LONDON — Green technologies posed the investment opportunity of our lifetime said Deutsche Bank’s global head of asset management, in a study published on Thursday. A Deutsche Bank report found that companies specialising in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected more to come in 2010. Clear proof of the threat posed by climate change meant that governments will only ramp up steps to curb carbon emissions and favour clean technologies, it said. ‘The shift to a low-carbon economy to mitigate global warming will require the creation of new technologies, industries and jobs on a massive scale,’ said Kevin Parker. Deutsche Asset Management had $695 billion in assets under management as of September 2009. ‘The absolute imperative to prevent climate change is therefore also, I believe, the economic and investment opportunity of our lifetime,’ he commented in the report. Deutsche bankers looked on the bright side of a Copenhagen climate summit last December which failed in its main objective to drive global consensus on action to fight climate change. Their report instead pointed to proliferating national green policies, regardless […]
NEW YORK — The world’s largest investors today issued a statement calling on the United States and other governments to ‘act now to catalyze development of a low-carbon economy and to attract the vast amount of private capital necessary for such a transformation.’ The U.S., European and Australian investor groups, who together represent $13 trillion in assets, called for ‘a price on carbon emissions’ and ‘well-designed carbon markets’ to provide ‘a cost-effective way of achieving emissions reductions.’ The statement was announced at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk, a meeting of 450 global investors at the United Nations that includes U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, billionaire investor George Soros and former Vice President Al Gore. The investors said while some progress towards a global agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions was made at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009, ‘we cannot wait for a global treaty.’ ‘Policymakers made only incremental progress in Copenhagen, leaving a great deal of work to be done to address the risks that climate change presents to the global economy and to investments,’ they said. They said, ‘we underscore the importance of concluding a legally-binding agreement […]
The Great Recession, so I’m told, has been great for one segment of the economy - the makers of pills and potions that offer the promise of keeping people healthy. A middle-aged woman remarked as she perused the supplement shelves in my local health food store (I was buying bulgur): ‘I can’t afford to get sick. I lost my job and I have no health insurance. Each year millions of people fall prey to false promises that this, that or the other formula or fortified food can protect their hearts, prevent cancer, improve memory, strengthen their bones, uncreak their joints, build their muscles, even enable them to burn extra calories without moving. The desire to achieve a healthy old age is laudable indeed, and will be even more so in the future. According to a projection of the century-long rise in life expectancy published in The Lancet in October, more than half the children born since 2000 in wealthy countries can expect to celebrate their 100th birthday. If so many of us are destined to become centenarians, it is all the more important to be able to enjoy those years unencumbered by chronic disease and disability. There […]
A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the startling revelation that his country’s security forces apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli intelligence forces. ‘A terrorist cell was apprehended and will be referred to the courts for its links with the Israeli intelligence services,’ he promised. Saleh added, ‘You will hear about the trial proceedings.’ Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the Arabian Nights were played out. Combine Yemen with the mystique of Islam, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Israeli intelligence and you get a heady mix. The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, dropped in at the capital, Sana’a, on Saturday and vowed to Saleh increased American aid to fight al-Qaeda. United States President Barack Obama promptly echoed Petraeus’ promise, assuring that the US would step up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the region. Another Afghanistan? Many accounts say that Obama, who is widely regarded as a gifted and intelligent politician, is blundering into a catastrophic mistake […]
The Rev. Pat Robertson turned heads with his appearance on The 700 Club on Wednesday when he blamed Haitian history for Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. In short, Robertson claimed that the quake was divine retribution for a pact with the devil that was sworn long ago, a statement he was audacious enough to make while the 800 number for disaster relief scrolled at the bottom of the broadcast. He said: ‘And you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon the Third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘O.K., it’s a deal.’ ‘ So what was Robertson referring to? The theory that Haiti is a nation built on a pact with the devil has circulated on a number of websites, each tracing back to an apocryphal tale of Haitian voodoo priests sacrificing a pig and drinking its blood in 1791 in order to secure Satan’s aid in expelling the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
