56 Papers In 45 Countries Publish Joint Editorial On Climate Change: A 'Profound Emergency'

From the Huffington Post:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C -- the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction -- would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

[...]

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided -- and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere - three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down - with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

[...]

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial was published Monday by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

 Read the rest of HuffPo's coverage here.

From the Happiness Project: This Wednesday: Seven topics to avoid if you don't want to risk being a bore.

Fascinating article on things that are boring.

Among list of things not to talk about at parties;

Unless you get a truly enthusiastic response from your interlocutor—which is possible—be very wary of recounting…

1. A dream.
2. The recent changes in your child’s nap schedule.
3. The route you took to get here.
4. An excellent meal you once had at a restaurant.
5. The latest additions to your wine cellar.
6. An account your last golf game.
7. The plot of a movie, play, or movie—in particular, the funny parts.

What do these subjects have in common? The listener has nothing to add. He or she must just hear you describe your experience.

Sadly, I'm guilty of almost all of those things. (I don't have a wine cellar.) I should probably more consciously think about these things before I see my girl Jaimie. As I've been kind of isolated for this past year and a half, I should pick up some human habits.

Jezebel Recommendation: Peanuts Plus President: You're A Good Man, Barack Obama

Sreya has sent you a link to a post on Jezebel:

Title: <i>Peanuts</i> Plus President: You're A Good Man, Barack Obama
Link: http://jezebel.com/5417337/peanuts-plus-president-youre-a-good-man-barack-obama

Sreya says: A brilliant mashup.

Repubs think Franken painted them as Rapist Sympathizers

 Repubs Think Franken Painted Them As "Rapist Sympathizers"

I think Jezebel had the right take on this. Al Franken doesn't need to say a word to mitigate Republican venom. It is abundantly clear that the party doesn't care about the rape victim in this instance, and it's not a case about leftists versus rightists but a case of sheer assholery. If they don't want to look bad, they shouldn't defend rape.

Not like the left is in the clear (the Polanski hulabaloo was alarming) but at least none of those folks are in power or in law enforcement. Politicians are very dumb sometimes, and when they dig themselves into their hole, their first reaction is to whine about the proportions of their caves.

Threat of reconciliation hovers over centrist Democrats on healthcare - TheHill.com

Threat of reconciliation hovers over centrist Democrats on healthcare - TheHill.com

You can do it, Harry Reid.

I don't understand why he's being such a pussy about reconciliation. Force the idiots into compliance and do it now. The Republicans've had no qualms about using it. Why are Democrats so spineless?

Stop being punching bags, sit up straight, and act like a man! Or an actual functioning political entity for once.

Afghanistan Speech Cloud

from the HuffPo

Repatriating

My best friend Venuri sent me the link to this brilliant NY Times story on repatriating Indian Americans.

As someone who has never lived in India and finds the country bewildering and sometimes baffling, I found this article very illuminating.

It starts with the story of Mr. Ayyadurai, whose return to India from Boston presented a whole host of unexpected problems.

In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to lure talented scientists of the so-called desi diaspora back to their homeland.

“It seemed perfect,” he said recently of the job opportunity.

It wasn’t.

As Mr. Ayyadurai sees it now, his Western business education met India’s notoriously inefficient, opaque government, and things went downhill from there. Within weeks, he and his boss were at loggerheads. Last month, his job offer was withdrawn. Mr. Ayyadurai has moved back to Boston.

For those who go back, the reasons are often complicated, and things don't seem to be as they expect.

While several Indian-origin authors have penned soul-searching tomes about their return to India, and dozens of business books exist for Western expatriates trying to do business here, the guidelines for the returning Indian manager or entrepreneur are still being drawn.

“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations,” said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found a business newspaper called Mint, which is now the country’s second-biggest business paper by readership.

He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.” He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.

I think a lot of the problem with corporate culture is that it doesn't mesh well with the unspoken and seemingly feudal tendencies of domestic hierarchies there. As the story says, directors are rarely challenged, meetings go on forever and often with no purpose, and the concept of ethics is a little fluid. Though I won't name names, I have plenty of friends who work in Indian based companies who tell me that these problems plague their work environments.

Though I haven't the energy to go very indepth with this piece, I just want to leave the reader with one last quote -- the last paragraph of this piece. It really made me crack up.

After Mr. Ayyadurai received mixed messages from the gentleman who hired him, Mr Samir Bhattachari, he was fired after promoting (publicly) his negative experiences with Indian work culture after his overtures were rebuffed at every turn. When the reporter went to ask Mr. Bhattachari about his position on Mr. Ayyadurai's abrupt firing, she got a very interesting response:

To prove his point, Mr. Brahmachari, who was two hours late for an interview scheduled by his office, read from a government guide about decision-making in the organization. Mr. Ayyadurai didn’t follow protocol, he said. “As long as your language is positive for the organization I have no problem,” he added.

As the interview was closing, Mr. Brahmachari questioned why anyone would be interested in the situation, and then said he would complain to a reporter’s bosses in New York if she continued to pursue the story.