Al Gore has launched his new campaign-this one to battle the effects of global warming. At its center is a new film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ which stars Gore and has been winning surprisingly positive press. It opens May 24. The former vice president, who has abandoned a relatively low profile to promote the movie, spoke to Eleanor Clift about the environment, technology and politics in America. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: They say timing is everything. Has the moment arrived for this issue? Al Gore: I hope it has. I hope that we are close to a tipping point beyond which the country will begin to face this very seriously and the majority of politicians in both parties will begin to compete by offering meaningful solutions. We’re nowhere close to that yet, but a tipping point by definition is a time of very rapid change-and I think that the potential for this change has been building up, with the evangelical ministers speaking out, General Electric and Republican CEOs saying we have to address it, grass-roots organizations-all of these things are happening at the same time because through various means people are seeing a new reality. The relationship between our civilization and the […]
Dark clouds have suddenly gathered over the fledgling market for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, where prices plunged by more than half last week as European countries discovered they were polluting far less than they thought. The innovative market is the brainchild of the Kyoto Protocol for controlling greenhouse-gas emissions — the carbon gases emitted mainly by burning oil, gas and coal that are driving perilous climate change. Its backbone is the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). Under this, 11,500 firms that are big users of fossil fuels have to meet a target of CO2 emissions or else pay a penalty of 40 euros (50 dollars) a tonne for 2006 and 2007, a punishment that will rise from 2008 to 100 euros (125 dollars) a tonne. Those that are below their quota can sell their surplus on the ETS to companies that are over, thus providing a financial carrot to everyone to clean up his act. At the start of the week, a tonne of CO2 was changing hands at 30 euros a tonne, compared to 20.5 euros at the beginning of 2006. On Wednesday, the price crashed to 23.40 euros, and on Thursday […]
Alarmed at the sharply rising cost of hurricanes and other disasters, home insurers are pulling back from some U.S. coastal markets, warning of gathering financial storm clouds over how the United States pays for the damage of catastrophe. The development is yet another legacy of Hurricane Katrina, whose mounting toll of destruction along the Gulf Coast has crystallized a growing industry debate about the combined effect of climate trends and population growth in coastal areas. Some believe the two are creating a risk of losses so large that insurers could be pushed to the breaking point, leaving the government and taxpayers holding the tab for the next disaster. Since Aug. 29 — when the hurricane made landfall along the Gulf Coast — Allstate Corp., the industry’s second-largest company, has ceased writing homeowners policies in Louisiana, Florida and coastal parts of Texas and New York state. The firm has stopped underwriting earthquake coverage in California and elsewhere. Other firms have pulled back from the Gulf Coast to Cape Cod, notifying Florida of plans to cancel 500,000 policies. Meanwhile, homeowners are moving to state-backed insurer plans of last resort, which tend to be subsidized by taxpayers, and whose costs […]
WASHINGTON – Stoking the smoldering international controversy over America’s conduct of its war on terror, a European Parliament inquiry has found that the CIA carried out as many as 1,000 secret flights through Europe since the 9/11 attacks. With details that might conjure up movie scripts, an interim report by a committee investigating such activity alleges that the CIA occasionally snatched suspects from city streets and whisked them away to far countries or to the US detention facility in Guantánamo, Cuba. The allegations have so far created few official waves, coming as they do as European governments mull their own responses to international terrorism – and after reports late last year had already prompted a round of transatlantic diplomacy. But the response does indicate that the US has a black eye not so much with European governments, but with European publics. And it also hints – as the report alleges – that at least some European governments not only knew of the flights and transfers of suspected terrorists, but also cooperated with them. ‘These investigations and the fact that in this case it’s coming out of the European Parliament suggest how this is more a reflection of […]
WASHINGTON — The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court’s approval, the Justice Department said Friday. It was the first time the Bush administration has publicly disclosed how often it uses the administrative subpoena known as a national security letter, which allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without court approval. Friday’s disclosure was mandated as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act, the administration’s sweeping anti-terror law. The FBI delivered a total of 9,254 NSLs relating to 3,501 people in 2005, according to a report submitted late Friday to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. In some cases, the bureau demanded information about one person from several companies. The department also reported it received a secret court’s approval for 155 warrants to examine business records last year, under a Patriot Act provision that includes library records. However, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the department has never used the provision to ask for library records. The number was a significant jump over […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
