Stradee wrote:Wildclickers, congrats to Maggie! Two new beautiful grandbabies
Emily Rose and Christian
ehBeth, courageous girl!
Thanks Stradee!
The babies are little dolls but Winter the almost one year old is my favourite at this moment. I know.... I know.... Grandparents are not supposed to say things like that but the one yr old is such a mischievous little tyke it's impossible not to favor her at the moment. She's trying to talk, walk & climb all at once.
Yesterday she took four steps all by her lonesome, then sat down with a big plop and a huge grin on her face. She is going to be hell on wheels in a matter of days! She is a little mimic too.....tries to copy whatever she sees us doing.
I'm doing my best to spoil the babies rotten. When they turn into kids I am going to move across country to visit you!!! Grandma calls this "getting even" time!
Hi all,
ehBeth, way to go - -
So, you found your earring in your bra.....
No new artwork - we did a lot and then quit.
Mags, by the look of the adorable photos of Winter, I'll bet there will be two visitors here, and you're more than welcome. Winter isn't about to let her grammie out of town without her.
My only grandson celebrated his 15th birhtday last October, and visits for a few weeks during the summer. When he lived in CA, we spoiled him daily. Now we only see his face a few weeks each year. That doesn't stop the family from spoiling him though. A neat kid too.
Hi Dan!
Hope you and Pattie continue painting ~ the works really good, imo.
ehBeth, had the earing been pierced, the cabbies would have learned the meaning of 'war'!
sue, interesting article.
Ocean diversity consideration is crucial. A natioanl-level, comprehensive strategy for protecting ocean ecosystems and wildlife, and improving resilience to the impacts of climate change vital when Congress begins deliberating enviornmental policies. Congress is debating several Oceanic bills now - however, the newest committee enactment, doesn't address marine systems thoroughly.
Not the best source for his motivation, but we will take all the help that comes along.
In Twilight of His Career, Warner Now an Environmental Maverick
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2007; B01
There are easier ways to retire than this. John W. Warner was flat on his back -- his coat was buttoned, his pocket square was perfect, but he was totally horizontal on a leather recliner wedged among his office's antique chairs.
Warner had a leg infection that prevented him from sitting down. He was looking at the ceiling and talking about climate change.
"We've got to have a law," he said in an interview last month. "And let's get on with it."
This is how Warner (R-Va.) is ending three decades in the Senate: with a potentially historic, but possibly fruitless, drive to pass a national law on greenhouse gases. A recent convert on the issue, he is trying to sell colleagues on a bill that would reduce emissions over 40-plus years.
The bill has enemies among both environmentalists and business interests. But so far, allies say, Warner's conservative credentials and willingness to make deals have helped give the bill momentum. On Wednesday, it passed a Senate committee, the first greenhouse-gas bill to make it that far.
"He's taking on an issue that's going to be very costly and hard," said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. Thurber contrasted Warner's exit with the retirement of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who said last month that he would leave for the private sector.
"You compare it to Lott, who seems to be searching for a job," Thurber said. Warner "is a totally different kind of person."
Warner, first elected to the Senate in 1978, has said he will not seek a sixth term next year. On Capitol Hill, he has been known for a focus on the military, for a pervasive courtliness -- his formal bearing and memento-bedecked office define the high senatorial style -- and for an occasional maverick streak. In 1994, for instance, he was the target of Republican anger after he refused to back Oliver North for Virginia's other Senate seat.
On climate change, though, Warner had not been a maverick.
In 2003, he voted against limits on greenhouse gases that had been proposed by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, then a Democrat, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). In 2005, when the idea resurfaced, Warner voted "nay" again. Both measures ultimately failed.
But Warner said his thinking changed earlier this year. He decided that the U.S. military might face new and dangerous threats if the world were disordered by the weather.
"I began to think, 'This thing really does impact on national security,' " Warner said. And once he decided that, he said, "you've got to get off the bench and get in the ballgame."
So this fall, Warner and Lieberman, now an independent, introduced a bill that would create the country's first national mandate to reduce greenhouse gases. It calls for cutting the emissions from major polluters to 2005 levels by 2012, and then cutting them to 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.
The plan calls for a "cap and trade" scheme, in which the government allocates most major polluters a share of a shrinking national emissions limit. Those that seek to pollute more could buy unused emissions credits from others, or from a government auction.
The bill was not written to be radical; it was written to be passed. And already, Warner and Lieberman have made compromises to keep the proposal going.
In subcommittee, for instance, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) won a concession that would help electric utilities in his state, many of which burn coal. Warner and Lieberman got his vote, and the measure passed. A similar perk went to utilities in Virginia, Warner's home state.
Some environmental groups think that Warner and Lieberman have conceded too much. They want tougher goals for 2050, and fewer concessions to industry.
"The bill's a good political compromise right now, but it fails on the science and the economics," said Erich Pica of the group Friends of the Earth. In particular, he blamed Lieberman and Warner for allowing a provision that would allocate polluting businesses a share of free emissions credits. The very valuable credits would effectively be a reward for years of bad environmental behavior, he said.
"This bill gets us part of the way there," Pica said. "And it's not enough."
On the other side of the debate, fossil-fuel groups have predicted that the bill could raise energy prices perilously high. One particular problem: The legislation envisions that coal plants will eventually be able to capture harmful emissions and store them underground. But if that technology does not become available, it could be difficult -- and expensive -- for them to meet emissions caps.
"We're putting ourselves in a position where, if we bet wrong, we don't have an economy," said William Kovacs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
On Wednesday, the bill was passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee after a full day of debate. In the process, it was amended to be more stringent: A larger number of pollution sources were made subject to the emissions cap, pleasing environmentalists who believed too many were left out.
A political cynic might have watched the debate and wondered whether Warner's support really mattered at all. In the end, he was the only one of the committee's Republicans to vote for the bill. Even if he hadn't, the measure would still have passed 10 to 9.
But its supporters say that Warner's dealmaking was crucial to getting the bill this far -- and that his conservative credentials could now give it a chance in the full Senate.
Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists noted that the bill will need 60 votes to be filibuster-proof in the Senate. Because Democrats control only 51 seats, that means it will need Republicans. It has a few Republican co-sponsors, including Norm Coleman (Minn.) and Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), she said, and Warner could bring more GOP votes.
"Senator Warner is the key to actually getting this bill to a place where it could pass," Shultz said.
The bill's long-term chances still seem murky. Even if it is approved by Congress, President Bush seems unlikely to approve large-scale emissions limits.
But Warner said yesterday that he is optimistic. When the full Senate takes up the bill, he will push for provisions that help nuclear power -- a move demanded by several senators.
Now almost recovered from his leg infection, Warner was already thinking of the bill as a part of his legacy on Capitol Hill.
"I'd like to have, tucked away in my public record . . . a chapter that had a bit of greenery in it," he said.
i.e., money (profits) as usual.
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,833,914.0 square feet!
~~~
1 Aktbird57 .. 2010 65.053 acres
I wish they had all been fed up a long time ago.
It's still not too late.
We can begin to clean up the earth.
All we have to do is get rid of the richest 1 & 1/2 percent of the population around the world.
And all the corporations and poor values that they have, or control.
Exploitation = dividends
My question is what the heck good will money do them when there's no enviornment? Are they building space ships for Mars relocation?
Congress had better get off their duffs and get serious!
Good Sunday all,
China isn't going to stop either. They are, however, beginning to talk about their environment.
Very worthwhile article.
Preserving Tropical Forests Is Key Issue at Talks on Global Warming
By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; A25
As 12,000 people gathered in Bali this week to begin framing a global response to Earth's warming climate, efforts to close a deal that would slow destruction of tropical forests appear to be the best prospect for a concrete achievement from the historic assemblage.
But the deforestation issue is also Exhibit A for the disputes that have made climate negotiations lengthy and divisive despite widening agreement that global warming is real and largely man-made. While scientific dispute over what causes global warming has ended, the debate over how to address it has just begun.
Deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Each year, tropical forests covering an area at least equal to the size of New York state are destroyed; the carbon dioxide that those trees would have absorbed amounts to 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as total U.S. emissions.
The bargain is being championed by a dozen of the world's developing countries at the conference, whose ultimate goal is to map out a two-year path aimed at forging a global system for imposing and enforcing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
But the hoped-for compromise -- which would give financial rewards to poor nations that slow or halt the destruction of their forests -- could still founder amid divisions over who bears how much responsibility for slowing climate change -- and who should pay for it.
Developing countries that profit from logging or expanded farming and construction are seeking incentives and assistance for preserving their forests or slowing the rate of destruction. But many developed countries do not want to pay other nations for actions that are not taken, and they worry that it would be hard to measure the amount of avoided deforestation.
"The problems tend to start when you get down to the small print," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty organization that oversees international climate negotiations.
Deforestation aside, much of the focus on the Indonesian island will be on the large print. "If things go wrong in Bali, I think we are in deep trouble," said de Boer.
The goal is to come up with climate accords that would take effect after the expiration in 2012 of the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated a decade ago. Under that treaty, a cap-and-trade system for limiting and creating a market for emissions is in effect in Europe and has become a multibillion-dollar-a-year business.
"It will be a process to get to a mandate to get a protocol," said Dirk Forrister, a managing director of Natsource LLC, a firm that invests in projects that produce marketable credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But government officials are also trying to leave Bali with some concrete achievements, and preserving the world's forests ranks as one of the most likely prospects.
"It's the area of climate-change negotiations that offers the most promise of cooperation between developing and developed countries, which is why it's so attractive to people on both sides," said Duncan Marsh, director of international climate policy for the Nature Conservancy, an advocacy group.
There is ample scientific evidence that tropical forests are particularly valuable in curbing climate change. Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology, has done studies showing that these forests not only store carbon in their trees but also help produce white clouds that reflect sunlight back to space, which has a cooling effect.
In 1997, deforestation was left out of the final Kyoto accord. Industrialized countries balked at paying countries for avoiding action, and Brazil did not want interference in what it considered a matter of national sovereignty. Later, when Europe implemented its cap-and-trade system, it did not give offset credits for avoided deforestation, which it feared would flood its system with cheap credits. (It did allow credits for planting trees in areas that were deforested before 1990 or where there had been no forest vegetation for at least 50 years.)
Without financial assistance, persuading poor countries to preserve their forests is not easy. Last week, Everton Vieira Vargas, one of Brazil's senior delegates to the Bali talks, told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that his country should not be held to the same standards as developed countries when it comes to greenhouse gases.
"It's a myopic vision to want to compare the responsibilities of India and China in emissions with the United States and Europe," Vargas said, adding that it's "very different" to compare the carbon generated by bringing electricity to Chinese villagers with the carbon emitted by sport-utility vehicles in rich countries.
But Daniel M. Price, Bush's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said in an interview that one of the key tests of any climate agreement will be whether developing countries do their part.
"It can't just be the developed countries. It's got to be the developing countries as well," Price said. When it comes to the next round of climate commitments, he added, "A post-2012 framework will simply not be effective if developing countries adopt the view that they need to do nothing."
Even the traditional allies of developing nations say those countries must tackle climate change. "It's a perfectly understandable point, but to not do anything to improve the greenhouse gas situation is semi-suicidal for everybody," said Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.
Providing financial incentives to "reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation" has emerged as the most likely way of enlisting poor countries in combating climate change. American nongovernmental organizations have helped write proposals for determining historical deforestation baselines that could be measured on a national level. That would avoid the problem of paying a country to stop deforesting one area and then have it do so elsewhere. Credits based on those "savings" could then be sold in cap-and-trade markets in industrialized nations.
Papua New Guinea is leading the group of tropical-forest nations backing a financial incentive plan. A session at the Bali talks will present 10 years of satellite and ground data to convince negotiators that accurate measurement is possible.
"Eighteen months ago, most people were really skeptical that this would ever be included in the next round," said Glenn T. Prickett, senior vice president for business and U.S. government relations at the advocacy group Conservation International. "Political opinion has really come around."
James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Bush administration was still studying how to steer money to the protection of tropical rain forests. "The concept of paying for avoided deforestation is a good one," he said. "The proponents themselves recognize there are difficulties. It's a new area, and we want to make sure it is done right."
Robert G. Aisi, who is Papua New Guinea's U.N. ambassador, has been pushing for more than two years to address deforestation in the context of a climate accord. He said industrialized nations need to understand that if countries such as his hold off logging their forests, there has to be financial compensation.
"It's our resource, it's not yours," he said. "But we understand it's a resource that can be part of the global public goods."
