Thank-you America

It’s a great relief that Barack Obama has won the US election and we can begin the honeymoon now.

I’ve been following the campaign for the last year. Personally, I had originally wanted Hilary Clinton to win despite the dynastic issue. She had experience and balls and would be very capable. You knew what you were getting with Hillary. Once it came down to just Obama and McCain, I was inclined to side with McCain as I wasn’t impressed with Obama’s expensive policies and interventionist inclinations. He could talk but so what? He just didn’t seem to have a lot of substance. McCain had experience and enough chutzpah to not always toe his party’s line. The person in the top job needs experience and balls.

I finally switched to Obama when the candidates chose their running mates for vice-president. Obama made an excellent choice. McCain made a terrible choice. The thought that Sarah Palin might be required to act as president was just too scarey. But worse, it showed a bad decision making process and it made McCain look unreliable.

So I’m glad Obama has won and it’s a novelty to see a politician with rock-star status. I’m hopeful but skeptical. He has a fantastic political mandate for change but the expectation that he will put right the world is just too much and I don’t expect the honeymoon will last long.

At least the neo-cons are on their way out the door and I really look forward to reading about the shutdown of Guantanamo Bay. That symbolic event will demonstrate closing the book on Bush-era policies.

Tags: Politics

Malaysian Elections

The results of the 2008 Malaysian election are in and Barisan Nasional is back in power. This coalition is headed by the UMNO which has ruled Malaysia ever since independence in 1957. I don’t believe having the same party in power for 50 years is that healthy and certainly makes for a very suspicious and unbalanced “democracy”.

Like many Asian countries, the deal is that citizen’s can have economic freedom but criticism, protest and dissent are not tolerated. In Malaysia, all the mainstream media are controlled by political parties. Journalists lack freedom of expression and forums for debate just don’t exist. As witnessed by the recent Hindraf protests or the arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian government will freely use the draconian Internal Security Act laws to squash political opposition. Opponents can be detained without trial indefinitely. This is justified as the way to maintain stability, security and economic growth. It’s also a convenient way for the same party to stay in power.

The biggest issue in Malaysian politics therefore continues to be avoided and that is the unequal treatment of citizens of different races. I don’t see how a country can achieve racial integration when you keep reminding everyone that their race matters.

This latest election brings hope that a more open dialogue will begin. The opposition political parties have gained many new seats and Barisan Nasional has lost it’s 2/3rds majority in parliament which allowed it to push through legislature with impunity. It may force the goverment to listen more but it’s a long road to getting politics balanced.

Tags: Politics, Malaysia

Global Ecological Footprint

Nice succinct graphs of our global ecological foot. Particularly like this one showing countries in proportion to the resources they use:

The Independent: Blair laid bare

There's an excellent article in today's Independent by Henry Porter. The intro blurb is:

In the guise of fighting terrorism and maintaining public order, Tony Blair's Government has quietly and systematically taken power from Parliament and the British people. The author charts a nine-year assault on civil liberties that reveals the danger of trading freedom for security - and must have Churchill spinning in his grave.

For example, here's an interesting extract:

"For instance, the law banning people from demonstrating within one kilometre of Parliament is contained in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005. The right to protest freely has been affected by the Terrorism Act of 2000, which allows police to stop and search people in a designated area - which can be anywhere - and by antisocial behaviour laws, which allow police to issue an order banning someone from a particular activity, waving a banner, for instance. If a person breaks that order, he or she risks a prison sentence of up to five years. Likewise, the Protection from Harassment Act of 1997 - designed to combat stalkers and campaigns of intimidation - is being used to control protest. A woman who sent two e-mails to a pharmaceutical company politely asking a member of the staff not to work with a company that did testing on animals was prosecuted for "repeated conduct" in sending an e-mail twice, which the Act defines as harassment."

And so it goes on. It gets worse. Your right to trial by jury doesn't apply in some cases. You can now be tried twice for the same offence. Hearsay is acceptable evidence for ASBO orders. Ministers now get complete control over goverment inquiries rather than Parliament.

If the Tories campaigned to address this imbalance, they might just get my vote in the next election.

Reforestation is not a Carbon Offset

Read an interesting lead article in New Internationalist (July, 2006) which highlighted some of the greenwash that's occuring when tree planting is sold as an effective carbon offset.

The problem is that burning fossil fuels permanently adds CO2 to the carbon cycle while carbon storage in trees is strictly temporary. In the long run, it doesn't help. These scheme's also tend to fund mono-culture mega-plantations and exacerbate local land disputes. Or sometimes, the planted tree's just die in poorly run scheme's. More info at SinksWatch and FERN.

So if you do buy into carbon offsets, check where your funds really are going. For example, 20% of funds given to Climate Care goes to a reforestation project in Uganda.

Personal Carbon Quota

So far, a personal carbon quota system is the best idea I've heard for managing carbon dioxide emissions. It's also refered to as Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs) or Tradeable Energy Quotas (TEQs) or Personal Carbon Allowance (PCA). Think of it as a personal pollution allowance/quota/ration.

The idea is you get a fixed number of units per year recorded on a plastic card. Units get debited when you buy goods or services. You can argue about the details but assume everything has a money price and a carbon price. The carbon units are a currency in their own right that can be bought, sold, earned and traded. Of course it won't be perfect and there will be a huge black market but it's the best mechanism I've heard of for creating a CO2 bound economy that leaves consumers with the greatest choice.

There are better descriptions of this on the net like Feasta Review, BBC News or TEQs.

I think it would be a more dynamic approach than carbon taxes which are a more blunt way of suppressing polluting activities. A personal quota provides a direct way of encouraging and rewarding green actions. You could even make money selling surplus carbon units. But it also allows you limited indulgence in polluting luxuries without raising the cost of them in "old" money.

Some will argue that such a scheme is too complex to run. Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the details. I think it's worth pursuing further.

Climate chaos: Bush's climate of fear

Panorama is a superb British news show. The latest broadcast exposed how the Bush administration has systematically suppressed scientific evidence of climate change over the last several years. Worth watching and you can view it online now.

It's just tragic waiting for how much worse it's going to get before real action will take place.

US on Oppressive Regime List

Ethical Consumer magazine is revising how they assess whether a country's regime is oppressive (issue EC98). This is then used to flag corporations that support these regimes so that you can avoid buying from them. The list criteria is still being revised but Sudan, China and Burma are proposed as the most oppressive regimes. Of course it's pretty hard to avoid buying stuff made in China.

Countries are ranked on occurences of 8 criteria. Turns out the the US scored 4 because of prisoners of conscience, torture, disappearances and the death penalty so it now makes it on the oppressive regime list.

Well deserved.

Iran's Nuclear Stance

I've been watching with some bemusement the debacle over Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology. I'm inclined to side with Iran.

As I see it, for better or worse, the current principle is that nations have the right to develop whatever technologies they want despite whatever risks they entail (nuclear, genetic, nano, etc).  A nation does this within any treaties and restrictions it has signed up to with other nations. The caveat, however, is that weapons development which threatens regional security can attract sanctions and worse.

Iran has the right under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop a nuclear fuel cycle under inspection. Would I trust them not to develop nuclear weapons. Nope! Of course not. But they still have the right to develop nuclear energy technologies.

The West proved very well that you just have to get past the bouncer at the door and once you're inside the nuclear club, everything is OK. India and Pakistan were welcome with open arms after their nuclear tests. You can only join the club by deception. It's a losy way to control technology.

What irks me is the "haves" controlling the "have-not wannabee's". Shouldn't there be a broader consensus on how dangerous technologies get developed and controlled? Genetic-modification is seriously dangerous. Nanotechnology can be too. Human cloning could be nightmarish. Is the club of nations that develop these technologies the ones who get to control them?

Learning for Sustainability School Conference 2005

I attended the Learning for Sustainability School Conference put on by a local education authority yesterday. It was aimed at people in various local educational roles and since I'm a school governor, I got an invitation. There are many groups promoting sustainability and the conference was an effort to bring these many groups together.

Sustainability is all very well and good but I was very sceptical about how it could be integrated into a learning environment. If we want to achieve sustainability, I believe it needs some pretty radical changes and not just some greenwash in a classroom. How far were they willing to go?

Turns out that Education for Sustainability is already defined as part of the UK National Curriculum :

Education for sustainable development enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions about the way we do things individually and collectively, both locally and globally, that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future. (The National Curriculum, 1999)

Not bad. Can't really argue with that.

The proposition at the conference is that Education for Sustainability must be pursued by a whole school approach where the entire ethos of the school is based on seven principles:

• 
  
  Interdependence


• 
  
  Citizenship and stewardship


• 
  
  Needs and rights of future generations


• 
  
  Diversity


• 
  
  Quality of life


• 
  
  Sustainable change


• 
  
  Uncertainty and precaution.

It's not just a taught subject. It's a way of threading together multiple topics. It's a perspective at which to look at everything that's done. It's an ethos and organisation prinple for the whole school.

The WWF has developed a useful education framework called Pathways. In their workshop, there was some inspiring case studies of schools that had fully embrassed this sustainability ethos (St Crispin's). It provided a nice roadmap for how to move a school forward. Meanwhile, the local borough is trying to embrace and extended this framework and promote it to the local schools. I need to read it still. There are some other interesting initiatives such as EcoSchools and FACE.

I even had a chat with a Senior Countryside Ranger about natural play and that article I had read in the Ecologist. He basically agreed that school grounds were generally not be used effectively.

I warmed up to this entire effort but had one concern. I raised the issue of ethical consumption with one of the speakers from Ofsted, Leszek Iwaskow. Was teaching about ethical consumption part of the sustainability agenda? I was impressed that he was all for it and even used it as an example in a later talk. It would be a great way to engage kids in secondary schools.

Sometimes, I do feel that Education for Sustainability smacks of "here, kids, we've had a party, spent your inheritance and don't have the political will to do anything about it so you better start thinking about how you might fix it". But it's better than the status quo and might raise a generation that has the political will to make the difficult decisions ahead.

Meanwhile, maybe they should add survivalist courses to the National Curriculum. If it's all too little, too late then they might just need it.

Battery or free-range children? A generation supervised.

Tim Gill published an excellent article in the October 2005 Ecologist magazine entitled "If You Go Down To The Woods Today" that I found very thought provoking. Can you recall your favourite place to play as a child? I've asked quite a few people this question and the answer is almost invariably somewhere outside and away from adult supervision. It was just somewhere you mucked about.

The article goes on to attack the current status quo of tight supervision of children in highly structured play environments. The underlying concern is that if the current generation is not so engaged with nature in childhood, how well will they fight to protect the environment? It's an interesting question and the article concludes with stories of communities that have ripped up playgrounds to plant natural play areas for kids to play in. It makes me wonder what other ramifications there might be with this kind of childhood.

Two issues raised by this article have really resonated with me: 1) freedom to roam and 2) unstructured outdoor play.

It's totally true that my kids have had far, far less freedom to roam than I did growing up. I roamed the neighbourhood far and wide. My kids stay within our property. I grew up playing around ponds, woods, creeks and hills. My kids have a small landscaped backgarden. It's rather boring so they play inside instead. Sad isn't it? I feel guily that it's my fault.

Of course it's not only my kids that are raised like this. All their friends are much the same. Some might have the advantage of a larger property or local streets with very little traffic. It does seem to mark the whole generation. Maybe what we have is a generation of paranoid parents fed fear by the media. I don't think the streets are less safe than before.

So now I'm struggling with thoughts about how to give back some freedom to my kids and get them outside just mucking about. It's worth reading the article and Tim Gill's website on rethinking childhood.

Exxon Exxposed

Exxon Mobile is one of the world largest and most profitable companies. There's a couple of websites that expose some of the nasty practices behind them. Download a damming report from ExxposeExxon or explore ExxonSecrets to see the influence Exxon has. According to ExxonSecrets, Exxon Mobile has funded the climate change lobbyists with $12,000,000 since 1998.

 

Give it a thought when you pull into an Esso station.

BodyBurden: The Pollution in Newborns

I've become increasingly aware of the stunning chemical stew that we all live in and the lack of governance in controlling the release of chemicals into the environment. U.S. industries use 75,000 different chemicals. Our exposure is pervasive from pesticides, food additives, cleaners, bodycare products, furniture, and numerous other ordinary products. It really can be no surprise that health problems are on the rise and that the majority of us will die from degenerative diseases.

Sadly, a recent report by the Environmental Working Group in the US documents that they found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in the ubilical cord blood of the 10 new borns that they tested. Of the 287 chemicals detected, 180 were carcinogenic, 217 were toxic to the nervous system and 208 cause abnormal development.

Not a great start to life is it?

Pesticide residue levels detected in bread

Isn't it annoying when you try to be healthy and find out it's worse for you? The UK Pesticide Residues Committee reports that "wholemeal bread contains more pesticide residues than any other bread type".

The report revealed that pesticide residues were detected in 53 of the 72 ‘ordinary breads’ tested, which included white (37), wholemeal (26) and ‘other’ (9) bread types.

The pesticides detected in the bread tested were chlormequat (a plant growth regulator used on various crops, including cereals), glyphosate (used as a desiccant on cereal crops), malathion (an insecticide) and pirimiphos-methyl (an insecticide used to control pests of stored grain).

One wholemeal sample was found to contain three residues, while 13 other samples (10 wholemeal, 2 white and 1 ‘other’) contained two residues.

The two organic samples tested contained no residues.

Read more about it at BakeryAndSnacks.com and buy organic bread.

Single Sex Education?

I read a great book a few months ago entitled "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax (2005). It's subtitle is "What parents and teachers need to know about the merging science of sex differences". I tried writing a book summary in my wiki but I haven't got around to finishing it.

It makes a very strong case for single sex education by summarizing lots of research about the fundamental differences between boys and girls and how they learn and behave. It's a fascinating read. For example, there's a significant difference between the balance of M cells and P cells in the visual cortex of boys and girls. Supposedly, this gives boys the advantage in seeing movement while girls have the advantage in object discrimination. The author goes further by claiming that young girls draw nouns prefering warm colours while young boys draw verbs prefering cold colours.

There are many, many more differences which all lend a lot of weight to the proposition that the teaching style should be different for the two genders. The key point is that while you want both boys and girls to have the same opportunities, how each gender is engaged should be different. I gather this is a hot topic in education circles.

Since reading the book, I've raised the topic of single sex education in various conversations and there seems to be two main objections:

1) If you don't socialise boys and girls together, they tend to see the opposite sex as another species. You get even worse "boy crazy"/"girl crazy" behaviour in the teenage years. This is particular worse if a child doesn't have a sibing of the opposite gender.

2) In class discussions, the opposite gender will often bring up points of view that would not arise if the class was all one gender.

I guess the ideal compromise would be to have a mixed school with more single sex lessons that just P.E.. However, this has a taint of discrimination and stereotyping so I don't see how this could work in practice. 

It's a pertinent topic to me since we need to start considering what senior school R* will attend and there's an all-girls school and mixed school close to us. It's a few years until we have to choose but it is on my mind.

Guardian: Selling Rapture

Detailed article about how the business of evangelical fiction in booming in the United States. In 2004, it was worth $2 billion so obviously there's a big market.

According to a recent Fairfield University study, there are 159 million adult Americans who now call themselves Christian, of whom 46% label themselves as "born again" and 24% as "evangelical".

As a secularist, I can't say I'm keen to see the rise of a faith-based popular culture. Fiction based on The Rapture is one thing but I hope I don't see Hollywood films where God intervenes in the end.

Guardian: Research councils back free online access

It's about time! I would go so far as to propose that any distributable artifact that is paid for with goverment (tax payers) money should be made freely available to the tax payer. If the goverrment funds research, the research must be made available for free or at least for only the cost it takes to distribute it. The cost of those research journals are outrageous! Paper journals are useless anyway; it needs to be all online and easy to search.

All that software developed by the government should be published as unsupported Open Source software too!

Ethiscore

I've been subscribing to Ethical Consumer for just over a year now. It's a great magazine for uncovering what's really behind the products you buy. They've launched a new subscription-based website called Ethiscore which gives you a quick ethical ranking of what the best buys are in numerous product categories. Check out some of the free reports and, if you live in the UK, consider subscribing  (I did).

It's horrendously difficult to shop with ethical criteria. Just try avoiding companies like Nestle, Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson. It's not easy. These kinds of companies dominate traditional retail channels. Ethiscore is an easy way to create a short list of what to buy and then the problem is just where to buy it.

I'm currently looking at all the personal care products littered around the bathroom trying to figure out healthier and more ethical alternatives. Luckily, these two things tend to correlate.

Wildlife films fail to tell the truth

Interesting snippet from Wildlife Film News 65 reproduced here:

In a report just published the Wildscreen Festival has stated that broadcasters need to re-think the ways in which they treat environmental issues following comments from the veteran programme-maker who chaired many of the key debates at last year’s Wildscreen festival.

In her review of the Did You See? discussions and screenings held as part of the international nature film and tv festival, Amanda Theunissen, says there's a danger viewers are being treated like children and consequently, maybe misled"

“The standard of films entered for Wildscreen 2004’s competition was impressively high but mostly they show the natural world as we would like it to be, not as it is, or as it is becoming. In the debates, we heard many worrying reports from different quarters about the threats our planet is facing, but with one or two commendable exceptions, the films that make it to the screen aren’t reporting the bad news, the true news.”

“There was a strong sense in the debates that there are difficult decisions to be made about the world’s future, and that, to make them, the public needs the right information. Equally, there was strong feeling that broadcasters are reluctant to air worrying issues, that they treat viewers like children who can’t cope with strong stories.” Ironically one of the films with the strongest messages was the children's Really Wild Show about farming bears for their gall in China. “It didn’t pull any punches and yet ended with a positive message. The film won the Children’s Choice award after being selected by a group of 8 – 13 year olds which just goes to show that children are far less sentimental than we think”

Support Caribbean Bananas

A website explaining the Latin vs Caribbean Banana plight. It's another example of the bad side of globalisation and the race to the bottom through oppressive labour standards.