Climate Change Fix

One of the most respected centres for measuring the earths temperature and modelling global warming is the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in England. It has now appears to have been “fixing” the temperature record so as to support the man made global warming theory of climate change - adjusting data to fit a model.

A computer hacker “broke” into the CRU computer and downloaded 1079 emails and over three thousand documents, all of which are now made available on line. They show the systematic attempts by Professor Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona and others to manipulate observational data to hide the fact that the earth has been cooling since 1998 and to support the “hockey stick” model developed by Michael Mann. They also show that the network of scientists involved in the IPCC fourth assessment report went to extraordinary lengths to stop the publication of any information or data which did not support the man-made global warming theory.

Also revealed is the fact that, when asked to release their data so as to permit analysis by independent scientists under a freedom of information request, Phil Jones, Michael Mann and others conspired to delete emails and related files so as to prevent disclosure – an act illegal under the freedom of information legislation in Britain. These scientists appear willing to break the law to hide their data.

As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the man made global warming message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. While some “warmists” are suggesting that these documents are false, the Centre has confirmed that they appear genuine, but has to verify that all of the documents and emails are legitimate and that they have not been "tampered with" in any way.

These files and emails will prove embarrassing to those who claim that the science is settled. It now looks like the science is also “fixed”. Whatever the outcome of this illegal hacking, its embarassing.

(This is the 550th post to this Blog)

Democracy Challenged?

The idea of democracy – where the people make choices about who will lead them for a period of time and that these elected officials govern in the public interest – is in decline.

The European Union leaders, meeting today in Brussels, have chosen two major leaders to represent the interests of all within the twenty seven countries of the European Union. The selection was made without any transparency or any involvement of the institutions of the Union. It is a selection which will be made by side-deals, trade-offs and the personal agendas of the leaders. So much for democracy.

The bigger threat to democracy comes from the United Nations. In the negotiations for the Copenhagen meeting on climate change, the UN proposed treaty involved the creation of a new unelected international governmental body. This body would have considerable powers to intervene in national economic and trade matters on a country by country basis. For example, section 38 of the draft treaty creates an new intergovernmental organization which will have considerable powers of enforcement. Here is what the draft treaty says, the term “government” being used to refer to the new international body:

a) The government will be ruled by the Conference of the Parties (COP) with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts, including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD (reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange.

Thus a major transfer of wealth and technology is planned, funded by developed nations, as well as Democratic countries hand over their cash, whether they like it or not. But more than that, there will be an interlocking series of technical panels which will have the right directly to intervene in the economies and in the environment of individual countries over the heads of their elected governments, provided they have the support of the Executive Board.

This idea of global government has been part of the thinking from the beginning of the UN’s involvement in climate change issues. Maurice Strong, who played a critical role in the negotiations leading to Kyoto and was instrumental in the formation of the IPCC, has made clear in a recent article. In an essay in the World Policy Journal, Strong, now 80, said "our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions”, with his comments linked strongly to the need to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. His point – competing interests of national governments get in the way of what needs to be done to reduce population, reduce emissions and “save the planet”. Democracy, in short, is problematic when global change is needed.

The Copenhagen draft treaty is yet to be endorsed and is unlikely to be in its current form, as President Obama and others made clear in the last several days. But beneath the surface of these negotiations are serious issues about the governance of wealth and technology transfer and the monitoring of national commitments to reduce emissions. Just as world financial systems are now integrated and the role of both the World Bank and IMF is being enhanced so as to create elements of a global financial regulatory regime, world leaders are looking for a similar set of mechanisms to regulate climate change. Both global financial regulation and global CO2 regulation will affect the daily lives of citizens directly. Do we trust our leaders to entrust a new intergovernmental agency on our behalf? Has anyone asked us?

Race is Over

So the results are in and the betting is over. The European Union has chosen its two top officials who will seek to raise the profile of the EU around the world. Both are seen as low-key consensual figures.

The new President of the Council of the European Union is Belgian PM Herman van Rompuy – a widely expected appointment, vigorously supported by France and Germany. He is a centre-right politician who has strongly supported the idea of expanded role for the EU in its member nations and the need for an EU tax to be part of each countries tax regime.

Mr Van Rompuy is seen as a consensus-builder and has been described as a pragmatic rather than a charismatic figure. During his time as budget minister in Belgium's Christian Democrat-led government, he took a tough stance on balancing the economic books, drastically reducing the country's public debt.

Britain played a smart card during the meetings on Thursday. Dropping its support for Tony Blair and persuading the seven-strong socialist group of governments to back EU Trade Commissioner Baroness Catherine Ashton for the foreign policy position, Prime Minister Gordon Brown may well have broken the logjam and vaulted a British candidate right into one of Europe's top jobs.

Lady Ashton was a junior Minister in the British Labour Government until 2007, when Brown appointed her Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council and elevated to the cabinet. In 2008 she was appointed Trade Commissioner for the EU, succeeding Peter Mandelson who left the EU to join the Brown cabinet and the House of Lords. She has never been elected to public office, having secured all her political roles from the benches of the Lords, to which she was appointed in 1999. She is married to journalist Peter Kellner, and has two children.

Lady Ashton is a surprise appointment. She has no substantial background in foreign affairs, except as they relate to trade issues (and this experience can be counted in months rather than years) and hardly any exposure within the EU. Appointing an unknown is clearly a side-deal aimed at appeasing a faction within the union. She will have a seat as vice-president of the European Commission, as well as a budget worth billions of euros and a new diplomatic service of up to 5,000 people. Many see the position as equivalent to that held by Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State.

It will be interesting to watch the leaders of the twenty seven nations rationalizing their choices over the next few days and then watch how these two roles emerge. So the race is over, now wait for the fireworks to begin.

Still Time to Place a Bet

The horses are at the starting gate for the two big prizes of the week – the Presidency of the European Union and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Belgium's Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy is reported to be the frontrunner for the job of European Council president, but his rivals include Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and the UK's former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Italy's former Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt are reported to be top contenders for foreign affairs chief.
Poland is suggesting that each candidate should present their ideas to the full Council of Heads of State before voting, with the winner being chosen by simple majority voting. Sweden will determine the process for selection, since they are the current holders of the rotating Presidency of the Union.

There is a strong backlash against the position of France and Germany, which may favour the compromise candidacy of anyone but Rompuy or Blair, with some strongly supporting the Iron Lady, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. But its anyones guess right now.
Paddpower, the online betting company, has two clustered close to the top of the odds - Rompuy (4/9) and Blair (4/1), with Blair showing a late resurgence. A total of eighteen candidates are in the Paddpower frame – the long odds being for Mary Robinson (former President of the Irish Republic), who is running at 25:1.

Unlike horse racing, form tells us little about the likely outcome. We do know that Blair is unlikely to be a compromise candidate – his ego is too big and you are either for or against him. The problem is that the front runner, Rompuy, has strong views about EU integration and the need for a EU wide tax to support the development of the EU, which is very unpopular in many EU states.

It is widely thought that the EU will make a decision on Thursday. Poland’s intervention – asking for interviews – may delay this decision. There is still time to place a bet.

The "No We Cant" President and Climate Change

With less than twenty days to go before Copenhagen meeting of world governments to agree a process by which a treaty to replace the Kyoto Accord can be replaced with a legally binding agreement, the rhetoric is now at full volume.

The latest clarion call to action comes from an alarmist scientific model prediction which suggests that average global temperatures will by up to 6C by the end of the century. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have, say these modellers, cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

This modelling comes from the Global Carbon Project study, led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, which found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available. The results of this modelling activity, which makes assumptions about CO2 staying in the atmosphere longer and about a decline in the ability of the oceans to act as a heat sink, are published in an advanced article in Nature Geoscience entitled Trends in the Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide. The findings are hedged with degrees of uncertainty and are, after all, computer generated `best guesses``.

On the same day, reports appeared that the snows of Kilimanjaro may disappear within the next two decades or sooner, according to researchers from Ohio State University and the National Science Foundation. The researchers are worried not only by the rapid retreat of the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro, but by the ice surface's thinning. They now believe that the volume of ice lost to thinning is equal to that lost by shrinkage, which is occurring on all sides of the famed Tanzanian mountain. While they do not say that global warming is to be blame – the more usual explanation is deforestation – the headline writers have found ways to insinuate that warming is the culprit.

Meantime, on the political front dithering President Obama now appears to have flip-flopped in less than a week in terms of what Copenhagen can achieve. On Saturday he was promoting a two stage process, with Copenhagen offering a political agreement and a legally binding agreement following sometime later. Now, in conjunction with the Chinese, he is saying that Copenhagen should provide the basis for a legally binding agreement for the developed world while others would follow some time later. Confusion. Obama is not in a position to sign a legally binding agreement on climate change without the support of Congress, and that support is not currently there.

According to Joss Garman of Greenpeace writing in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, the US is now seen as a dead hand on the Copenhagen summit. Obama, rather than being a `yes we can`` President, is seen as an ``on and off`` dithering delayer. He is waiting for congress to pass a Bill that, at best, will have no real impact on emissions, offering to cut between 4-7% on 1990 levels. What is needed, according to Garman, is a 50% cut to keep global temperature rises to below the 2C the G20 committed to in the summer. No one involved now takes the US position “of the day” seriously.

Goodbye Christmass

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the UK has introduced a Bill which, according to the British Catholic Bishops, outlaws Christmas. Known as the Equality Bill it seeks to strengthen protection for minority groups by placing a new equality duty on public bodies. Church officials said this meant town halls and other public organizations would be expected to foster good relations and equality of opportunity between people of different faiths.

It is, in essence a political correctness bill. This kind of thinking already leads to strange behaviours. For example, a local authority instructed tenants to take down Christmas lights in case they might offend Muslim neighbours. In another case, organizations have been removing the word Christmas out of cultural sensitivity to everyone except Christians – “we don’t want to offend anyone”.

A Lot of Hot Air

Over the last two weeks, a number of significant arrests have been made of those involved in the wind-power industry. The most high profile of these was the arrest of Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC Energy Company and president of Italy’s National Association of Wind Energy. The charge is fraud. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate of Vigorito, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily. Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.

The wind power industry is heavily subsidized. In the charge, it is alleged that the government subsidies were used to build wind farms that were not able to operate, with the owners pocketing large amounts of public funds while not returning any services to the public for these funds.


In the financial year 2007-08, UK electricity customers were forced to pay a total of over $1 billion to the owners of wind turbines. That figure is due to rise to over $6 billion a year by 2020 given the UK government's unprecedented plan to build a nationwide infrastructure with some 25 gigawatts of wind capacity, in a bid to shift away from fossil fuel use. Capacity is not the same as use. According to U.K. government statistics, the average load factor for wind turbines across the U.K. was 27.4%. Thus a typical two-megawatt turbine actually produced only 0.54 MW of power on an average day. The worst-performing U.K. turbine had a load factor of just 7%. These figures reflect a poor return on investment. This poor return is often obscured by the subsidy system that allows turbine operators and supporters to claim they can make a profit, even when turbines operate at very low load factors. They only profit from subsidy and a legal requirement for energy providers to use renewable energy.

Roger Helmer, the European MP who is skeptical about wind-farms, recently noted that all wind farms require back-up systems to provide energy when wind is low or power from the wind farms is intermittent. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) suggests that some 75% of capacity needs to be backed up by coal or gas fired power systems. Generating industry players like E-ON say over 90%, while a recent UK House of Lords Report suggests that some 100% back-up will be required, effectively cloning the capacity. The back-up generation capacity will run intermittently, variably and sub-optimally to compensate for wind variation — and therefore run inefficiently, with higher costs and emissions than necessary.

Subsidy levels vary by jurisdiction. In the US, the Production Tax Credit (PTC), recently extended for another year, is a 1.8-cent tax credit per kilowatt hour for the first ten years of the wind turbine's life. Average electricity rates fall between 7 and 11 cents per kilowatt hour, so the credit amounts to a subsidy of between 16 to 25%. This is not the only subsidy that wind energy industry gets. Several US states offer tax breaks on operating revenue, and allow write-offs for capital investment. State laws that require a certain percentage of electricity to be produced by renewables guarantee that there will be a market, no matter what the cost. In the UK, subsidy levels are now at wind involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh, the entire burden of which falls directly on electricity consumers, whether they want renewables or not.
The two motives for encouraging wind-power are CO2 reduction and job creation. On the CO2 front, things do not look good. For example, Denmark, with the highest intensity of wind generation in Europe, has amongst the highest per capita emissions in Europe. The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,”

In Spain, a report by a highly respected economics unit found the nation’s push for huge expansion of alternate energy sources had no positive impact on job creation and instead appeared to have caused job losses by diverting resources in ways that hurt the overall economy. The jobs that were created required enormous subsidies – ranging from $752,000 to $1.4 million per position created – and often were only temporary. In Oregon, an investigation published in The Oregonian newspaper shows that a tax-credit program meant to spur the construction of solar and wind power plants in the state cost 40 times more than the administration told legislators it would. Lax oversight meant many dubious projects were given millions of dollars. Job gains were few.

So why is wind power so important? It is a sign that politicians can use to suggest that they are responding to the perceived threat of climate change. Fraud, subsidy, lack of impact and high costs together with the myth of job creation will not stop politicians committing to more wind-farms, with Alberta leading Canada’s rush to look responsive. It is a shame that no one is looking critically at what this rent-seeking and grant-farming industry is really all about. Perhaps the Italian courts will help us see the reality of this industry.

The Next President

On Thursday at a dinner in Brussels European leaders will decide who will occupy two key positions in the European Union - The President of the European Council and the odd sounding yet critically important High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Both are created as a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the new constitution for the EU which aims to make the EU more efficient and to enhance its role on the world stage. The job of managing this process, largely secretive and with not even a veneer of democracy, is in the hands of the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, currently President of the European Union.

It will be a difficult meal. In part because no one is really sure what kind of role they would like the persons holding these two positions to take and in part because France and Germany are seeking to shape the outcome through sheer brute force. The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, are said to have settled on the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy, as their candidate for President. He is clearly the current favourite and if the decision was to made over lunch today he would secure the support of most nations in the EU. But there appears to be growing resentment that France and Germany are “running the show” and this could lead other nations to support Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister.

Just a few weeks ago Blair was a front runner. But his support of the Iraq war, his alliance and close relationship with George W Bush and his smooth talking “spin” politics are all weighing against him. Angela Merkel in particular is against his appointment. There is also a concern that having a British person represent the EU when Britain itself is often ambivalent about many aspects of Europe and is not a member of the Eurozone would send unfortunate signals to other countries around the world. Blair wants the Presidency, but cannot be seen to be campaigning for it.

As for the "foreign minister" position, there is the possibility that David Miliband, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, could secure this position. Over the last month he has given a series of interviews and a detailed speech on Europe's place in the world. He said what many other European leaders wanted to hear. But over the last few days Miliband has ruled himself out. The BBC reports one official in Brussels as saying that his behaviour looks like a case of "political flirting". The more cynical see his behaviour as an attempt to position himself as the successor to Gordon Brown when Brown steps down, likely after the parliamentary elections in Britain, now widely expected in March 2010.

The Swedish Prime Minister is hoping to arrive at the dinner with just two names which he knows he has support for, but this is as much of a pipe dream as securing a binding climate change treaty in Copenhagen just a few days later. The “old firm” European countries and the newly arrived Eastern European members of the EU see the two positions in different ways, each requiring very different kinds of people. Poland has suggested that there be interviews and a selection committee. Germany has made clear that they do not want either position holders to consider themselves anything more than spokespersons for the EU – they are not policy makers. By the time desert arrives, it is likely that they will postpone a decision or chose candidates through so many compromises and side-deals that they devalue the positions themselves.

When George W Bush visited the EU in 2005 he famously said "You sure gotta lotta presidents in this Europe." That is part of the problem. While the EU wants to enhance its status in the world and saw these two positions as the vehicles by which this could be achieved, there are a lot of Presidents who want to secure the credit for being the voice of Europe. To complicate matters, The European Parliament voted in its own president, former Polish prime minister, Jerzy Buzek, in July. Earlier in the fall it gave its backing to Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as commission president. Under Lisbon, the presidency of other councils (EcoFin, Agriculture, and Transport for example) continues to rotate every six months between member states, which will continue to seek some recognition and profile for their "presidencies". There is also the increasingly powerful presidency of the Eurogroup – the ministerial meetings of the Euro countries. George W Bush was likely more insightful than he could know.

Being a waiter at the dinner on Thursday would be an interesting position, and no doubt many journalists are practicing carrying trays and pouring wine. There will be a lot of talk and side conversations. Whether a decision will be made is anyone’s guess. It may be that, as someone remarked about Clement Atlee, “an empty taxi turned up at the dinner and the first President of the European Council got out”.

What are the Deniers Denying?

There is a growing anxiety amongst the supporters of a climate change treaty that the “deniers” are exerting an undue influence over the Copenhagen negotiations and are sowing the seeds of confusion and doubt in the minds of the general public. Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has suggested that the deniers are "too dangerous to ignore" and that they are "holding the world to ransom".

But what are the deniers denying? Basically, the deniers are denying four things:

1. They are denying that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change. They do not doubt that climate change is occurring, it always has and always will and it is nature’s response to a complex array of conditions. While emitting CO2 in ever-growing volumes is not a desirable thing, reducing these emissions, even dramatically, will not unduly influence climate.

2. The deniers deny that there is a consensus within climate science that man is the primary cause of global warming. There are many areas of dispute amongst the scientific community with respect to climate, including explanations for changes in Arctic and Antarctic ice, the role of the sun in determining climate and the validity and robustness of computer models of climate change. As Einstein noted, it takes a single set of observations linked to an alternative theory to trigger a shift in thinking in science. The theory that humans are the primary cause of climate change is not, like Newtonian laws of mechanics, a closed theory – it is still open to question.

3. The deniers deny that many of the events attributed to climate change – the melting of the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, hurricanes, the spread of malaria in Africa and so on – are connected to climate change. For each of these events there are other, more plausible explanations. For example, the melting of the ice cap on Kilimanjaro is strongly linked to deforestation of the area in close proximity to the mountain, which results in a lowering of moisture levels which impact ice formation.

4. Finally, the deniers deny that taxing carbon and developing carbon markets will have an impact on the climate. Indeed, the economists who are deniers are skeptical about the economics of many green “solutions” – wind farms, solar farms, cap and trade, carbon taxes and emissions control. They do not deny that reducing CO2 emissions may be desirable for other reasons – air quality being the most important. But they are not convinced that all of these investments will produce the return expected – a cooler planet.

To support their denials, deniers use peer reviewed scientific papers which call into question the currently dominant scientific view and comprehensive economic analysis. There are many such papers by experts in climatology, including some who are or have been part of the scientific team used by the UN to create the technical documents which are said to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. They also make extensive use of observational data and measurements of temperature, ocean level, emissions and so on. They do not put their faith in computer models, which in any case produce contradictory findings: rather they rely heavily on direct measures.

Because the deniers have been very vociferous, they have also come under attack. The attacks take three basic forms. The first is to question the scientific credentials of those why deny the man-made global warming thesis. The same standards are not applied to the IPCC itself or to many “warmists” – the head of the IPCC (a former railway engineer), David Suzucki and Al Gore, for example, have no qualifications in climatology. Second, there is the standard accusation that deniers are funded by big oil or the coal industry. This ignores the funding granted to the “warmists”, which runs into billions, by interest groups and governments which should not be regarded as neutral sources of funds. The final accusation is that they ignore the human suffering their denials may cause. This is not at all the case – the primary action plan suggested by the deniers is that we should focus our actions on adaptation and technologies to combat warming, cooling and the other effects of the natural cycle of climate change.

Skepticism is healthy and necessary condition of science. It is also a necessary condition of public policy development. Trying to weigh evidence and make decisions is tough, but the warmists refuse to debate with the deniers and the policy makers have their minds set on a course of action, despite growing evidence that it will make little difference to the climate over time.

As we get near to the December meeting of world governments in Copenhagen, now less than four weeks away, frantic attempts are being made to salvage something from the meeting. What now looks likely is a high-level political agreement to be followed by more talks. The deniers will be blamed for derailing what could have been a powerful moment in Copenhagen, leading to the creation of a powerful global governance organization for climate change strategy management. The deniers certainly influenced public opinion, but the failure of Copenhagen to produce a binding agreement is as much a failure of the intellectual quality of the argument for such an agreement as it is about the politics surrounding it.

The Real Agenda Behind Climate Change

In various buildings housing outposts of the European Union hang signs which boldly state “You Control Climate Change” and extol the virtues of lowering the personal carbon footprint of those employed by the EU.

Some employees, including senior officers, it seems, believe that drastically reducing carbon emissions will stop climate change. Others have another agenda.

That agenda sees the “climate-change crisis,” largely engendered by the media and a small group of scientists, as a valuable cloak by which to achieve sustainable development, wealth and technology transfers, energy security and a restoration of “balance” in the global economy. Put simply, many of the smart people in the EU organizations know that climate change is a natural process, but see it as a convenient means of furthering the pursuit of a new socio-economic policy.

The goal of the new policy is to slow global population growth, with a view to reducing poverty, especially in emerging economies. The first step to its implementation was the need to link economic development and growth with a renewed concern for the quantity, nature and quality of natural resources.

The next step to creating a sustainable world economy, the thinking goes, is the transfer of wealth and technology from the developed world to the emerging economies.

With that in mind, the EU is expected to recommend, at December’s Copenhagen global warming summit, that the developed world transfer $100 billion per year to the emerging world to create an essential pillar for accelerating economic development , a mechanism which is also known to slow the rate of population growth. Once the second strategic pillar – the rapid transfer of emerging technologies, especially “green” technologies – is added, it is believed that the seeds for rapid development of new and sustainable industry sectors will be well on its way.

For the United States, there are additional benefits to linking naturally-occurring climate change and energy security: it will be able to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil and increase its ability to generate energy through wind, solar, nuclear and oil — provided it can be produced in a green and sustainable way from local neighbours, including Canada.

While energy security has been an avowed objective of US policy since the Nixon administration, US President Barack Obama has elevated it to the heart of the climate change policy debate.

To pay for energy security, governments need such new sources of revenue as carbon taxes and levies on fuels, airline travel and recyclable equipment, among a variety of other things. They are all also encouraging their citizens to become carbon-conscious, which also generates new transferable funds for governments to use. For example, the sale of carbon permits in the US, after the first allocations, is estimated to be worth over $600 billion.

Part of the rhetoric to sell this energy-security agenda revolves around the argument — yet to be proven in any jurisdiction — that a focus on renewable energy and energy security will create millions of new jobs. While there is no doubt that new jobs certainly will be created, they generally come with the loss of other jobs in more traditional carbon-intensive industries.

In Spain, for example, each of its new green jobs was connected to the loss of 2½ jobs from other sectors. The issue should not be the number of new jobs created in green industries, but net job gain as a result of new economic activity.

For some policy makers, the climate-change “crisis” affords them the opportunity to rebalance the economy away from wealth for a few as a result of globalization to a more equitable distribution of wealth. And in geopolitical and family terms, under such a scenario, wealth creation comes increasingly from sustainable economic activity.

Simply put, the climate change debate is being used by policy makers to eradicate poverty.

These serious-minded policy makers know that climate change is more complex than has been presented to the general public and that scientists have many complex views about what is happening and what might happen. But the cloak of a global crisis provides a unique opportunity to pursue what is, in their view, a noble agenda.

Compromise at Copenhagen

It is now clear that the Copenhagen summit of world governments, due to meet in less than twenty days, will not reach a binding agreement on climate change as was originally intended.

China, the USA, Britain and Canada working closely with host country Denmark, have agreed to a two step process. Step one, to be completed at the Copenhagen summit, is a global political commitment to combat climate change – reinforcing the key messages from Rio, Kyoto, Bali and the recent G20 meetings. This political manifesto will contain nothing new, though Obama is subtly seeking to shift the message so that it focuses on clean energy and not embrace the entire gambit of economic activity.

The second step, much more difficult given the failure to reach agreement over the last twenty four months, will be for the world leaders to agree on a timetable for a binding agreement that will dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, creating a technology and resource transfer funds for developing nations and commit the world to sustainable development. The UN have suggested that a conference in the spring of 2010 will seek to narrow the basis of such an agreement.

Time is running out. The Kyoto Accord, the last binding agreement, is due to expire in 2012. As it does so, legally binding treaty obligations which include the purchase of offsets, expire and nations can legally cease to spend billions in support of reforestation and other projects around the world said to be “green”. Despite the fact that the Kyoto Accord is a remarkable failure – global CO2 emissions continue to rise, even in countries which are signatories to the accord – many nations are seeking an agreement which is much more aggressive than Kyoto ever was. It is worth noting, however, that the EU stands as a group of nations which will likely meet its Kyoto obligations, with several countries (France, Germany, Britain, Greece and Sweden) doing so without the need to purchase offsets.

In this lies the problem. The drastic measures sought by the green lobby – an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions based on a 1990 baselines to be achieved by 2050 – coupled with the recommendations for a new global government agency for climate change are simply too much for many nations to take. The split between the developed world, especially the EU, and the developing world over the economic impacts and the growing distaste for global government agencies which flout democracy, each conspire to make a binding agreement more difficult to take. The new phenomena of a growing popular backlash against climate change policies, especially in the US, are causing politicians to be cautious. President Obama, for example, is downplaying cap and trade and focusing upon clean energy and energy security and rarely speaks of climate change as the focus for his agenda.

There are a few devices which will make the agreement in 2010 easier to reach. The first is to change the baseline date for calculating how deep to reduce CO2 emissions. Canada has already done this, having moved the baseline date for its policies from 1990 to 2006 – it is seeking a 20% reduction on the 2006 figure by 2020 and 60-70% by 2050. Doing so significantly reduces the amount of CO2 to be taken out of industrial processes, transportation and other economic sectors. The second is to focus on energy and see this as the centre of attention – narrowing targets to the energy sector, fixing a portion of a nations energy supply to come from renewable sources and demanding clean coal, carbon sequestration and carbon taxes on energy. The third big shift will be away from notions of global government and a strong focus on using existing mechanisms, such as the G20, as a basis for coordinating efforts.

Most interestingly, there is a move away from market mechanisms as a basis for carbon reduction. While the EU still favours a cap and trade mechanism, the US is quietly moving away from this and is looking systematically at a simple carbon tax. The White House continues to develop plans for an aggressive global warming bill early in 2010 that will be loaded with new spending on green technology and jobs paid for with tax increases. Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf says the White House focus on deficit reduction could easily kill the cap-and-trade effort. “I think this means cap-and-trade has to go to the backburner,” he said. He also notes that, given the growing unpopularity of climate change talk – Al Gore’s speech was disrupted by chants and protests when he spoke to a small audience of some eight hundred in Florida about the need for strong and decisive action last Saturday - and the fact that 2010 is the year of mid-term elections, he expects modest rather than bold proposals.

The communications industry will go into overdrive to “spin” the Copenhagen political agreement as an important milestone in the work of governments to “stop” climate change. Don’t be fooled. It is really a spin on failure. At three summits this year – the G8, the G20 and the APEC summit – climate change agreements have been weak and nebulous. So will this one. Green lobby groups, funded largely by governments themselves, will rightly see Copenhagen as a failure. When Canadian Prime Minister muses that he may or may not go to Copenhagen, he is right to do so. Since nothing new will emerge, he would be better to spend his time looking at climate change data – he may be very surprised to see the difference between the rhetoric and the facts.

Man Bites Dog and Climate Change

The European Union made clear last week that there is a need to create a climate change fund to transfer directed funds to developing nations to help them mitigate the impacts of climate change. The EU leaders suggested that an annual sum of $100 billion is needed, yet they made no firm commitments to transfer any sum from EU sources. Just as the G8 leaders reached an agreement that average global temperature should not be allowed to rise more than two degrees this century, the vagueness of these commitments and the absence of detail permit the politicians to claim victory when it is plain for all to see that nothing has actually happened.

Green campaigners are, as might be expected, not at all happy. They were looking for a firm commitment by the EU on actual funds and a timetable for the transfer of these funds. They were also looking for agreements on the easy transfer of green technologies between developed and emerging economies. They regard the announcement, championed by Gordon Brown as a breakthrough, as a “greenwash” and a hollow rhetorical announcement in the lead up to Copenhagen’s world summit on climate change, now just five weeks away.

Within the EU there are strong disagreements. The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, is a confirmed climate change skeptic and sees the taxing of carbon as a major economic challenge for the development of nations. Most of the former eastern bloc countries, led by Poland, are also finding the cap and trade and mitigation strategies being adopted by the EU as very problematic. The East-West split within the EU is making real decision making difficult. We can expect more symbolic and empty announcements, especially between now and Copenhagen.

Meantime, a new report makes clear that the economic impact on Canada of achieving the modest CO2 reduction targets set by the Canadian government – a twenty per cent reduction on 2006 emissions – would be considerable, with Alberta taking the brunt of the impacts. Written by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation and commissioned by the TD Bank, the report claims that Canada could meet these targets and reduce CO2 emissions. What it doesn’t say is that doing so will have no discernible impact on the climate.

There are other developments. Al Gore, Nobel prizewinner and champion warmist, now claims that sea levels will rise two hundred and twenty feet within ten years – ocean levels rose right inches over the last century and the IPCC predict rises of 1.26 inches per decade for the remainder of the century. Some have seen this claim as an example of the desperation warmist campaigners feel as they see the potential of a treaty being agreed at Copenhagen fading fast.

Some key campaigners are showing their desperation too. David Suzuki has repeated his suggestion that Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be jailed for their policies on climate change. George Monboit, the British journalist and writer, also repeated his suggestion that, every time a flood occurs in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be jailed on the grounds that airline emissions are a major cause of warming. Gordon Brown has said that if Copenhagen fails to produce an agreement then it will be too late for mankind to act o “stop” climate change. Expect more high volume and bizarre rhetoric between now and December 7th, when the Copenhagen meeting begins.

Meantime, the planet continues to cool, oceans are not rising any faster this century than they did in the last and ice extent in both the Arctic and Antarctic continue to expand and Polar bears continue to thrive in all but two of the bear communities. Nature is sending its own message. It is unfortunate that most reporting ignore nature and prefers the Al Gore, proving that dog bites man is not as interesting as man bites dog in the news business.

Hancock's Moment of Truth

Alberta has a progressive Minister of Education, Dave Hancock. He has used 2009 as a year of dialogue and engagement. His aim was to create an informed basis for a reform of the Education Act and a repositioning of Alberta’s school system to better prepare students for life and work in the twenty first century. Widespread community based sessions, major conference events and serious consultation with the ATA and thought leaders throughout the Province have taken place. Hancock is now preparing to act.

Part of the background to this reform is that education in Alberta is seen to be successful, at least in terms of outcomes. Using standard measures, Alberta fairs well in international comparison of pupil performance – generally ranked among the top jurisdictions in the world and as the best performing Province in Canada. Where we are weak is in the number of students completing high school and the skills they leave with – many in the workforce have poor literacy and numeracy skills and poor innovation literacy.

The twenty first century demands many new skills from our school leavers – an ability to engage in lifelong learning, technology literacy, teamwork and problem solving skills, the ability to design, to create and to challenge as well as the core skills in science, math, language arts, social studies and language. Many, including the Alberta Teachers Association, have argued that our outcome heavy curriculum gets in the way of real learning and student engagement and that now is the time not just for a rethink of what students are asked to learn but also of how the students are being asked to learn.

In particular, the role of technology in teaching and learning is seen as a key issue. Many, but not all students have access to broadband enabled systems, gaming, the internet, social networking and other digital devices which can be used for learning. Yet, despite spending over $1.8 billion on technology for schools over the last ten years, many teachers are not using technology effectively as a learning resource and many schools have inadequate IT equipment to make real learning through technology effective.

In other parts of the world, educational reform has focused on structure and competitiveness. David Cameron, Prime Minister in waiting in Britain, has committed to a voucher like scheme which would permit for profit schools to offer the required educational programs and additional learning specialities in exchange for government cash. Similar reforms in Sweden have produced remarkable results, with over twenty percent of Swedish students attending private schools. One in eight schools are private and some fifteen hundred applications to establish a school are in progress. Ending the power of school boards to block Charter Schools, letting funds follow the child and funding schools directly through vouchers are all part of the scheme. Sweden also performs well on international outcome measures. The fear amongst some in Alberta is that Hancock will adopt the mega Board model used in the reform of Alberta’s health care system. Devolved authority is the key to performance improvement.

The big challenge for Alberta is that it has spent two decades centralizing control of curriculum, teaching and technology and, in the process, has de-professionalized teaching. While many teachers have seized opportunities to develop their professional skills and competencies through graduate degrees and professional development activities, curriculum control and testing now inhibits innovation and risk taking in terms of teaching. Many teachers do not have the skills sets needed to facilitate new forms of learning and new uses of technology.

A related challenge, which educators have been quick to draw the publics attention to, is that education is slated for budget reductions along with health, social services and all other Ministries in Alberta. A figure of $300 million in 2010-11 has been used to highlight this challenge. The Ministry of Education has some seven hundred staff and an additional one hundred full time equivalent staff on contract – a very large Department by any standard. Most of the required savings could come from reducing this bureaucracy and changing some of the ways in which the Department functions, for example, ending Grade 3 Provincial Achievement Tests.

There are three criteria by which we should judge Hancock’s reforms when they become known. The first is what they will do for the process of learning – how will it change as a result of the Hancock reforms? The second is what will the changes do to give greater levels of empowerment and control to schools directly – and, consequently, reduce control by the Department? Finally, we should ask what they will do improve student engagement, retention and performance?

Hancock is a vey capable Minister – his challenge will be to manage reform with a caucus which appears hesitant when faced with a chance to make significant change and reluctant to invest in the future at a time of budget restraint. Bold is what is needed – the dynamics are such that modest is what will occur. Major educational reform occurs only once in every generation. Lets hope Hancock rises to the challenge.

Blair 0 Milliband 1

Any hope Tony Blair had of becoming the first President of the European Union were dashed today as France and Germany signalled that they had an alernative candidate and would prefer not to have Blair in the chair.

His support of George Bush and the Iraq war provide one set of reasons for his rejection, but his smooth talking and spin-doctored presentation of policies were just as significant. Newly re-elected Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel led the opposition and persuaded Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who had previously supported Blair, to change his mind. Gordon Brown’s strong support probably did not help.

The new candidate who has secured the German and French support is Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende, now widely seen as the new favourite. While Balkenende vigorously denies any interest in the position, leaked conversations make clear that he is.

The Presidency of the European Union is a new position called for in the Lisbon Treaty, likely to be ratified next week, once the Czech Republic finalizes some special arrangements agreed to this week in a meeting of the EU’s leaders. The Czech constitutional court will rule on whether or not the treaty is legal or whether it breaches the Czech constituion on Thursday, 5th November.

The role of the President is to be chair of the leaders meeting and to be the public face of the EU between these meetings. The concern with Blair was that he was not seen as a Chair, more as a Chief Executive.

Britain may still get something from the situation. David Milliband,currently Britain’s foreign secretary, is now widely favoured for the position of first EU Foreign Minister, a position also called for in the Lisbon Treaty. Milliband, who many see as a potential leader of the Labour Party after Gordon Brown’s departure following his expected defeat at the next British general election, is young (forty four), seen as an effective communicator and mediator and has performed admirably as Britain’s foreign secretary. He and his brother, Ed Milliband, are the first siblings to serve at the same time in the British cabinet since Neville and Austin Chamberlain.

Blair will be disappointed. He had worked hard to secure this appointment. Its yet a further indication that his personality and performance are now seen as barriers rather than assets. Some have suggested that his preoccupation with religion in public life and his falure to make an impact on the middle east peace process, which is a key concern for him in his role as a Middle East Envoy for the “quartet” of interested parties (US, UN, EU and Russia), are factors which also weighed against him. He is also seen by some, including the Czech President, as an intellectual light-weight.

The decision on who will hold the Presidency and Foreign Minister roles will be made by the leaders of the EU within weeks of the Lisbon Treaty being approved.

Obama: Must Do Better

Barrack Obama is increasingly looking like the rookie Senator from Chicago, acting in the role of President. Despite the hoopla and ballyhoo surrounding his historic election, many now see Obama as “on probation” and the report card shows that he is potentially a failing President.

Obama has proposed just one specific piece of legislation and a budget. The legislation was the $787 billion dollar stimulus package he insisted on when he arrived in office and the budget is one which takes the US so deeply into debt based financing as to carry the potential of destabilising the world’s bond markets and forcing major cuts in US spending. Now that the US is officially out of recession, he may begin to claim that the stimulus funds were the critical ingredient in ensuring this quick recovery, despite the lack of evidence in support of this thesis. Whatever the merits of the theory that stimulus funds “saved” the US economy, the reality is that these same funds may also impair growth.

Indeed, the economic strategy being pursued by Obama is difficult to fathom. In less than a year in office, Obama has tripled the deficit and sent shivers down the bond market traders who have to find buyers for several billion dollars of government bonds each working day. The debt will rise and his plan to curtail government spending once the recession is over and growth returns to the economy looks, at best, wishful thinking and at worst, deceitful. Few economists, with the notable exception of Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, think that there is a strategy at all. Whatever the economic framework, it is threatened daily by new commitments and suggestions coming directly from Obama.

Obama’s desire to see health care reform is, to put it bluntly, a shambles. Rather than propose anything, he left the work of drafting legislation to Nancy Pelosi and her left-leaning friends in the House of Representatives. When the backlash came, Pelosi is hidden away and Obama hits the campaign train and begins the work of community organizing to try and get something passed so that it can appear as if reform has taken place. The so-called “public option”, which involves government managed insurance scheme, has been “in”, “out” and doing the hokey-cokey for weeks now (it is “in” the Senate bill at the time of writing, but may be dropped given the opposition my maverick sometimes Democrat Joe Lieberman) and exactly what the bill will change is as yet unclear. Not exactly an example of focused leadership.

His other big agenda item, climate change legislation, has been left to Senator John Kerry to develop and promote. This is a mistake. He denies that cap and trade has anything to do with government, thinks that the world is so imperilled by CO2 and that “science is telling us what to do” and is not at all clear on the socio-economic implications of his own bill. The Waxman Bill, another version of the same thing, is also on the rocks – facing hundreds of amendments in the Senate and a filibuster by republicans. Recognizing that the global summit on climate change in Copenhagen is a bust, Obama has repositioned this whole initiative in terms of green energy and energy security. This file is also a shambles.

Then there is Afghanistan. Not an easy issue for any President or Prime Minister to tackle, as Stephen Harper and Gordon Brown can attest. Nonetheless, Obama has to make a decision about whether or not he is supporting a surge and transferring troops who are now withdrawing from Iraq into Afghanistan. He also has to work behind the scenes to ensure that the election results from the run-off election are credible, whoever wins. Obama is taking his time. His Vice President, who rarely has both feet on the ground since at least one of them will be in his mouth, is opposed to the surge. His defence team are for it. The people seem, by and large, against being in Afghanistan. Obama’s response is to dither and wait. Another shambles.

Obama’s approval ratings have fallen twelve points since he became President. This despite, or perhaps because of, his almost daily appearance on television. Obama knows how to campaign and win votes, which is why he is out supporting mid-term electoral candidates across the US. But campaigning and governing through focused leadership are two different things. He may want to appeal directly to the American people so that they can influence the congress, but what is in fact happening is that his appeals for community action and producing more questions about his leadership and no meaningful results in congress. His campaigning is seen as a way of getting some “relief” from actually doing the job of President of the United States.

If the people could write a report card right now for Obama it would probably say that he is a strong and effective communicator, a solid campaigner and an imaginer. He is not yet proven himself to be an effective President of the United States. In the immortal phrasing of the millions of teachers who write report cards around the world “could do better” comes to mind. Indeed, for him to fulfill the promises he made at the time of his election, “must do better” should replace “yes we can” as his signature phrase.

Rebooting Alberta

As Alberta looks increasingly like a Province blowing in the wind – mounting deficits, no meaningful strategy to reduce spending or increase taxation, a government paralyzed by a leadership review of its Premier and the trials and tribulations of an emerging right wing Wild Rose Alliance party – a group of Albertans have decided to take some action. In late November a by invitation only conference in Red Deer, Reboot Alberta, will take place.

The team behind this – Ken Chapman, Don Schurman, Dave King and Michael Brechtel – are seasoned thinkers and players in Alberta’s political minefields. Their aim is not to create a new political party but to develop a series of policy and action frameworks that could reshape Alberta for the twenty first century. Focusing not just on reinventing democracy in Alberta, but also on green oil, rethinking schools and education, social policies and environmental policies, the sessions are intended to develop alignment of progressive thinkers.

Writing about Reboot Alberta on his widely read blog, Ken Chapman says “We need to look at our entire political culture, not just the government. We need to consider what needs to be controlled, what alternatives do we need to create and what can we dispose of and delete in order to deliver us from the current frozen state of ineffective politics and governance.”

Part of the rationale of the event, which is by invitation only, is that it is time for thinking citizens to outline what they see as policies in the public interest. Underlying this is the idea that the gap between the interests of the government and those of the public are widening, especially with respect to some key issues such as schooling, environmental policies and the economy. When the Premier ruled out tax increases and presented a view of the economy as “waiting for a turnaround”, many were disappointed. A key moment for rethinking the role of Government and the nature of the public service was lost. Despite a public appetitite for austerity, the Government thinks it can buy an election by continuing to spend. It may be surprised that this is not what the public see as in their interests.

On the environment, while some policy shifts have taken place under Stelmach, there is no real articulation of a green oil strategy that makes sense. The governments strategy can be seen as piecemeal, reactive and hesitant rather than a bold move to do demand higher royalties, higher standards of environmental responsibility and higher investments in refining capacity. As Satya Das has made clear in his recent book Green Oil (see review elsewhere on Troy Media web site), the interests of the owners of the oil sands – the people of Alberta – have become secondary to those of the oil companies.

On education, reform is in the air. But bold and courageous may not be. A bloated government department is working hard to protect “turf” and radical ideas for change, while being listened to, are always brought to caucus for dismissal. Yet the system needs to change and become much more responsive to the needs of a twenty first century economy.

Healthcare is, most people agree, a “wicked” problem which has difficult solutions. While Stephen Duckett brings his own brand of austerity to the health care system, the public is largely shut out of the process of health care reform and development. Government needs a long term health strategy which reboots the system and focuses on wellness and preventive work rather than continually boosting hospital and emergency care. Without a reboot, the system will fall into decay due to lack of funding.

These are some examples of the policy conversations which progressive people will engage in at the end of November in Red Deer.

A reboot, as those of us who work with computers know, restores some sanity to the chaos of a confused machine. While it takes some features of the machine back to benchmarked standards, it updates others and suggests modifications that users should consider. So too with reboot Alberta. It is time to take some of our government activities back to benchmark while others need to be modified. Some things need to be added to our suite of activities, others deleted. It will be an interesting conversation.

Rethinking Copenhagen

October is almost over, as is any optimism associated with the Copenhagen meeting on climate change, scheduled for December. Canada, in the form of Environment Minister Jim Prentice, has made clear that it does not think a consensus can be reached when the governments of the world meet in Denmark. At best, they are hoping that they can agree to keep the dialogue open and move towards a common understanding of the challenges nations face together with a range of bilateral and multilateral arrangements which will seek to mitigate varying consequences of climate change.

But major shifts are already taking place. President Obama, who spoke on climate change at MIT this week, has redefined the US climate change strategy as fundamentally about energy and energy policy – a very different focus from the one he had six months ago. The speech, watched carefully for signals of compromise with the increasingly skeptical US Senate, made hardly any mention of cap and trade and instead focused on the need to rebalance the sources of energy used by the US while at the same time strengthening energy security. The US environmental lobby reacted angrily to this reengaging of past commitments.

India and China are resisting a draft treaty which set binding carbon emission reduction targets, compensating for the negative economic impact with significant funds for technology transfer. They see these binding targets as limiting the potential for growth, slowing recovery from recession and making it more difficult to lift large numbers of people from poverty. They are not convinced that the developed world understands the opportunity they have created for real development and see climate change mitigation as a threat rather than an opportunity.

The US and Canada are interested in using Copenhagen to reach bilateral and multilateral arrangements with India, China and others. The European Union is looking at Copenhagen as a way of leveraging climate change to promote a world carbon market, which could be supported whether or not tough limits on CO2 are imposed by treaty arrangements.

The real challenge now is communication – how can world leaders explain what will look to many like a failure at Copenhagen?

Some will not be able to. Gordon Brown, who is nearing the end of his short time as Britain’s Prime Minister, has staked some of the last shreds of his fragile credibility on being a deal maker at Copenhagen. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, has his sword sharpened ready to fall on following his rhetoric earlier in the year when a deal at Copenhagen looked faintly possible – his florid language and apocalyptic predictions may lead him to be a one term Secretary General if Copenhagen is seen to be a “failure”. Prince Charles, who has made it clear that we are all doomed if Copenhagen fails, is probably packing and making arrangements to move to a cooler planet than the one he currently spends most of his time on.

If the Copenhagen talks focus on rethinking global energy strategy, integrating “green energy” with carbon based energy, accelerating technology developments for green technology and stimulating low-carbon economic development in the emerging economies of the world, then some good could come out of it. The organizers need now to act swiftly to lower expectations, shift the focus to energy and economic development, give less emphasis to cap and trade mechanisms and more to technology transfer and sharing. There is also a need to focus some time and conversation on mitigating some of the other effects of climate change, notably any possible rise in sea levels or adverse effects on food supply and health.

A global summit is an expensive affair. Bringing thousands of public servants, politicians, lobbyists and journalists together in Copenhagen, not to mention a highly destructive event for the planet, is also a logistical nightmare. To use the time unproductively by focusing on a deal that cannot be done makes no sense. While the green lobby groups, mostly funded by governments, will be upset with any retreat from their luddite agenda, a rational approach to what is possible – energy, technology transfer, sea defense strategy and global health management – makes sense. Copenhagen, rather than being a bust, could be a new start for new technologies for energy and a different future for the emerging economies of the world.

Time for Real Leadership in Alberta

On Wednesday of this week two prominent Albertans gave important speeches.

The first speaker focused on the need to rethink the Alberta competitive advantage, especially as it relates to attracting new investment, restoring fiscal responsibility and developing strong communities. Based on a detailed and thorough analysis, the speaker recommended that Alberta needs to reduce public spending, cut the Alberta income tax and taxes on capital and impose a sales tax of eight per cent. Pointing to the fact that many other jurisdictions within Canada, never mind the US, are now more attractive destinations than Alberta for firms wishing to create new enterprises or expand existing ones, the speaker argued that urgent action was needed.

The second speaker, in a more folksy style, recognized that Alberta was facing a challenge but encouraged us not to panic. Because Alberta had stacked money under the mattress and could pay down the deficit the Government was incurring and could raise money through issuing bonds. He also suggested that wage freezes would also be needed for two years to stave off real trouble, but we shouldn’t panic – things would soon be back to normal and we could get back to growth.

The second speaker has been widely derided for his comments. They lack depth, they show an ignorance of the real structural challenges Alberta’s economy faces – a long-term change in the nature of natural gas pricing, shifts in investment patterns in oil and gas and a jobless economic recovery, over-spending and lax taxation – and project an ignorance of the political and social dynamics underlying Alberta’s current situation. The speaker was Ed Stelmach, sometime Premier of Alberta.

The first speaker, though recognized as having understood the economic problems Alberta faces, is widely thought to have solutions which many think Albertan’s would find tough to accept, even though they understand the need for both austerity and real change. While he caught the mood of the realist Albertan, his solutions are radical for a low tax regime. The speaker was Jack Mintz, formerly of the University of Calgary.

These two views of Alberta – “we’d better act differently to stave off real economic challenges” and “don’t panic, trust us, just don’t expect wage increases for a while” – suggest an emerging challenge for Alberta’s government. No one things that staying the course, with minor adjustments, will position Alberta well for the future. Most people think that significant change in strategy – major cuts in spending, increased taxation, reinventing the role of Government and finding solutions to long-standing problems like health care cost growth and environmental issues – will be necessary, but the Government does not appear to be listening.

The Wild Rose Alliance, which elects its new leader tomorrow, is voicing the concerns of thinking Albertan’s and their rise in popularity should also be triggering a significant rethink of strategy in the governing party. The fact that it isn’t speaks to the enmeshment of the cabinet in the hands of its caucus. Its time for the senior members of the party to break out of their capture by their own caucus and show real leadership for Alberta. It’s also time to recognize that the Premier, nice as he is, is no longer the right person to lead Alberta in the next stage of its development.

Alberta is a great place to live and work, kind of. But we don’t do great anymore and we are making it less and less likely that we ever will. What we are seeing in the Premiers address this week is an absence of bold, imaginative leadership. It is this that Alberta now needs.

All Change in Westiminster

David Cameron, the leader of the British Conservative Party, sits on top of a fourteen point lead in the latest opinion polls, suggesting a landslide victory with a majority of eighty or more in the next general election in Britain. Most commentators expect the election next May – it must be over before the first week of June under British electoral law – as Gordon Brown keeps hoping for either a significant economic turn-around or David Cameron to make a damaging campaign blunder. Gordon Brown is not helped by the news that the sight in his one remaining eye (he lost the sight in one eye as a teenager) is damaged.

Cameron had a reasonable party conference. He said enough to demonstrate that he could communicate effectively and that the new compassionate conservatism was focused, forthright and fiscally responsible, but not enough to worry the centrist voters. He left policy details for the election itself and focused on the major themes his party will pursue: getting Britain back to work, reducing the size and cost of government, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and tackling poverty. He balanced a government committed to austerity with one committed to compassion.

Most significantly, he offered a powerful and effective critique of the achievements of the Labour Government. He points out that since Labour came to power in 1997, the poor have become poorer, more young people are now long term unemployed than at anytime in recent history, inequality is rising faster under Brown than it did under Thatcher, crime rates in poverty stricken areas of Britain are rising, more schools fail to meet standards now than did a decade ago, more patients die in hospitals of medically mistakes and infections than at any time in the last fifty years, national debt (forecast to be £175 billion for 2010) is the highest since IMF intervention in the last Labour administration of Jim Callaghan. In fact, deficits and debt will define the social and economic policies of the next decade of British politics, with debt servicing in a single year costing more than is spent supporting schools.

This powerful critique is intended to point out the difference between the rhetoric of the Labour Party – a party for the people – and the reality of its achievements and to point to the history of the compassionate conservative party as the model for what is to come. It is an intellectually convincing argument, but people’s memories are fuzzy. Their images of conservatives don’t match this rhetoric – Cameron has a massive task ahead getting this message across in a way that is not patronizing or open to attack.

But fundamentally, the “new” Labour project of Blair, Brown and Mandelson has failed and done so spectacularly. Britain’s finances are in a shambles and it is selling off assets and printing money (now referred to as “fiscal easing”) so as to delay the inevitable increases in taxes and substantial cuts in public spending, which all major parties are committed to.

Brown will not go before the election and will fight to the end, but many in the Labour party are now resigned to the fact that they will lose the next election. Some three hundred and twenty five members of parliament will not return to the commons after the election – some 170 labour members are expected to retire, be forced to resign or lose their seats. As Labour begins to contemplate a decade or more in opposition, it will have some new blood to help it consider its future and will need a new leader.

Leadership candidates are already positioning themselves, while overtly supporting Gordon Brown. Ed Balls, currently Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, is a leading candidate as also is David Milliband, Foreign Secretary. Balls is a close ally of Brown, but is noticeably beginning to distance himself from Brown’s public policy positions. Milliband looked like a coup member earlier in the year, but backed off against significant threats to his political future by a rabid group of Brown acolytes who, it is said, make the mafia appear amateur when issuing threats. There is a growing view that, in order to have a chance of rebuilding, they need to skip the current generation and look to the next intake in the commons for a new leader. They will have time. No one will be looking to Labour for ideas and innovation for some time.

The New Prize Season

Written by Richard Cohen

In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of “Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention to ace every course and graduate number one in class.” In a prepared statement, young Shawn called the unprecedented award, “f—ing awesome.”

At the same time, and amazingly enough, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature went to Sarah Palin for her stated intention “to read a book someday.” The former Alaska governor was described as “floored” by the award, announced in Stockholm by nude Swedes beating themselves with birch branches, and insisted that while she was very busy right now, someday she would make good on her vow to read a book. “You’ll see,” she said from her winter home in San Diego.

And again in a stunning coincidence, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the Oscar for best picture will be given this year to the Vince Vaughn vehicle “Guys Weekend to Burp,” which is being story-boarded at the moment but looks very good indeed. Mr. Vaughn, speaking through his publicist, said he was “touched and moved” by the award and would do everything in his power to see that the picture lives up to expectation and opens big sometime next March.

At the same press conferences, the Academy announced that the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award would go this year to Britney Spears for her intention to “spend whatever it takes to save the whales.” The Academy recognized that Spears had not yet saved a single whale, but it felt strongly that it was the intention that counted most. Spears, who was leaving a club at the time, told People magazine that she would not want to live in “a world without whales.” People put it on the cover.

The sudden spate of awards based on intentions or plans or aspirations was attributed to the decision by the Norwegian Nobel committee to award the peace prize to Barack Obama for his efforts in nuclear disarmament and his outreach to the Muslim world. (The committee said next year it will honor a Muslim who reaches out to the non-Muslim world.) Some cynics suggested that Obama’s award was a bit premature since, among other things, a Middle East peace was as far away as ever and the world had yet to fully disarm. Nonetheless, the president seemed humbled by the news and the Norwegian committee packed for its trip to the United States, where it will appear on Dancing with the Stars.

Obama and the Catholic Church

Barrack Obama’s Nobel peace prize came as quite a surprise to those of us who used to think that the Nobel prize actually meant something. I gather he is now considering joining the Catholic church so that sainthood is a possibility in his second term.

Making Innovation Investments Work

As budget season approaches, universities are once again making the claim that they can be a key part of economic recovery and growth because they are engines of innovation.

Universities are critical vehicles for research activities which, sometimes, produce breakthroughs – penicillin, canola, Gatorade, Google. But their fundamental purpose is the development of highly qualified people who are able to engage in creative problem solving, critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge. Some of these highly qualified people, graduates of arts and social studies programs as well as science and technology, engage in advanced research. It is important that they do so, since knowledge based economies depend on both commercially attractive research but also on deepening our understanding of science, technology and social and cultural phenomenon.

We need more highly qualified people in our workforce. In comparison with other high performing innovative economies, such as Finland, we have around half the number of people with science and technology degrees as they do and we have significant weaknesses in high qualified managers leading our firms, especially those at an early stage of development.

We also have a low level of private sector spending on research. Our major research companies, recently denuded by the loss of the biggest research driven company in Canada – Nortel - number less than one hundred and twenty five and spend less per capita than most of our international competitors. This shows itself in the continued reduction in spending on R&D by firms but also in the decline in the ratio of private to public spending on R&D. In Finland, which is highly successful as an innovative economy, this ratio is close to 3:1 – in Canada it is closer to 1:1. Several research studies show that it is this ratio is a crucial driver for the commercialization of new products and services derived from research and the higher the ratio of private to public funds, the more commercialization takes place.

Our challenge is simple. Focusing funds on university research, while laudable, does not produce returns on investment which translate into economic growth. What is needed is a refocusing of our understanding of innovation as a commercially driven process, linked to the firms and a jurisdictions innovative capacity and the ability of people to lead, champion and manage change.


Five things need to happen if Canada is to leverage its knowledge based firms and research capacity for economic growth. First, we need to stop believing the rhetoric that research leads to innovation which leads to commercial products. It can be like this, but rarely is. We should accept that research is valuable in its own right and fund it, roughly at the level it is now. We should downplay the commercialization functions attached to universities and encourage them, through incentives, to find new and more engaging ways of working with firms.

Second, Canada needs to do all it can to stimulate R&D in firms. Extending the various tax credits to include marketing and consumer product testing, finding more ways of matching private firms spending and looking at different tax related strategies to encourage angel and venture capital funding of early stage, knowledge intensive firms.

Third, Canada needs to rethink its investments in learning and focus its immigration strategy on a dramatic increase in the number of highly qualified people with strong science and technology backgrounds working in firms. As part of this effort, we should pay attention to the frequent voices of the venture capital and investment community that constantly remind us to strengthen managerial capacity throughout Canadian industry, but especially in knowledge intensive early stage companies.

Fourth, we need to recognize that public service focused innovation – in health, education, social services, eldercare – is different from innovation intended to have direct commercial value. There are different buyers, regulatory requirements, competitive environments and product life cycles for “public good” based innovation versus widgets, sockets and socks. We need to consider what supports are needed by these public good sectors versus others and start to differentiate our support services accordingly.

Finally, we ought to see public policy and regulation as vehicles for stimulating commercialization. To take the “green economy” as one example, the faster Governments regulate a requirement to reduce water use in the oil sands, to reduce CO2 emissions dramatically, to end the production of tailing for the oil sands then the faster innovative technologies will emerge and provide a basis for what one author calls “Green oil”.

Investing more in the usual suspects and expecting different results is likely to lead us to fall further behind our competitors. It is time for a new and fresh thinking.

Our Universities

The Times Higher Education newspaper published its annual ranking of the world’s top two hundred universities this last week. The top five Universities in the world remain relatively constant – Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, University College London, Imperial College London, Oxford. What is more interesting is the position of Canadian Universities and the rapid emergence of Universities from Asia.

Canada’s top university, according to the list, is McGill (18th) followed by the University of Toronto (29th) and the University of British Columbia (40th). Dalhousie, which was on the list last year, no longer makes the top two hundred. Alberta has two universities of the list – the University of Alberta (59th) and the University of Calgary (149th), both of whom have made substantial gains over the last year, with the University of Alberta gaining fifteen places and the University of Calgary twenty one places, mainly due to their scores from students and employers.

Asian institutions are gaining ground. Japan has two in the top thirty – University of Tokyo (22nd) and the University of Kyoto (25th) - and China’s University of Hong Kong is also in this group. The National University of Singapore (30th) also ranks highly. This top thirty is dominated by the United States with thirteen and the United Kingdom with seven.

The lists are broad indications of the performance of institutions and only tell us a little about actual performance. The Times Higher Education list is largely about perception and experience. Other lists focus on actual performance and research – using measures of activity as opposed to staff, student and employer ratings as the basis for the ranking.

But such a list is timely. It reminds us to consider the quality of our Universities when making tough choices about funding, as Governments across Canada are now doing.

Strange things have happened in the world of Universities. We have the top five Universities in the country arguing that, due to their importance in terms of research and innovation, they should be treated and funded differently from other Universities. We have the growth of private universities offering undergraduate and graduate programs in a variety of modes – Meritus University, part of the group that also owns the University of Phoenix, Lansbridge, Yorkville, University Canada West, Quest and the University of Fredericton – all competing for students on pure market conditions with no funding from government. We have established private, non for profit university colleges, such as Concordia University College in Edmonton, offering quality undergraduate and graduate degrees. Then various Governments, but notably British Columbia and Alberta, have converted former community colleges to Universities. Two such conversions occurred in September, when Alberta converted Mount Royal College and McEwan College to universities.

It’s a confusing scene. What is actually happening is that being a “university” has been confused in the minds of politicians and administrators with being granted the right to award degrees. The result is a growing plethora of degree granting institutions competing for a declining population of students and demanding more from a shrinking pool of funding.

In all of this rush to upgrade our institutions, we are in danger of losing sight of three things. The first is the fundamental nature of a university – a place where scholarship and imagination is nurtured and research enabled, with the discovering minds of academics helping the growing minds of students come nearer to the frontiers of knowledge. Not all of the “new” universities and none of the private’s are engaged in research as a core of their beings as institutions. When this is absent or minimized, then the meaning of the “university” is devalued.

The second thing that is in danger of being lost is the conception of quality. Most quality assurance processes in Canada, and I am directly engaged in several, focus on student protection and the assurance that the institution is capable of sustaining the offering of quality programs to students, thus giving emphasis to teaching and minimizing (and, in some jurisdictions, ignoring) the role of a University in terms of research or the engagement in community service.

The third thing we are in danger of losing sight of is our academic standing in the world. As we diversify the offering of degrees through a range of different institutions and de-emphasize research, we lower Canada’s profile in the world. While a few institutions make modest gains on the league tables, such as the Times Higher Education ranking, the “new” and private universities operate knowing that they will never make the ranking process, never mind the list.

Universities are complex places. They have a teaching function, a research function and a community building and service function. In the rush to have a better educated work-force for the knowledge economy, we may be in danger of diluting our resources and creating several different leagues of institution that compete for resources, students, faculty and research funds. We are in danger of lowering our sights and missing the target: excellence.

Ireland Decides Tony Blair's Future

Ireland votes today on whether or not to approve the Lisbon Treaty agreed by twenty six other member nations of the European Union. It is likely that they will say yes. The result will be known on Saturday evening, Irish time.

Ireland is in serious trouble. Unemployment is at thirteen percent, the government is creating a “bad” bank to adopt the toxic assets of Ireland’s indebted banks so as to ease the flow of credit. Large corporations, once part of Ireland’s “roar” as a Celtic Tiger, are now leaving Ireland for less expensive and friendlier nations, many offering incentives for moving. They need the support of the European Union to get to the other side of the real crisis that Ireland faces. That support depends, in some measure, on how the people of Ireland vote today.

The “no” campaign has focused on the loss of sovereignty they see inherent in the Lisbon Treaty, which cedes powers to the European Union and unelected bodies within it. They also claim that the European Union will force social policy changes, especially about abortion, on Ireland which the Irish people do not want.

The “yes” side focus on the economic benefits that will be derived from the European Union and the potential of the Union for strengthening Ireland’s infrastructure as a knowledge based economy. They also point out that there have been concessions, both in terms of the Treaty itself and other matters, which support Ireland’s economic future and social development.

Ireland is the only nation bound by a referendum and most of the remaining nations have approved the Treaty, despite the fact that the Treaty was rejected by referenda is both France and the Netherlands. Two countries – the Czech Republic and Poland – have still to sign the treaty, though both of these countries are in a position to do so. The Treaty creates new institutions, formalizes majority decision making and creates the post of President of the European Union. It also permits a strengthening of the co-decision powers of the European Parliament, working collaboratively with the European Council of Ministers.

Watching the Irish vote anxiously is former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, widely thought of as the front runner for the Presidency of the European Union, a post the EU wants to fill before the British general election, expected in May 2010. Several reports appeared this week suggesting that, if the Irish vote yes, Blair would be named President at the next meeting of the EU heads of government within a month. While there are other candidates - Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands; Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister; Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg; Felipe González, the former Spanish Prime Minister; Mr François Fillon, Prime Minister of France; and Wolfgang Schüssel, the former Austrian Chancellor – Blair has the formal support of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s Prime Minister, President Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany. It looks like a done deal.

The Irish people are in a very powerful position: they will determine some key elements of the future of the European Union, the fate of the present Irish government and the career prospects of Tony Blair. Much will depend on turn-out and the mood of the people of Ireland. There is a lot at stake. The announcement of the vote will be watched with interest.

Posturepedic Politics

There is a lot of unhealthy posturing on parliament hill in Ottawa. The Liberals have tabled a “no confidence” vote and the NDP are threatening to bring down the Government on a softwood lumber “ways and means” motion. No one really knows where the Bloc stands, but it is likely that they will support the Government. But posturing continues.

One should never look at politics on the surface – there are always other layers to the reality. One layer is simple: the Liberals and the NDP would loose an election if it were held today. Any calculation suggests that an election before Christmas would provide either an extension of existing minority arrangements or a small majority for Stephen Harper. Ignatieff and Layton must be calculating that their postures and moves will not lead them into an election.

Another layer is also clear. Stephen Harper must realize that if he faces an electorate angry at going to the polls for a second time in less than a year and secures only a majority, he is starting a process of exiting from the leadership of the party and the work of the Prime Minister: he needs to win a majority to sustain his leadership.

A third layer is that the electorate look at Canada in comparison to others and, while they recognize that we have some problems, the country is in a strong position to move from staving off the depths of recession and starting a recovery. Many also recognize that it will be a tough journey and austerity will be key to restoring Canada’s fiscal health. The electrorate isn’t stupid. They know that the Liberals demanded more public sector spending and more “stimulus” and fiscal easing – they got it. They can hardly complain that stimulus spending leads to debt. Unlike almost every other nation, we had room in our economy to take on debt and did so. Now show us the plan to get us out of debt over time and the electorate will buy it if it makes sense. Such a plan will involve a combination of cuts to public service and higher taxes – so get used to it.

The final layer is people. As Rick Mercer, a seasoned political observer, noted, none of the leaders of the three major national parties are people you would throw a rope to if they were drowning in the harbour. They are not exciting or dynamic and in many ways are as dull as Angela Merkel of Germany or Gordon Brown of Britain. But the reality here is simple: they are all we have. So get used to this too.

Stephen Harper will never be dynamic, never have physicality and only rarely will “let himself go” and actually laugh out loud. Ignatieff is never going to appeal to your average worker and will only ever appeal to a small number. Jack Layton is, well, Jack. Nothing sexy about any of these white middle aged men. Worse, the people behind them are not as much fun as these three – it just gets worse. So voting in Canada will not be on the basis of personality – it cant be.

“We live in interesting times” is not the mantra we should apply to this situation. Rather we should simply observe that “the times in which we live are of interest to some”. Most people couldn’t care less. That’s the other reality.

The G20 Big Yawn - More to Come

The G20 summit in Pittsburgh was essentially a bust. The big decision is that the G20 will replace the G8 as a mechanism for coordinating the response of the major economies of the world to development global challenges – the economy, climate change, global health issues and terrorism. This is something that Canada’s former Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was promoting some time ago. Now, five years later, the G20 agrees.

Other than that, the agreements reached were modest:

1. Most but not all banks, but not other financial institutions, will be required to increase their capital. Specifics are left to a Working Committee. Monitoring and enforcement is left to the national governments.

2. Bank salaries and bonuses are to be restricted and made to conform to performance over a three year period. Specifics are left to a Working Committee. Monitoring and enforcement is left to the national governments. These prospective rules will not come into force until 2013 – after the next US Presidential election and the British general election. Britain is likely to lead the way with reforms to be announced this week in the run-up to the British general election.

3. Leaders agreed to work to reduce the economic imbalance between those countries that have large balance of trade surpluses and rely heavily on export trade (e.g. China, Germany) and those who have large, chronic deficits and consume too much, i.e. the United States and Great Britain. Specifics are left to a set of Working Committees and the goodwill of the governments involved.

4. Some adjustments will be made in the voting quotas of the IMF to give greater weight to Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations). The U.S. retains its veto and the power shifts only modestly.

Not much to boast about here, though more than most finance ministers thought possible when they met two weeks before the summit itself. These decisions come after three meetings of the G20 (and close to $500 m spent on organizing them).
Noticeably absent were any substantive agreements on the link between economic recovery and the economic response to climate change. Each of the Presidents and Prime Ministers present had lauded “green jobs” as the cornerstone of sustainable recovery as well as the focused response to climate change. Yet the communiqués from the G20 said nothing, despite the fact that the world leaders are working to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Accord, which expires in 2012.

The fact that climate change and the economy were not a substantive focus for this meeting is significant. It indicates what many have been saying for some time, namely that progress towards a global climate change treaty is stalled and that the US Government is backing off – lowering expectations for the Copenhagen meeting of over one hundred governments in December. In the US, given the furor over health care reform, climate change legislation is now very much on the back burner.

If this is the level of G20 decision making, then we have little to fear from the emergence of the G20 as a new mechanism of global governance. Just as the United Nations demonstrates its impotence on a daily basis, the G20 now does so quarterly. All of the issues they “decided” in Pittsburgh were also decided in principle at each of the past three meetings. This is the one “green” thing they are doing – recycling old press releases, reusing old rhetoric and reducing their significance. I bet you can’t wait for the next meeting in Huntsville, Canada in 2010.

Lost in Translation

Gerard Hoffnung was a raconteur and wit on the BBC in the 1950’s. His speech to the Oxford Union, available on iTunes, is a classic piece of period of humour – a must listen to recording. Amongst the gems on that CD is a selection of letters received after inquiring about hotel accommodation in the Dolomites, contributed by readers to The Spectator. Wonderful comic material – “we are poor in bath, but good in bed” or a brochure which said “Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a French widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects”. Another refers to the manager on the telephone saying “I can offer you a commodious chamber with a balcony imminent to the romantic gorge, and I hope you will want to drop in”. But my own favourite from The Spectator collection, as recited by Hoffnung, is the motto posted at one hotel which simply said “Our motto is 'Ever Serve You Right'”.

The good news is that the tradition of mangling English persists in restaurants, hotels and public places, as a recent tour of France confirms. A sign in a hotel in Nice made clear that “Being dressed well is compulsory in the dining room” – French fashion week is obviously a constant. In another hotel, this time in Monte-Carlo, offered different room rates for different times of the year, with extra charges for “manifestations”. I had two, one with tonic. It in fact refers to public holidays. Outside a small hotel in Menton was a clear and illuminated sign, “Parking in the Back Side”, which I am not sure was all that feasible, unless you were driving a small car.

In Paris, at the Hotel des Academies, there was a simple sign saying “please leave your values at the front desk”, suggesting that this was the place that many European politicians stayed at. A dress shop on the Montparnasse had a sign that enticed some, but not many, to enter: “dresses for street walking”. I am still trying to understand the sign in our rented apartment in the Luberon: “please avoid coca watering, cream cleaning, wet towels wrapping, and ironing drying” – but we complied to the best of our ability. In the Super-U supermarket in a small French town where many English tourists spend time, we spotted a sign that said “For your convenience, we recommend courageous, efficient self-service” and they were not kidding. This supermarket has given rights to people with disabilities to go directly to the front of any line-up and all French people we met appeared to have one or more disability, or at least felt they had. In a laundry in Gordes there is a sign that says (in French) “Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time”. Its nice to see that old French traditions die hard.

Menu translations are also a source of great entertainment. Once in a restaurant, the waiter explained that one dish was of pigeon, another or rabbit and a third of rat (meaning ratatouille). In a Chineese restaurant we saw the main items as “sheep leg, cowboy leg and local steaks” – the cowboy leg came with sides (also known as chaps). The same eatery had a menu item that simply said “juice of steams the fish mouth”, which we couldn’t be talked into.

In a street-side café the menu included a special cocktail for “Ladies with nuts”, which I feel sure was warranted. The same café also made clear that the water was safe to drink – “the manager has personally passed all the water here”.

A friend suggested to me that there should be an international centre for translation where any organization can send their menu, street sign or draft brochure and have it translated into a version of English that more of us could understand. I disagree. In a hot day after a long walk and many museums, such translations lift the spirit and encourage recuperative laughter, and I am all for that. That’s why I am still laughing at the sign in the taxi we took which said “We take your bags and send them in all directions” – a skill they probably learned in an Air Canada workshop.

The New German Politics

Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor, won more than a second term today in a general election – she also defeated her left-leaning former coalition partners, the Social Democrats, and helped the more conservative and pro-business Free Democrats. Merkel and the Free Democrats will now form a Centre-Right coalition for the next four years. The Social Democrats experienced their worst political defeat in sixty years. Merkel continues, but there is a real and radical change of government.

The new coalition can begin to scale down the stimulus spending demanded by the Social Democrats, the scale of which Merkel did not fully approve, and begin to refocus and redefine the role of Government in German society. A period of spending cuts and a reinvention of Government can be expected.

In her first election, Merkel talked of “radical economic reform”, but compromised so as to secure the Chancellorship and some stability in the coalition. But now she has more freedom of action with like-minded partners. She is a pragmatist, but she is also a fiscal conservative. She also wants to strengthen the position of Germany in the EU.

At the top of her agenda is the economy. Germany has experienced high unemployment and an exodus of manufacturing jobs to other countries, notably in Asia. Also key to her strategy is the greening of Germany’s economy, something already well under way. This is important for Merkel, who is a conservative environmentalist, not just because “green jobs” may help grow the economy but also because the Green Party improved their standing during the election.

Her second priority is the war in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of German troops. It is most unpopular war and the strategy she wishes to pursue mirrors that of Canada – shifting the mission to one of development and social support and away from military action. She is also concerned about the widespread corruption within the Afghan government and the absence of the rule of law. Germany has over 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and, during the election, there were hints of a pull out by 2013. Merkel and Gordon Brown have called for a rethink of the Afghan mission – something American President, Barrak Obama, is now having to consider.

Merkel’s election is bad news for Gordon Brown. It shows a major European ally dissatisfied with left leaning political and economic strategies and more interested in economic and fiscal responsibility, smaller government and a smaller role for the State in daily life – precisely the strategy the British conservative party is pursuing in the run up to the election in Britain.

Projecting the image of a global leader, Merkel has overcome an image of a pragmatist and policy “wonk” to be a quiet, but confident leader of the German people. She appeared surprised at the scale of her success in the election, having stumbled a little in the last few days before polling. Her victory signals a period of stability in German politics, as the left will now spend time diagnosing its failure and reorganizing for the future, possibly with a new leadership team. Merkel will savor her victory.

Gordon Brown's Last Stand

Amidst scandal, plots and anxiety, the British Labour Party begins its annual conference this week in Brighton. It will be its last as the governing party, unless some major upset occurs between now and the general election, expected in May. Things are so serious that a tribute evening for Gordon Brown, to be held during the conference, has just three hundred people attending in a venue booked to seat eight hundred.

The scandal concerns the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland. Using a law she herself developed, she was fined £5,000 ($8,740) for hiring someone not entitled to work in Britain as her cleaner. Despite this offence, she continues in office. The tradition is that the Attorney General should be “beyond reproach”. Gordon Brown, Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister, is standing by his Dominican born Minister, elevated to the peerage in 1997. This scandal, which many have already dismissed as minor, comes at the same time as another Minister, Baroness Vedera, steps down as Business Minister to pursue a non-paid role as advisor to the G20.

The plotters are led by “the usual suspects” – former Ministers under Tony Blair and those in the party concerned about the potentially devastating loss in the coming election and the likely loss of their own seats in parliament. The focus of the revolt is on seeking to retain power or, second best, secure credible opposition party status at the next election. They fear a massive defeat at the hands of David Cameron’s Conservative Party, which is some thirteen points ahead in polling – enough for a landslide win. These same polls show that some seventy one percent of voters are unhappy with Gordon Brown’s performance as Prime Minister.

The plotters have three problems. The first is that Gordon Brown has demonstrated that he is unwilling, no matter what the carrion calls are, to leave office unless its due to terminal illness. Second, the plotters cannot find a champion willing to take on the task of David slaying Goliath. The plot has no credible leadership. The third problem is that, even if Brown went, there is no time for a new leader of the Labour Party to turn around this dying political tug boat which, in the minds of the British public, is a tired and worn-out boat in need of a long period in dry dock.


John Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair, rightly observes that there is a need for caution when looking at opinion polls. In 1970 the Labour Party went into the election with a sixteen point lead and lost to the Conservatives. In the 1992 election, Neil Kinnock as Labour Leader was clearly winning until he began to behave as if the election was over – the public rapidly turned on Labour and the Conservative’s won. So much can happen between now and May.

But it all now depends on Gordon Brown. John Prescott described him this week-end as a “global giant” who pulled the world back from recession. Others are seeking to position him as a global statesman – a fitting man to lead Britain. They contrast his global statesmanship with the youth and inexperience of David Cameron and posit that Britain needs a steady and proven captain to the steer the ship of state through troubled times. The reality is that Britain is in trouble. It has massive deficits and public sector debt, it has a growing set of issues of education and schools which Labour has failed to tackle in its twelve years in power and there is a social malaise and sense of political alienation which permeates all regions of the country. Britain needs change – it is almost tangible in any conversation about politics.

Gordon Brown, despite his public commitments, will not change. He is what he is and cannot change. He has been at the heart of the Labour party for twenty years and at its head since the early 1990’s. He thinks what people want is action. In an interview at the end of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week, he said "I think what people are saying is that until they can see the results of all the action we have taken in getting the economy back to recovery, they have suspended judgment. I accept that I have got to show people that the action that we have taken is bringing results and will bring greater results in the months to come." He thinks results will “speak for themselves”.

The Conservative Party is leading the charge for a new era of austerity – demanding cuts in this fiscal year so as to lower the expected budget deficit of £175 billion ($305 billion). They claim that the fiscal stimulus, coupled with the increase in the supply of money in the system, will lead to massive debts which will burden the British economy for years to come. They also claim that public spending and the role of the State under labour are becoming out of control and that less, not more, government is what the people want. Their double digit lead in the opinion polls, consistent since the beginning of 2009, suggests that they may well have captured the mood of the British people. Brown’s counter is that the Conservative proposes massive cuts to public programs which will ride roughshod over peoples’ needs and expectations – Labour’s traditional response to austerity measures.

It will be an ideological election as well as an election about Gordon Brown. Unless David Cameron makes a major blunder, Brown will lose and the Labour Party will wonder why it did not act to forestall both the defeat itself and the scale of the defeat. While its true that “a week is a long time in politics”, the eight months between now and May is even longer and a lot can happen. But it will take a miracle to save Labour now.

Cooling on Climate Change

The UN are pulling out the “big guns” in an attempt to create a climate of urgency about climate change, so that the meeting of over one hundred world leaders in Copenhagen some seventy five days from now can produce an agreement to replace to failed Kyoto accord.

Nature, however, is not co-operating. Average global temperature is rising at 1.40C per century, not the 3.90C indicated by the IPPC models. We are in the seventh year of global cooling. Sea levels, despite messages to the contrary, are rising at normal rates – eight inches per century – much less than the IPPC models suggested. There has been no significant rise in sea levels over the last four years. Arctic sea ice, currently in its summer state, is more extensive in 2009 than it was in 2007 and 2008. Antarctic sea ice is at record high. Global sea ice shows relative stability over the last thirty years. While CO2 levels are rising, the rate of growth has slowed considerably – the IPPC suggested that CO2 levels would grow at around 468 ppm per century, when in fact the observed growth in CO2 is 204 ppm per century – less than half of the IPPC model suggestion.

Hurricane activity, which does not appear to be connected to CO2 emissions, is at the lowest level since satellite monitoring and observation began in 1979. In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricane activity is currently one of the quietest in a decade. Reefs off the Keppel Islands on Australia's Great Barrier Reef have shown rapid recovery of coral dominance, despite repeated coral bleaching events that many ascribe to CO2-induced global warming. All in all, nature does not seep to be co-operating with Ban Ki Moon and the climate change negotiators.

Neither is China. Despite high expectations that they would enter into a global agreement which involves a commitment to curb green house gas emission by an agreed targeted amount, China indicated that they see this issue as a national one, requiring balance between China’s need to continue rapid development and manage its environmental conditions. It will not be told what to do by the international community. Neither will India.

The United States is ambivalent. While President Obama clearly sees climate change as a clear and present danger, legislatures are deeply divided about the appropriate response. The House of Representatives has approved a bill that provides for a cap and trade for carbon credits, the free allocation of a large number of carbon credits to polluting companies and regulation of vehicle emissions. The Senate, however, is delaying consideration of the issue and is not likely to pass any legislation before Copenhagen.

The current US proposals will not have any substantial impact on either carbon emissions in the US or on global temperature. They will, however, have an impact on the economy – higher energy prices, changes in transportation systems and in consumer behaviour. They may also help to stimulate the creation of green jobs, at the expense of jobs in other sectors. What will certainly happen is that the emerging financial services (carbon trading, carbon offsets) and climate research will expand and grow. The carbon trading industry is currently worth $100 billion worldwide and research on climate change is a $7 billion industry worldwide.

Most committed are the member states of the European Union. Collectively they have determined emissions targeted, new transportation standards and have been operating a cap and trade system for a number of years. They are also now considering the scale of technology transfer and financial aid to developing countries. They have also enacted, through EU regulation, constraints on consumer behaviour – making it illegal to sell certain kinds of light bulbs, creating incentives for smart energy purchases and smart grid technologies.

It will be a long meeting in Copenhagen and it looks unlikely that the meeting will be able to conclude the kind of comprehensive agreement Ban Ki Moon is seeking – the fractures between the parties and the challenges of securing agreed targets are likely to be significant. The G8 summit showed that this was the case with just eight nations – there will be over one hundred in Copenhagen.

Some climate change scientists are becoming concerned that the momentum for Copenhagen is already fading and that the possibility of agreement is looking more unlikely than it was at the beginning of the year. They are beginning to use science to argue the polemics of the case rather than just draw attention to the science – the lines between scientific inquiry and political action are becoming blurred.
It will be an interesting time between now and December, with the voices of concern already becoming shrill. What is needed are some calm, reflective and realistic minds focused on what is possible and the consequences of the possible actions for both the environment and the economy. They may well be in short supply and will almost certainly find themselves castigated for not being committed to environmentally sound change or as “deniers” – but we need such objective analysts to provide support the general public in their attempts to assess the work of their governments.

Obama, The Turtle and the Hare

The next three months will define the Obama Presidency. Right now, the potential for failure is high.
First the economy. Obama rushed into office with a massive stimulus package which was intended to lessen the impact on the recession on workers and communities. A lot of these funds are yet to be spent, but the recession is already “officially over” and the economy is beginning it long journey back to its new start point. However, unemployment remains high and the recovery looks increasingly jobless at this point. Unless unemployment declines, Obama’s stimulus package will not have succeeded on one critical litmus test.

The next economic test for Obama will relate to the handling of regulatory reform and the potential dangers of bank indebtedness. Obama is sensitive to the nuances here and is using rhetoric and his powerful communication skills to steer the financial services culture away from its “greed and feed on the weak” modus operandi to one of careful and cautious capitalism. In short, Obama has to find a pathway between encouraging risk taking (the core of capitalism) while at the same time moderating the rewards capitalist secure from taking these risks. He needs to do so in a culture that is still dominated by Milton Friedman rather than Milton Keynes.

Not an easy task. Underlying this is the fact that many of the needed regulations are in place, just poorly executed. The Bernie Madoff scandal and others like it show this to be true, as does the continuing struggle to track down where all the TARP money went.

Bank indebtedness – the bad debt sitting on the books of banks and financial services organizations which has to be managed if banks are to meet their corporate and legal obligations – pose a significant threat to the stability of the US financial system over time. Obama, working with Bernanke and others, needs to find the path to reduce the risk of these debts unduly slowing the recovery and affecting confidence without resorting to the socialist solution some European governments have pursued.

His final economic challenge is the rapidly growing scale of US budget deficits and debt. The Republicans are right to be concerned that his legislative agenda is likely to significantly increase public sector borrowing, raising interest rates and taxes while leading to cuts in government programs and services. Obama needs a convincing strategy to leave office after two terms with a manageable level of debt. Right now, this plan does not appear to exist.

His two other flagship activities –climate change and health care – are in serious trouble. The Democratic leadership in the Senate signaled recently that they are to postpone serious consideration of the climate change legislative until 2010 or, more likely, 2011. Meantime, legislators are looking to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do its work for them and use its existing powers to regulate CO2 emissions. There is growing speculation that climate change legislation will not pass the Senate in Obama’s fist term.

Health care reform, as is obvious to all, is showing the extent to which congressional governance is dysfunctional. Obama trusted congress to work out a reform package that would meet the need to extend health care coverage, reduce the burden of health care costs on families and companies, while improving the quality of life for Americans. What we have seen over the last four months is the lack of alignment even within the Democratic party on the nature of such reforms. Obama needs a convincing victory in this field – not just a rhetorical one – for his Presidency not to be damaged by the process and the paucity of reform. The loss of the automatic majority in the Senate following the death of Ted Kennedy puts the final outcome of the health care reform process in doubt.

Obama faces another challenge: overexposure. There is no doubt that, in comparison to several other US Presidents (Carter, both Bush’s, Nixon), Obama is a powerful orator and excellent communicator. But every day? Each time he appears in an interview, on Letterman or Conan or on the White House lawn he uses up some glitter. All Presidents have a certain amount of glitter to use and over use exhausts the supply quickly. He needs to learn the power of silence and patience if he is to be effective.

Obama has several opportunities to deliver on the promise of “change” he offered during his campaign for the Presidency, but boldness and brashness often do not lead to sustained change over time. When he says good night to his daughters on Pennsylvania Avenue one night, he might usefully pick up the story book of the turtle and the hare and remind himself that the turtle won. Its time for Obama to learn to be a better turtle.

The UN and Climate Change Negotiations

The political conviction that man is causing global warming and that concerted political action on a global scale can “halt” such warming continues to shape an agenda for the post-recession economy. The world’s airlines have committed to reducing their carbon emission by fifty percent by 2050 and car manufacturers are pushing electric cars and working on alternative energy sources for transport systems. The race to be green is on.

At the UN this week, world leaders will all proclaim that the science is settled and that the actions called for “by the science” demand a rethink of key aspects of the economy. In particular, there will be pressure to either pursue carbon taxes directly, as President Sarkozy is seeking to do in France, or to pursue carbon caps and a mechanism for trading carbon emission certificates, as the EU has done for some time and President Obama would like to do, though congress has postponed a decision on cap and trade till 2010 “at the earliest”. China and India are indicating a willingness to take some modest action, but they need major investment support in the billions to do so.

Expect a lot of rhetoric and also expect the UN to push for new monitoring and governance roles for itself – the UN sees the challenge of climate change as an opportunity to expand its scope of operations and enhance its role in the day to day affairs of nations and people around the world.

What is at stake in this conversation is the fabric and structure of the economy. Current drivers of economic growth – transportation systems, consumer spending, energy systems – all need to change to reflect a commitment to lowering emissions. From how we heat and light our houses, how we use transport, what food we buy and where we can buy it are all likely to change. Day to day living will become more expensive and poverty in the developed world will increase, as energy and food prices rise. Only fundamental changes in behaviour, led by changes in the cost of regular and routine activities, will lower emissions in a radical way.

Estimates of the likely impact of policies such as cap and trade suggest that the impact of major changes in the lifestyles of citizens of the developed world will have only a modest (if any) impact on carbon emissions and even less impact on climate, which is also impacted by the actions of winds, the sun and the oceans. What is more, the cost of achieving a less than 0.11 degree change in average global temperature will exceed $300 billion annually in North America alone. While many citizens are concerned about climate change, the personal economic impacts are beginning to create a climate of doubt and uncertainty about the actions which governments want to take. Many citizens are yet to be convinced that the actions government plan make sense.

The negotiations leading up to Copenhagen in December, when over one hundred nations will start the work of negotiations for a post Kyoto agreement, are already very fraught. Under Kyoto, greenhouse gas reductions are subject to an international system that regulates the calculation of emissions, the purchase of carbon credits and contribution of sectors such as forestry. The US is pushing instead for each country to set its own rules and to decide unilaterally how to meet its own target. The US is yet to offer full details on how its scheme might work, though a draft "implementing agreement" submitted to the UN by the Obama team in May contained a key clause that emissions reductions would be subject to "conformity with domestic law". Legal experts say the phrase is designed to protect the US from being forced to implement international action it does not agree with.

Meantime, the carbon trading and offset market is already a $100 billion a year business and growing. Climate change research has secured funding of some $7 billion each year over the last decade – a big business. Money is a major driver of the climate change alarmist movement. The skeptics, on the other hand, don’t have much money (despite claims that they are funded by Exxon, who have given less than $25million over the last decade) but they do have observational data on their side. The world is cooling, CO2 emissions are falling (mainly due the recession) and the ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic is expanding. The UN meetings and the Copenhagen meeting in December will take place against a backdrop of scientific measurements which suggests that the alarmist climate models are, at best, overly pessimistic and at worst just plain wrong. We live in interesting times.

Perhaps we should all heed Prince Charles’ advice and give up using our cars and private jets. Maybe we should all start buying carbon offsets, despite the fact that some of the leading providers of this service have recently been found to be supporting projects which do little, if anything, to offset carbon. Perhaps we should simply ignore the rhetoric of politicians about reducing emissions and instead start to plan for adapting to climate change. Whatever we do, we should not depend on our politicians to do the “right thing”, whatever “right” is.

Looking for a Fat French Person? Dream On

The search for an obese French man or woman began in Paris, travelled to Nice, Monaco, Menton and then various locations in Provence, focused largely on the Luberon. While occasionally distracted by other things, such as menu translations (“try our big balls” referring to ice cream or “our special hand made paste” referring to pasta) and signs in hotels (“it is compulsory to be dressed well in the dining room” and “extra charges for manifestations”), we were relentless in our search during our three week journey.

We thought it was all over on the first day in Nice when we saw a large girthed man with man-boobs bigger than any of the topless women on the same beach. Turned out to be a Texan trying to get to grips with the etiquette of the private beach, he ended up kissing everyone on each facial cheek. Another sighting of a large person, this time female, in Beaulieu turned out to be a Welsh woman from Llangollen desperately looking for faggots and peas. She had to make do with caillette’s and petit pois –the French version of the same thing.

One reason it is so difficult to find an obese French person is that there are so many ways in which they burn up calories. Just watch them speak – they get upper body exercise through the use of the hands and their body language overall uses 30 calories a sentence. Then there is the weight loss during driving and the even greater weight loss while seeking, finding and then securing (against determined opposition) a parking space. I myself lost over five pounds just from these activities, most in Monaco and Apt.

Other activities also eat up calories: daily shopping for bread (50 calories), arguing and then choosing an appropriate wine (30 calories), trying to find other ways of insulting the English and Germans (70 calories) and finally playing boules (between 100 and 500 calories, depending on the intensity of the game, the age of the players and the gullibility of their opponents – the more gullible, the less calories used).

Systematic observation of the French during the last three weeks also tells me that the French actually lose weight while eating. Take dinner, which starts late and ends close to the next day, is an elaborate affair usually involving up to seven courses. The arguments about the quality of the food, the right wine parings, the best combination of food on the fork, the argument about what’s in the sauce, the choice of cheeses, the decision about which desert best compliments the meal and finally what alcoholic digestive best finishes the meal all burn up so much calories that those consumed during the meal are outweighed by those used up in the process of consumption.

We passed and observed thousands of French people – almost none were fat and absolutely none were obese. The largest people we saw and talked to were Americans and British. Spend enough time in France and lose weight!

Where Is The Premier of Alberta When We Need Him?

Where is the Premier of Alberta? Why is he absent from our consciousness and allowing our anxieties and worst fears to fester? Why is he not communicating powerfully and effectively with the people of Alberta?

The Province is facing a deficit in this fiscal year of $7 billion and is planning to make cuts to public expenditure in the next budget of $4billion, including cuts to education, health and social services. The Province is planning, largely through inaction, significant increases in electricity costs due to its support for the unproven carbon sequestration program with an already firm commitment of $2 billion we cannot afford and an ask for another $1billion a year which is definitely beyond the scope of this Government. Health care cuts are coming and people are getting anxious.

The key problem is not the recession, though this is clearly not helping. The key problem is a fundamental change in the way in which the natural gas price is behaving and this is dramatically affecting government revenues. This problem is structural – it will challenge the base economic model of the Government – and will not go away. The dynamics of the natural gas market have changed in a way that will reduce revenues for the Government for some time to come.

The Premier has mused about the dangers of the US Climate Change Bill, which contains a clause that would permit the US Government to impose tarrifs at the border on commodities entering the US which were produced with a higher footprint than other similar goods coming from US sources and he is right to do so. But his comments weren’t backed up by a briefing document showing the impact such a scheme could have on oil, gas, coal, lumber and other industries and on the Alberta economy. Too vague and too mute.

The Premier did make a rare public statement to make clear that “while he was Premier” there would be no new taxes and no tax hikes. An unwise commitment, especially in the light of the ongoing economic challenges the Province faces. Albertans enjoy their low tax regime, but would prefer to pay more taxes to sustain many health, education and social services than to cut them as severely as now seems planned. Now the only way in which tax hikes can occur is if the Premier resigns and a new Premier takes his place. Some saw the Premiers tax statement as a veiled resignation offer to the party.

The last two months, at least amongst the bloggers and journalists in Alberta, there have been rumours of a coming cabinet shuffle, triggered in part by the resignation of the Deputy Premier, Ron Stevens, and by a growing concern about the strength of the finance and treasury team now challenged, according to some, beyond their competence. The furor that surrounded Bill 44 was also taken as a sign that things need shaking up and the Premier needs to show that he is in charge and stop the next action equivalent to a Bill 44 mistake. Firing one MLA showed some metal, but then the sword was put back in its sheath and the Premier appeared to go back to sleep.

One would expect a Premier, who is no intellectual slouch and a very down to earth kind of guy, to be on camera helping Albertans understand what is happening in and to their Province, how he sees the future and laying out his options for change. Creating the right context and climate for action is one of the things required to make change work. Instead he is absent, leaving the talking to others, not all of whom know what the message is or should be.

It is time for a clear statement of the challenges we face as a Province – we need an interim financial statement, a context statement and a set of options. We need these to come from the Premier and we need these statements now. As confidence in the Premier erodes – he is already concerned about the November Red Deer leadership review and he should now be more concerned, as anxiety grows and confidence in the ability of this Government to act also declines.

Maneuvers are going on behind the scenes on budget, on change and on other challenges Alberta faces – quiet meetings are being held and briefings given. Put the public is left out of the conversation, which is not smart.

Its time to meet the people. To be transparent. To share the challenges. To make clear that the future isn’t what it used to be. Alberta needs a Premier it can see, hear and talk to.

A Health Care Challenge for Canada?

Canadians watch the health care debate in the US with mixed emotions. The Americans, who spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation in the world, clearly have many challenges. Some forty six million are not covered by health insurance, seniors pay for prescriptions after the first $2,500 and life expectancy is amongst the lowest in the developed world. Clearly, a lot needs to be changed.

The trouble is debating change in a health system is always very emotional, as we can see from coverage of the town hall meetings taking place across the United States. We each have stories of good and poor experience of health, of family members who struggled through the system and of things going terribly wrong. Serious discussion about change becomes clouded in emotional conversations about pain, disease and problems.

Many Canadians appear satisfied with the basics of Canada’s health care system, despite the rising costs of securing universal health care coverage and the growing waiting list for a range of basic procedures. Yet an OECD study, just published, uses poll data to show that sixty per cent of Canadians are seeking fundamental change in the way Canada’s publicly funded health care system operates. More people in Canada seek such change than in Britain, the US, Germany or Australia. A further twelve per cent think that our health care system needs to be completely rebuilt. Put simply: most Canadians don’t think the current health care system is sustainable.

There are several issues. The first is that the costs of the system are growing faster than Provincial governments can afford. When health care reaches half of all Provincial spending, as it will within the next decade in British Columbia and Alberta, what cuts to other government services will be made to permit this cost to be covered?

The second challenge is our over-reliance on professional health care workers to help us manage such things as diet, exercise and minor health issues – cuts, bruises, and colds. Self-reliance and personal responsibility has been ceded to an ever growing list of professional workers seeking to manage more aspects of our daily life.

The third major problem is the growing cost of technology for health. Expensive equipment can now produce powerful images and deep understanding of physical conditions and doctors and patients rely on expensive technology to make decisions. Technology changes and improves frequently at great cost to us all.

Linked to the growing costs of technology is the growth of sustaining the prescription drug culture – “there’s a pill for that”. A diabetic with hypertension will spend close to $5,000 a year on prescription drugs, only seventy per cent of which is recoverable through most insurance policies. It is this that drives up the costs of insurance.

Finally, the accountants are taking over. While some of them used to health care workers – doctors and nurses – their preoccupations are now costs. Whether it is staff costs or the cost of procedures, cost not outcomes are driving key decisions in the health system.

Whenever discussions of health care occur in Canada, the passions engendered are similar to those seen in town hall meetings in Wyoming or Chicago. Emotion replaces rational conversation about options.

One option is for Canada to retain a single payer, but to permit private companies to offer health care and health insurance from which the single payer can purchase services. The private providers would focus on high volume, profitable activities – hip and knee replacements, treatments for diabetics and obesity, rehabilitation services, chiropractic - and sell their services to local health authorities. Competitive private insurers would provide coverage which “filled the gaps” of the provincial system, including drug and dental coverage.

A second option is to require every citizen to hold a health insurance policy for which they pay their provider (the provincial government or a private insurer), with rates depending on life-style. Smokers pay more. People who are obese pay more. These policies may cover more than the “approved list of services” under the Canada Health Act, depending on the premium paid. Connecting health to cost for the end-user would be a major change.

Whatever happens, Canada needs to have a serious discussion about health care. Most Canadians think we need a significant change. They are right.

Four Months to Save The Planet, Or...?

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, has said that there is less than four months to save the planet. Referring to the December negotiations in Copenhagen when the world community will seek to create global governance so as to manage climate change and develop agreements to replace Kyoto, he said that the situation is both urgent and dire. A failure to act will lead to the loss of several Pacific islands, over twenty eight million climate change refugees and further challenges to the developed and developing world.

Senator Kerry, Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoes these kinds of concerns in his urging of his fellow senators to act on the climate change bill now before it. Citing pandemics, drought, an increase in natural disasters, famine, the rise in sea level and a fall in water supplies in the Middle East and Asia, he claimed that all of these had their root cause in climate change.

These statements, and others like them, are the prelude to the multilateral talks in Copenhagen. These talks already look likely to fail, with India and China not playing ball with the US and Europe on specific cuts in emissions or on a technology transfer fund to move technology quickly and at low cost from the developed world to the developing world. Australia, seen at one point as a deal maker, cannot secure its own legislation and Canada remains skeptical about the rhetoric. The US, with a climate change alarmist as President, is still struggling to pass modest legislation on emissions and is focusing instead on the economic mechanism of cap and trade – something unlikely to have any significant impact on emissions. We can expect more rhetoric, both from politicians and stealth campaigners masquerading as scientists in the next three and half months as the prospect for a significant agreement in Copenhagen receed and the likelihood of the environmental lobby being disappointed again.

They were deeply disappointed by the G8 summit held in July. Expecting a significant commitment to 2020 emissions targets and an agreement to a post-Kyoto framework, all that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth secured was a statement that the G8 leaders agreed, in principle, that the climate should not be allowed to heat up more than 2 degrees above its current levels. No suggestion as to how temperature increases may be constrained and no commitments, other than those already made, to any new mechanisms for the management of climate change strategy.

Meanwhile, evidence is accumulating that the $78 billion spent by the US government on climate change research and mitigation technologies may not be a wise investment. Recent data shows that the IPCC projection of CO2 concentrations reaching 836 ppmv by 2100 are exaggerated and are unlikely to rise much beyond 570 by 2100; seal level is not rising at anything like the levels the IPCC projected and are in fact stable around the Maldives, Tuvalu and other Pacific islands; sea ice in the Antarctic is expanding and the sea ice in the Arctic is within normal ranges at this point in the sea ice cycle; the polar bear population is stable and large and, as a final straw, the earth continues to cool. Actual data do not follow the alarmist levels anticipated by the computer models on which the IPCC makes most of its scenario statements.

Given the economic slow-down and other factors, the G8 target of no more than a 2 degree rise in temperature is within our reach – current projections are for the global mean temperature to rise by app. 2.5 degrees by 2100, with no warming taking place for a decade and a half since 1995, this may be a pessimistic estimate. The oceans are not warming, hurricane activity is the lowest since satellite monitoring began and wind caused catastrophes in North America show no upward or downward trend since the 1950’s.

Since real data suggests that there is an exaggerated sense of alarm, fuelled by those receiving much of the $78 billion in climate change cash from the US Government and a further €100 billion from the European Union (Exxon Mobil has spent less than $2.25 million a year on climate change science, despite the claim that it is fuelling skepticism), it is likely that a failure in Copenhagen will be of little consequence, except politically. Reputations have been built on fear, but when the emperor is shown to have no clothes, fear has a habit of going away. There will be some kind of statement in Copenhagen, but it will not be the one envisaged two years ago when work on this global summit began.

Misinformation and Public Policy

Much is being made of misinformation and organized disinformation in the health care debate in the US. The Sarah Palin “death panel” that will determine who lives and who dies, the government “take over” of health care as the new socialism and the threat to seniors from $500 billion cut to Medicare are all examples of misinformation.

Yet those of us who take a rational, measured approach to climate change are used to this. One side – in this case the climate change alarmists like Al Gore, James Hansen and the IPCC – use carefully selected “evidence”, exaggerate it, ignore actual data and then proclaim truth.

One example of this is the claim that many locations in the world will be under water due to rising sea levels, caused by melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Sea levels will rise, according to the IPCC models and other projections, covering islands like Tuvalu (“the first casualty” according to most accounts) and the Maldives.

But the actual measurement of sea levels at all of the normal locations mentioned by the alarmists show no significant sea rise since 1992. In fact, the sea level is virtually constant. In the Maldives, a reconstruction of sea level data for the past 2,600 years show that, at various times, the sea level has been some 20cm higher than it is at the present time and that, since it fell in 1970, there has been no significant rise in sea levels in the Maldives.

Another location for Gore-like catastrophe is Nederlands – lowland Holland. In the past century the sea level in Nederlands has risen 20cm but there is no evidence of an accelerated rise in sea level since the mid 20th century and sea defenses continue to be constructed – something which the Dutch are very good at.

Sea levels rises are not a threat. Polar bears are thriving. The earth is cooling. When is actual evidence going to be used and policy is based, not on misinformation, but on established facts and a commitment to climate adaptation?

Reforming Health Care in the US - Lessons in How Not to Manage Change

Sarah Palin is promoting the strange idea that the Obama health care reform includes a provision for Government agents to visit the elderly and determine when and how they should die. The so called “death panel” does not exist, has never existed nor could it ever pass a vote in any legislature in North America. Yet some seemingly smart people are convinced it is in the Bill now before congress.

One reason there is so much passion and anxiety about health care reform is that we can all imagine ourselves needing care, especially those of us who have needed care in an emergency. When someone threatens to change what we think we have as a right or service, we naturally get concerned. When the changes are not well understood, all that happens is that anxiety increases, passions are inflamed and rumours replace information as the basis of public concerns.

We see this is spades in the debates now raging across the US. In addition to the death panel rumour, there are also concerns that the bill will lead to the US Government being the single payer in health care – what some call socialized medicine, which is also not true. If the bill that passes congress continues to include a public insurance option – the Government offering a plan which individuals can opt into – it is also unlikely to significantly impact the private health care insurance business, which has profits last year of $30 billion.

The bill before congress contains the intention to limit the type of medical procedures that the government would fund in a government program and through Medicare and Medicaid (both government runs programs, along with the Veteran health programs). Opponents of the plan don't want the government to fund any procedures. So, how is restricting the procedures funded through a government plan rationing? Anyone who wants to is entirely free to buy as much health care as they want outside of the government-subsidized plan. However, many of the supporters of the Bill have signaled a willingness to drop the public insurance option.

Another compromise that the White House has already agreed to is a back-room deal with the pharmaceutical companies to limit the extent of cost cutting for drugs – one of the fastest growing costs of health care – to no more than $80 billion. Also included is an agreement to ban the import of lower costs drugs from Canada. These arrangements limit the extent to which reforms will reduce health care costs over time.

There is a claim, this time by the proponents of the Bill, that doing nothing is not an option, since the costs of health care are running “out of control”. The projected $1 trillion cost over the next decade is equal to about 0.5 percent of US GDP, less than half of the cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars at their peak. The $250 billion ten-year shortfall that Congress is struggling to fill is a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP - a rounding error in the total budget approved by the US congress.

The focus, at least during the Presidential campaign, was on ensuring that the 46 million Americans who do not currently have access to health care insurance would do so as a result of the changes Obama and the congress propose. The bill now before congress would help some people have access, but would not reach all of these disenfranchised health seekers – at best it may help an additional 10 million. Obama claims that an additional 36 million may benefit, but few support the math behind this claim.

When we watch the town-hall meetings, we can see the passion and the concerns. We can also see the division between the right and left, the informed and the ignorant and the hysterical and the calm. Anyone wanting to secure real change in health care will need to do a much better job of explaining, without seeking to score political points, what it is they wish to change, why they wish to change and what the implications of that change will be on different groups in the community. Until this happens – and it is not happening yet in the US – decisions will be made on the basis of rumour, innuendo and guesswork. A responsible media would help to improve the quality of debate.

In Canada, we will also need to look at changes in health care over the coming decade. We should watch with interest what happens when reforms are attempted and how vested interests seek to manage and control the debate. It makes for entertaining news, but is also disturbing.

Peak Oil ? - Nonsense

Several reports circulated in the last two weeks about “peak oil” – oil production in established fields now declining, not just because of OPEC constraints on production, but also because the quantity of oil available from these sources has passed peak production and will decline steadily. Some predicted that there was less than a decade of oil left.

Nonsense. According to most established analysts, there are some forty years of conventional oil supplies available from proven reserves, New fields are now coming on stream, including the new Kuharis field in Saudi Arabia, which contains about half the oil that has been pumped from the North Sea. New discoveries of conventional oil occur all the time, the most recent of which is in Uganda which, according to one observer, is almost as large as the Saudi oil fields. Then there is the oil sands – Alberta has the equivalent of 175 billion barrels of oil tied up in tar and there are other oil sands and oil shale operations globally.

From a fuel point of view, there is also a need to look at coal and gas. With new technologies liberating natural gas from shale, gas production has grown exponentially – up 48% in the US alone last year. Coal is also abundant.

So talk of peak oil is nonsense and some have recently argued that we will be entering a period of significantly lower energy costs until, that is, the climate change levies are applied.

Economic Recovery Will Be Slow

There are some limited signs that some key aspects of our current economic challenges are beginning to shift. Car sales, especially in Western Canada, are again growing but are not back to the boom levels of 2008. Shipbuilding is stimulated by a major purchase from the Government of Canada. Houses are selling and mortgages are being offered. Some areas of retail – especially fast food and cinema going – are also recovering. Oil prices are settling at around $65 a barrel, though are subject to fluctuation. But, as the Canadian Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty observed, this is not a recovery, these are just “green shoots”. Economic bears can trample green shoots.

There are signs of the bears trampling around the Canadian economy. Manufacturing, especially in Ontario, continues to be troubling. Protectionism, which world leaders condemned at the April G20 summit, continues to grow and is impacting steel and lumber. Some industries face permanent structural change – the forest industries, car manufacture, technology and financial services. There are new regulatory and tax issues facing business – significant new restrictions and controls on banks and financial services, carbon taxation and environmental regulations, new reporting requirements, such as carbon footprint labeling or life-time tracking of animals in the food chain.

It is also likely that other actions of government, required to respond to their growing indebtedness, will have an impact on the economy. Cuts to government services and tax increases, labour disputes over contracts and a significant attempt to raise new funds in the bond markets will all take their toll on the economy. One key outcome of government action is likely to be inflation. The more bonds being sold to pay for the debts and deficits incurred in the attempt to “stimulate” the economies of the world, the more bond buyers will be able to demand better rates of return. As bond rates increase so do base rates and inflation follows. Interest rates for mortgages and borrowing will then rise. As this cycle continues, inflation occurs. Inflation will show or, worse, stall the recovery.

Another possible development is what is known as a jobless recovery. Companies have laid off workers to survive the recession. As the economy recovers and firms begin to see profits return, they realize that they can operate without having to incur the same labour costs they incurred during the 2007-8 boom. The unemployed remain jobless while companies grow. This is especially the case in some service sectors and in manufacturing. As some sectors consolidate – companies merge or acquire their rivals in an effort to grow their way out of difficulties – fewer jobs are required as duplication and inefficiencies are removed from the market.

Banks are cautious and need to continue to be cautious. They have some toxic assets on their books and need to restore their margins and manage their loan portfolios carefully. They should not be lending to people or businesses who have less than a strong opportunity to meet the conditions of their loans. This is a good thing, despite the pressure from governments to increase lending. Responsible lending is the hallmark of sound banking.

It will take time for the economy to rebalance itself, though it is already recovering faster than many predicted in the early months of 2009. What is clear is that recovery does not mean going back to the way it was before the recession. We are seeing is a major correction of the economy and the industries and firms within it. When the next shoe drops – paying for all of the government actions to stimulate the economy – there will be further adjustments. We are likely to see a period of austerity before we see the return of the good times. This is why savings are growing and why the recovery will be slower than many hope for.

What's Next for Labour ?

In late September, Gordon Brown will face the Labour Party in Conference in Brighton, England. The following week David Cameron will face the Conservative Party in Conference in Manchester. Both will be interesting events.

Gordon Brown has survived several attempted very British attempts to oust him as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. He survived through a variety of means, including threats, bribery through the offering of positions and promises. The key promise he has made several times in his career is that he will be changed and chastened by “recent events”. The most recent event was the loss of a parliamentary seat in a by-election in Norwich. Formerly a safe Labour Seat with a 7,000 voter majority, it is now a Conservative seat with a 5,000 voter majority – a significant loss. Brown has again vowed to change. No one expects him to do anything different. He is a lost cause.

David Cameron, who was careful not to gloat over the Norwich victory, has won a lot of support for his commitment to increase taxes and reduce public expenditure by cutting programs. The strategy is simple: tell the truth about debt, deficit and excess in government and then offer to be the guide to a more responsible and austere future. He has already identified several ways to reduce the size of government – reducing the number of quasi-governmental organizations (Labour created over 1,000 of these since coming to office), reducing duplication and inefficiency and then cutting programs that do not enhance the quality of life or are not valued by their “customers”. There is a strong appetite for “responsible, lean government” and Cameron has become the champion of this message.

Labour continues to believe that the next election will be fought over a simple ideological battle. Labour will position itself as a caring government that will continue to invest in public services, while they brand the Conservative as a mean bunch of business men who are in in politics to line the pockets of their business friends. The Conservatives will label Labour as not working and is profligate in public spending. They will point to a slow recovery from recession, 20% unemployment for people aged 18-24 and the largest debt load since the end of the second world war and point to the facts. Provided no serious gaffes occur, the Conservative Party will form the next government.

In July, the Conservatives are some fifteen points ahead of Labour in the latest survey of voting intentions – a lead that would give them a 72 seat majority. Some polls have the Tory lead much stronger. The election will be held sometime between this coming October and May 2010. The Norwich by-election suggested that voters would show their distaste for politics by either not showing – less than 50% of voters participated in the election – or by voting strategically, including voting for “other parties”. In the most recent polls, Labour may have to fight for second place with the Liberal Democrats, who are just five points behind Labour.

A lot can happen in ten months – Harold Wilson, a former British Prime Minister, observed that “a week is a long time in politics”. There are likely to be events which will permit Gordon Brown to show his skills in making difficult decisions under pressure – as he showed on a number of occasions early in his Premiership. There will also be dangerous moments for David Cameron – a slip of the tongue, dissent within his party, a wrong-footed policy can all quickly create what has come to be known as “reverse momentum” or “slippage”. But the die is cast. It’s a

Conservative victory that is now theirs to loose.
One development could help Labour. If the European Union finally manages to secure its constitution – known as the Lisbon Treaty – after forcing the Irish to vote again and Tony Blair becomes the first President of the EU, then he would have a pulpit to support the ailing “New” Labour Party which he re-launched with Gordon Brown and Peter (now Lord) Mandelson in 1994. Blair is an eloquent, charismatic leader and could do much to revive the fortunes of the governing party in Britain. He would need to take care not to be seen to interfere, but there are ways in which this could be done.

But this is a long-shot. Brown is done and his party recognize that their days of power are numbered. A number of senior figures have already indicated that they will not be running in the next election and many others are looking at the back-benches as a place of respite from the tribulations of governance. Some are considering when to begin their run at the leadership, vacant already in all but name. Most of all, Labour politicians are settling their financial affairs and considering life after politics. Gordon Brown is probably polishing his resume. If he isn’t, he should be.

The Truth About the IPCC

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is seen by some as an independent, scientific body which provides objective analysis of the climate and offers predictions about the future – predictions which then inform government policies around the world. This perception, carefully fostered over many years, is false.

The IPCC is a political agency, directed by politically supported bureaucrats who selectively use science to promote a political agenda.

Let us outline how the IPCC works. First, a small select group of bureaucrats define the agenda for the work of the panel. The focus for this work has always been on the human causes of climate change – they have never been in the business of systematically reviewing all of the causes of climate variation. Second, having defined the agenda – in 1990, there were three lines of inquiry determined by the panel. For each agenda, a team of scientists are asked to coordinate a review of the available evidence. Each “chapter” is directed by a lead author, supported by a small group of five or six lead members. Some 2,500 people are involved in this work. While some are experts in their field, others are not. For example, in the 1996 report on health and climate, one lead author was an expert in the impact of motorcycle helmets on accidents rates. Some are environmental activists with no science background and others are scientists whose interest are narrowly defined and in line with the views of the lead author.

So, scientists review evidence and the lead authors shape this evidence into so-called scientific chapters. It is commonly said that 2,500 scientists wrote the last IPCC report. In fact, there wee 1,190 who contributed and not all of them were scientists – many were political appointments, environmental activists or individuals with a vested interest in the outcomes. The actual texts we read were written by 35 scientists and not all of those whose work they summarized agree with the summaries.

The document most people see and read – especially government officials and Ministers – is known as the Summary for Policy Makers. This document is not written by scientists but by bureaucrats, aided by lead authors. The draft of this document is submitted to UN member governments who can insist that changes be made. Scientists who write the bulk of the final report do not see these drafts and have no avenue to correct errors that creep in during this governmental review process. And errors and misrepresentations do occur. For example, the 2007 Summary for Policy Makers contains errors of substance, for example in the way it represents the threat of malaria resulting from climate change. There is also poor and shoddy work in several reports, including the discredited “hockey stick diagram”.
Many assume that the Summary for Policy Makers is a summary of the consensus view of the scientists who have chosen to associate themselves with the IPCC. It is not.

Indeed, several IPCC authors have resigned as a result of the Summary misrepresenting their views and the views of others. The Summary for Policy Makers is the consensus view of Governments who have a variety of socio-economic and political agendas.

It is also assumed that the IPCC makes predictions. It does not. What they do offer is a set of scenarios based on climate computer models which, as the IPCC themselves admit, are limited in their ability to model climate. These scenarios provide speculative views of the future, based on certain key assumptions. These assumptions do not include any weighting for human adaptability, any significant role of sunspots, the earth’s orbit and tilt and several other factors which are known to impact climate. They also give undue emphasis to certain phenomenon – CO2 emissions, for example – over others. The climate models are a work in progress. They are also flawed.

In Plimer, in his book Heaven and Earth, also cites examples of data being fabricated to support global warming alarmism by IPCC authors (see especially pages 481-483). In one cases, legal measures to secure access to the data had to be used so that the claims made by the IPCC authors could be subject to peer review. In this peer review, where the data was subject to scrutiny, the evidence showed that urbanization has a significant impact on temperature data – something the IPCC said was not the case. Integrity and normal scientific processes are not the norm in many IPCC supported studies.

A great many peer reviewed scientific studies contradict the IPCC’s view of climate, climate change and its consequences and these are summarized in the report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The existence of these studies, and the different implications they give rise to for governments, speaks to the selective use of scientific work by the IPCC.

The view that the IPCC represents the consensus of science is not an established fact. The view that the IPCC is an independent science-driven body providing “neutral” evaluative assessments is a naïve view of the work of this United Nations governmental body. The view that this organization offers a thoroughgoing review of the current state of the science of climate change is contradicted by many different sources. The view that the IPCC uses process which are imbued with integrity and the best practices of science is laughable. We should see the IPCC for what it is – a politically motivated and supported UN organization.