President Barack Obama’s national security aides gave a bleak warning about the conflict in Afghanistan yesterday as they called on their European allies for a new international military and civilian approach to the war-torn nation. Richard Holbrooke, who heads to the region tomorrow as Mr Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the annual conference on security in Munich that the US and its allies needed to be far more realistic about their objectives in Afghanistan, warning: ‘It’s going to be much tougher than Iraq.’ Arguing that Nato’s future was ‘on the line’ Mr Holbrooke said: ‘We seek attainable objectives but we will add more resources. I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited.’ His dire assessement was reinforced by General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in the Middle East and central Asia, who said the war in Afghanistan had ‘deteriorated markedly in the past two years’ and warned of a ‘downward spiral of security’. The speeches by Gen Petraeus and Mr Holbrooke were notable for their lack of any mention of President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader. Senior figures in the Obama administration have made little secret in recent […]
The government’s major financing agencies for overseas development projects reversed direction Friday, committing to scrutinize fossil-fuel facilities for their effect on global warming and pledging to help build renewable energy plants abroad. The decision was revealed in settlement agreements filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in a lawsuit brought by two environmental groups, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, against the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. in 2002. The environmental groups were joined by three California cities — Santa Monica, Oakland and Arcata — along with Boulder, Colo. The cities argued that carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by such U.S.-financed projects as oil refineries and gas pipelines in India or Russia affect the Earth’s climate. And global warming, the suit argued, influences Santa Monica’s water supply, the sea level near Oakland’s airport and the snow on Rocky Mountain ski slopes. From 1995 to 2006, the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC provided more than $21 billion in loans and loan guarantees for oil refineries, pipeline projects, liquefied natural gas plants and electric power plants around the world, according to a Times investigation in 2007. An analysis of a sample of 48 projects […]
Potentially opening a new era in farming and pharmaceuticals, the U.S. government has approved the first drug produced by genetically engineered livestock. The drug, meant to prevent fatal blood clots in people with a rare condition, is a protein extracted from the milk of goats that have been given a human gene. The same drug, which was approved in Europe in 2006 but has not been widely adopted, is the first to have been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under guidelines the agency adopted only last month to regulate the use of transgenic animals in the nation’s drug and food supply. Made by GTC Biotherapeutics, the drug is produced by a herd of 200 goats that live under quarantine on a high-security farm in central Massachusetts. The animals have been bred to contain a human gene that causes their milk to produce a human blood protein that can be extracted and processed into the anti-clotting drug. Proponents say such animals could become a way of producing biotechnology drugs at lower cost or in greater quantities than with the existing methods, which involve extracting the drugs from donated human blood or growing genetically engineered […]
Scientists are to hold an emergency summit to warn the world’s politicians they are being too timid in their response to global warming. Climate experts from across the world will gather in Copenhagen next month to agree a stark message to policy makers, which they hope will break the political deadlock on efforts to curb rising temperatures. The meeting follows ‘disturbing’ studies that suggest global warming could strike harder and faster than expected. It comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussions on climate change, which climax with international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol. Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who is organising next month’s event, said: ‘This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy.’ The meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Richardson said the IPCC report was ‘wishy-washy’ on issues such as sea level rise. ‘The IPCC talks of a 40cm sea rise this century. Well, if the consensus now is a rise of a metre or more then […]
Barack Obama is to invite China to join the United States in an effort by the world’s two biggest polluters to stop global warming running out of control. Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State, is to raise the prospect of a ‘strong, constructive partnership’ to combat climate change on a visit to Beijing next week, and the President is seriously considering a proposal from many of his most senior advisers to hold a summit with the Chinese leadership to launch the plan. Last week, China’s ambassador to the US, Zhou Wenzhong, made it clear that his government would welcome ‘co-operation on energy and climate change’ with the US. Such unprecedented teamwork would transform the world’s prospects for agreeing radical measures to combat global warming, and – senior Obama administration officials believe – lay the foundation of a new relationship between the two most powerful countries in the world. Related articles * Chance for a green alliance that could still save the world For years, progress towards negotiating a new international climate change treaty has been bedevilled by the two superpowers, each refusing to commit itself to action unless the other goes first, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
