into Copenhagen for the summit that may determine the future of mankind. Although no one is certain, or even optimistic, that a deal can be done, few governments are driving the agenda more forcefully than the British.
While the ebbs and flows of Gordon Brown’s premiership have been marked by floods (Gloucester in 2007 and now Cumbria), the broader politics of weather once appeared to pass him by. His conversion to climate change evangelist came when he first read Lord Stern’s report and realised that the thesis married his two favourite subjects: planetary salvation and economic revival. Since then he has spread the message that the market could help curb global warming and propel Britain out of recession on a wave of green jobs and eco-technology.
Not since the emergence of Swampy, the Newbury bypass tunneller, has Britain produced a doughtier eco-warrior than Mr Brown. His garden boasts a wormery and compost bins, his computer is never left on stand-by, and No 10’s feuds and furores are illuminated by low-energy light bulbs.
It is, however, on the international stage that Mr Brown is most effective. In the “climate emergency”, he has discovered another epochal event, like the recession, that plays to his penchant for car-wreck politics. The PM is a catastrophile in the sense that he is suited, by temperament and intellect, to tackling global disaster.
The £13.3 billion fund he unveiled at the Commonwealth meeting will channel money from rich countries to poorer ones (Britain will donate £800 million) and so give immediate aid to nations hit by hurricanes and drought. Besides launching this vital plan, Mr Brown is said by allies to have quashed the “silly numbers” advanced by some countries who wanted help equating to 1 per cent of GDP, on top of 0.7 per cent in development aid.
Mr Brown was also the first leader to say he would go to Copenhagen. More than 80 heads of government and state have since followed suit, including Mr Obama. Although the President will arrive too early and offer too little, both his presence and the US offer to cut carbon emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 are deemed a passable start from a man placed in “an impossible situation” by foot-dragging compatriots.
The offer from China, the other key player, attracts no such guarded optimism. A pledge to decrease carbon intensity by 45 per cent by 2020 (an effective emissions increase) has been met with public politeness and private alarm. The numbers, one expert says, are “frankly disappointing”. If Beijing does not up its game, then Copenhagen could end in disaster.
With no hope of a legally binding treaty, optimists still hope for a deal halting global warming at two degrees, put into force immediately (unlike Kyoto, which took eight years) and ratified in law in 2010.
It is hard to gauge how much all this preoccupies Mr Brown’s top team. Though the Cabinet includes some ardent recyclers and composters, a widespread view is: leave it to Ed. It is true that Mr Miliband is displaying a skill and fluency that attracts admiration bordering on reverence at No 10. While not every senior minister is as enthusiastic (”Wind farms are b——”, one heretic told me last week), David Cameron cannot be accused of lack of interest.
Once the Tories’ ethical man, towed by huskies across ice floes and planning a wind turbine on his roof, his espousal of blue-green politics put his party above Labour as the voters’ eco-choice. Mr Cameron’s greenery subsequently wilted so fast that he and George Osborne barely mentioned the environment in their conference speeches. These omissions were hastily rectified last week.
Mr Cameron declared his “passionate” commitment to Copenhagen amid a plethora of initiatives, including Mr Osborne’s plan for a “green recovery” and paying people to recycle. The shadow chancellor’s charge that the Treasury has been “indifferent” or “obstructive” was greeted with derision by Alistair Darling, who – as anyone who listened to his Budget speech and G20 messages could affirm – has plugged green issues to the point of narcolepsy.
Promises of green ISAs and an investment bank, however shakily financed, are a mark of the Tories’ desire to recapture an agenda sidelined by Mr Cameron, many of whose supporters balk at wind turbines on their doorsteps (or anyone else’s) and won’t wear high-speed rail links carved through Middle English pastures.
Neither party has yet struck a populist chord. Stories of the tax status of Zac Goldsmith, Mr Cameron’s land-owning organic guru, remind voters that peasant farming is more fun for non-doms than for peasants, while government backing of a report urging cow-free diets suggests a Marie Antoinette-style edict: let them eat tofu. Meanwhile, the less said about Heathrow expansion the better.
However clumsy their overtures, both parties know the eco-vote is vital. In Brighton and Norwich, Labour could yet be unseated by the Green Party, but the real election game-changers will be the semi-greens: the vast constituency who fear for their children’s and their grandchildren’s future. Unlike the American Right, they do not think climate change is less credible than the tooth fairy. Unlike Lord Lawson, they do not consider agnosticism a prudent stance when scientists (of whom he is not one) have produced overwhelming evidence of looming catastrophe. Unlike sceptics seeking diversionary tactics, they don’t think emails disgracefully suggestive of faked statistics at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit should divert attention from Copenhagen.
In key marginals, the semi-greens may vote for the mainstream party with the best environment policy. On current indicators, that will not be Mr Cameron, who is losing the support of the powerful NGOs once persuaded by his green agenda and now swinging back to Mr Brown.
A general election is inconsequential compared to what’s at stake in Copenhagen. Nor may Mr Brown’s impressive away performance compensate for the weaknesses in his home game. Even so, Denmark will shape political as well as planetary destinies. Mr Cameron is right to be afraid.

Honda promises to change the world with U3-X, the first ‘mechtronic’ unicycle

Leo Lewis in Tokyo

Every so often, a brand new “personal mobility” contraption appears and someone declares that the world is about to change forever. For the car and the bicycle, the claims were legitimate. For the jetpack, hydraulic pogo stick, Sinclair C5 and hydrogen powered rollerskate, less so.
But shaky odds of success have never deterred Japan from gadgetry. So gird yourselves, mortals, and throw away your walking shoes — because if Honda is right, pavements across the globe will soon be the domain of U3-X, the world’s first “mechatronic” unicycle.
A decade in the making and test driven exclusively by The Times, Honda’s creation unambiguously restores Japan’s reputation as the most fanatical of mad inventors. Its starting point, explains an excitable Honda boffin, was nothing less than the reinvention of the wheel. The balancing technology came from the same division of the company that recently produced a pair of robotic trousers.
After a 30-second tutorial, the test drive begins. Minutes later I have mastered the future of travel: it is somewhere between the hovering landspeeder in Star Wars, the effortless glide of a Dalek and a piggyback from my dad when I was 4.
As I recklessly shimmy around the boardroom, reversing gloriously into a whiteboard, the chief engineer behind the unicycle struggles to describe how the U3-X is working beneath its shiny, carbon fibre shell.
The trick, says Shinichiro Kobashi, is to imagine balancing a broom handle on your palm. The thousands of tiny movements your hand instinctively makes to keep the broom upright are simulated in the U3-X by a lattice of motion sensors and Honda’s new omni-directional wheel.
The new Honda drive system, he continues with a cackle, can do all sorts of useful things ordinary wheels cannot, such as moving sideways.
None of this, however, outshines the machine’s most spectacular magic trick: Honda has somehow managed to build a 10kg unicycle that can stand upright on its own. Taken off its charging stand and held in the starting position for a few seconds, the U3-X quivers to life. It will not fall over as long as its batteries last. Even while in motion, the unicycle is nearly impossible to topple and makes no balancing demands either of the buttocks cupped in its soft leather saddle or their bemused owner. The driver merely leans the torso in the desired direction of travel and the single wheel compensates improbably for the shifting weight of its master, rumbling off with a puny electric whirr.
One day, says the engineer, polo matches will be played on these machines. For the moment, though, any match would be a slow one. Honda has limited the unicycle to a maximum speed of 4mph (6km/h) — a speed at which it makes considerably more sense to walk.There are reasons why Honda may be on the brink of a great personal mobility transformation — and many why we may never see the U3-X again.
The machine is far more portable than a fold-up bicycle and takes up no more pavement space than a pedestrian. But Honda are not yet talking about a price for the machine, or even a release date.
If nothing else emerges from the project, however, Honda may well be the first company to produce a car that rolls sideways into a parking space.

Environmental

Atlantis plans major tidal turbine test

Published Date: 01 December 2009
ATLANTIS Resources is to test what is claimed to be the world’s biggest tidal turbine in the waters off the Orkney Islands next year.
Chief executive Tim Cornelius yesterday said the company was investing about £15 million to build and test the turbine, which has rotors that are 18 metres in diameter, roughly the height of a five-storey building.The AK-1000 turbine, which has a capacity of 1 megawatt – in line with other pioneering marine energy converters – will be deployed at the European Marine Energy Centre test site in Orkney.Atlantis is working with Norway’s state-owned utility Statkraft to win a bid in the Pentland Firth marine energy project.

Is Lord Adonis being driven by an urge to impress David Cameron?

While most ministers are keen to hang on to whatever perks they have left, Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, has dispensed with one of Westminster’s most valued extras, his ministerial car.

Tim Walker: Edited by Laura Roberts Published: 10:00PM GMT 30 Nov 2009

Perhaps he is hoping to ingratiate himself with David Cameron, who is rumoured to be considering asking him to stay on in government as an education minister if the Tories win the next election. Cameron pledged to cut the budget for official government cars by a third in September.
A spokesman for the minister said: “Andrew has given up his allocated car since October. He now uses the green car taxi service on an ad hoc basis.”

Interestingly, the spokesman was keen to make clear that his decision had nothing whatsoever to do with a green agenda.
“This fits in with his arrangements better,” he said. “He hasn’t made the decision based on environmental reasons.”
Prior to giving up his car, the cost of Lord Adonis’s department’s four cars in 2008-09 increased from £272,700 to £289,800, a rise of £17,100 – the price of a Ford Mondeo saloon.
However, his sacrifice won’t necessarily save his department any money. Chris Mullin, the Labour MP for Sunderland South, disclosed in his published diaries A View From The Foothills that dispensing with a government car could cost a department up to £704.75 a week in addition to £4,000 in a depreciation charge.
Mullin memorably recounted that Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, was also unwilling to use a car as a junior minister. He was only able to rid himself of his unwanted vehicle by claiming that he needed to walk for health reasons.

The Economics of Climate Change

The stakes are too high to treat Climategate as just another academic spat.
The emails and documents leaked last week from some of the world’s leading climatologists offer a rich trove of evidence that scientists were massaging the data and corrupting the scientific process to support their own preconceptions. But they also offer the beginnings of an explanation for why. In the words of another famous leaker, follow the money.
On its Web site, the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit describes how it could barely make ends meet for most of the years since it was founded in 1972, and how most researchers weren’t even guaranteed salaries in the early years. “Since 1994, the situation has improved,” CRU writes. Why 1994? That was the year the U.N.’s climate change convention came into force. Since then, it has been boom times for those lucky enough to have gotten in on the ground floor of a growth industry powered by grants from governments eager to understand just how quickly we were overheating the planet.
In the 1990s, CRU director Phil Jones helped bring in £1.9 million ($3.1 million) for climate research. But in this decade, according to one of the leaked documents, the total shot up to £11.8 million, including grants from the U.K. National Environmental Research Council, the U.S. Department of Energy and NATO. Another leaked spreadsheet for CRU researcher Tim Osborn shows a similar pattern. Between 1994 and 2000, Mr. Osborn secured research contracts totaling £173,881. Between 2001 and 2007, the last year covered by the file, his haul jumped to £764,055.
Or consider the cash that Michael Mann—another climate establishment figure whose name comes up frequently in the leaked emails—has helped pulled for Penn State University. In 2000, before Mr. Mann joined the faculty, the university banked $20.4 million in research funding for environmental sciences. By 2007, two years after he came on board, Penn State counted more than $55 million a year for environmental research, much of it government funded.
To keep this money flowing, climate scientists needed to keep the fear going. Anything that called into question their most dire predictions of climate catastrophe would put all that funding at risk. On the other hand, the bigger the climate calamity, the more willing governments became to fund global-warming research. Keeping the dissenters on the outside was not simply a matter of academic jealousy. It was in many cases a question of professional survival.
In 1988-1989, the U.S. ponied up 199,500 Swiss francs ($198,995) to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. By the end of Bill Clinton’s and Al Gore’s tenure in the White House, America’s annual offering to the international global warming authority had ballooned more than 2,600%—to 5.42 million Swiss francs in 2000-2001. The very earth hung in the balance, after all.
The gusher of money that has flowed into climate research does not, by itself, impeach the conclusions reached by the scientists. But it does make clear just how much their professional fortunes became tied to the notion of climate catastrophe. It was the fear of catastrophic climate change, after all, that unleashed the rising ocean of money by which their research came to be funded. Findings that might call the hysteria into question would also, perforce, put at risk the flow of funds into their field.
According to the old quip, the disputes in academia are so vicious because the stakes are so low. In this case, the money trail suggests the reverse—the scientists were so protective of their theory because the stakes had become so high. Under those circumstances, it’s no wonder they were tempted to “hide the decline” in temperatures and keep their critics out of the peer-reviewed literature.
For the world’s economy, of course, trillions of dollars are now at stake in pursuit of emissions reductions based on the flawed science that these leaked emails have helped lay bare. For the rest of the world too, the stakes are too high to treat this as just another academic spat.

Climate heats up Australian politics

Australia’s Liberal leader is being forced out over emissions trading. The crisis may be a taste of what’s to come elsewhere
Julian Glover
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 15.30 GMT
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Australia is experiencing the world’s first political crisis of the climate change age. No one in Britain is paying much attention – because the story involves the country’s opposition Liberal party and politicians hardly anyone outside the country knows. But what is happening matters. It is a test case of political will – especially on the right – to pay the price of global warming.
In Britain we’ve been spared a political bust-up between sceptics and zealots, thanks to David Cameron’s rather brave and early decision to make the environmental agenda his own. But there was nothing inevitable about his victory, or Tory support for green measures that will be hugely unpopular with voters once they have to start paying the bills. If David Davis or Liam Fox had beaten him to the leadership in 2005, Australia’s crisis would be Britain’s, too.
First, a brief political history. Australia, one of the world’s highest per capita carbon polluters, stood aside from the Kyoto protocol until John Howard’s right-of-centre coalition was defeated by Kevin Rudd’s Labor in 2007. After that, Australia moved into the mainstream on climate change, and the Liberal party elected Malcolm Turnbull, as the opposition leader.
Turnbull is interesting – he was the lawyer who took on the British government in the Spycatcher case, then championed an Australian republic, and, as environment minister in the Howard government, he was the greenest member of the cabinet. To the Australian right, he’s always been a bit suspicious: a flash Sydneysider from Australia’s richest constituency whose got enough money to indulge environmental concerns.
In opposition, he’s been struggling, hit by bad poll ratings and a car crash of a crisis a while back when he called on the prime minister to resign on the basis of some emails that turned out to be fake. His rivals have been manoeuvring. In the past week they have pounced, after Turnbull forced through a controversial vote to back the government’s emissions trading scheme in the Australian senate.
Without at least some Liberal support, this scheme will not pass, since Labor doesn’t have a majority in the upper house. If you want to be generous, you could say that Turnbull has decided to sacrifice his leadership for his principles – a “climate change martyr” as the Sydney Morning Herald put it. Or you could say he is trying to face down his critics on an issue where he can hold the moral upper hand, and that this whole saga has more to do with egos than climate change.
Either way, Turnbull is toast: a large chunk of his frontbench resigned rather than back emissions trading, and at least one member of it, Tony Abbott, has confirmed he will fight Turnbull for the leadership tomorrow, on an anti-emissions trading ticket.
He might win. If he doesn’t, another member of the front bench, Joe Hockey, is likely to get the job. He is Turnbull’s preferred candidate but risks becoming a hostage of climate sceptics if he takes over with their backing.
For the Liberals, it is a hellish mess. For Australia, it is a testing moment. Does the country have what it takes to cut emissions? For the world, it might be a foretaste of politics to come.

Barack Obama’s road to Copenhagen ends in Oslo for most of the US media

US press pack will have to make do with reporting from Norway, as Danish capital runs out of room
Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 17.11 GMT

Only the other day Barack Obama was being applauded for breaking the deadlock at the Copenhagen climate change summit. The White House confirmed last week that Obama would commit to reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions, and would drop in on the meeting on his way to Oslo where he is to receive the Nobel peace prize.
There was relief around the globe. America’s failure to set a target for reducing emissions had been seen as the greatest single obstacle to reaching a strong political agreement at Copenhagen. Obama’s stopover in Copenhagen on December 9 was also welcomed - although the timing means the president will not join other world leaders in actually sealing a climate change agreement at the end of the two-week meeting.
Even so, the White House was so pleased by the positive response to the announcement that it even interrupted the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to point reporters to press reaction.
“On climate change, the president demonstrated America’s commitment to global action, while at the same time convinced key countries like China and India to pledge to take mitigation actions to reduce their carbon emissions. This progress is a result of the president’s recent trip to Asia, and his policy of global engagement,” the release said on Saturday.
But all that praise is still not enough to guarantee an actual hotel room in Copenhagen, the White House learned to its chagrin.
The White House travel office said today it could only provide accommodation in Copenhagen for the dozen or so reporters who will be in the presidential press pool. The White House charter flight, carrying the rest of the reporters, will only stop in Oslo for the Nobel ceremony.
Everything else was booked up long ago. The US government delegation alone is reported to include some 600 officials.
“It’s not that we don’t want people to be there,” a travel office spokeswoman said, “but we’ve heard that the closest hotel rooms are in Oslo.”