Environmental advocates have finally managed to put the issue of global warming at the top of the world’s agenda. But the scientific, economic, and political realities may mean that their efforts are too little, too late. As the world’s leaders gather in New York this week to discuss climate change, you’re going to hear a lot of well-intentioned talk about how to stop global warming. From the United Nations, Bill Clinton, and even the Bush administration, you’ll hear about how certain mechanisms-cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, carbon taxes, and research and development plans for new energy technologies-can fit into some sort of global emissions reduction agreement to stop climate change. Many of these ideas will be innovative and necessary; some of them will be poorly thought out. But one thing binds them together: They all come much too late. For understandable reasons, environmental advocates don’t like to concede this point. Eager to force deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, many of them hype the consequences of climate change-in some cases, well beyond what is supported by the facts-to build political support. Their expensive policy preferences are attractive if they are able to convince voters that if they […]
MAHMUDIYA, Iraq - On bases big and small south of Baghdad, the scrambled reality of war has become routine: an unending loop of anxious driving in armored Humvees, gallons of Gatorade, laughter at the absurd and 4 a.m. raids into intimate Iraqi bedrooms. This is Iraq for the 3,300 soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division’s Second Brigade, and many have come to the unfortunate realization that it now feels more like home than home. No brigade in the Army has spent more days deployed since Sept. 11, 2001, and with only a few weeks to go before ending their 15-month tour, the soldiers here are eager to go. But they are also nervous about what their minds will carry back, given the psychic toll of war day after day and the prospect of additional tours. Heartache can be heard in the quiet voice of Specialist Gerald Barranco-Oro, who at 22 is on his second tour of Iraq and will leave for home without two close friends who were killed May 19. There are other losses, too: for fathers like Staff Sgt. Kirk Ray, 25, whose 2-year-old daughter screams when he calls because ‘she doesn’t know who […]
This Sunday a number of Episcopal churches in America will be praying under a distinctly foreign authority. God is still in charge, but so will the Church of Uganda. The east African nation’s Anglican Church consecrated Virginian John Guernsey as bishop earlier this month to lead 33 American congregations that have defected from the U.S. Episcopal Church, mainly because of the American organization’s stand of gay ordination - a stance reaffirmed at a conference this week in New Orleans. But earlier in September, in a five-hour long, open-air service in southwestern Uganda that blended Anglican hymns with traditional African music, bishops from around the world joined together to anoint the latest conservative U.S. cleric seeking shelter in an African church. Says Guernsey: ‘Uganda has become a haven for ecclesiastical refugees.’ Wearing a slightly ill-suited, printed Ugandan shirt, Bishop Guernsey earnestly calls Uganda his ‘spiritual home.’ Guernsey is the most recent in a series of American bishops pledging allegiance to African churches that have strong anti-homosexuality stances. In September alone, Americans William Atwood and William Murdoch were also consecrated by an African church, the Anglican Church of Kenya. Anglicans worldwide have been divided since the U.S. Episcopal Church, the […]
CENTRAL ASIA — It almost seemed since the month of May that in the battles of the Caspian energy war, Russian President Vladimir Putin was destined to glide serenely from victory to victory until next March when he leaves office in the Kremlin. But a backlash was bound to happen. Putin’s standing as the ace player in the Great Game of our times had surely become an eyesore for Western capitals. You could tell it from the stillness in the air, as the autumn began stealthily approaching the Central Asian steppes, that something was afoot. Are we heading for a season of unraveling, with the West bracing, no matter what it takes, for a marathon jawing that would somehow punctuate the claustrophobic intensity of the Kremlin’s string of success stories in May-June – and create an alternative? In focus is Turkmenistan, the energy-rich gas powerhouse of Central Asia. These have been manic weeks in Ashgabat. The melodrama is acute. But then the inscrutable space between victory and the chimera of victory has always been very narrow in Central Asia. September 1 was the cutoff date that the Kremlin penciled in for the signing […]
SHIJIAZHUANG, China - Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary water source for this provincial capital of more than two million people is steadily running dry. The underground water table is sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater. Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table. ‘People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,’ said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation. For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
