India Nuclear-Energy Agreement Wins U.S. Senate Panel's Backing

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- India and the Bush administration won the backing of a key Senate panel to resume trade in nuclear fuel and technology between the two countries after more than three decades.


The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 19-2 today in favor of legislation to approve the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement. The measure, which had the support of top Democrats and Republicans on the panel, moves to the Senate floor. The House of Representatives also is considering whether to grant its approval. More >>>

U.S.-India nuclear bond?

Commentary by William Hawkins

Washington - September 21, 2008: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sept. 11 said she supports waiving House rules to speed passage of the U.S.-India nuclear trade agreement by the end of the year.

"It does have support in the House," she said. The seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with its focus on national security, was an apt time for the speaker to talk about the pact with India. The agreement has diplomatic implications that extend far beyond even its substantial economic benefits. More >>>

World’s Largest Solar Energy Project Planned for Gujarat, India

Now this is a world record worth talking about! Although still very much at the planning stage, The Business Standard is reporting that the Clinton Foundation is investigating developing what would be by far the world’s largest solar energy project in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Over Five Times the Size of the Current Largest Solar Project the project would be an ‘integrated Solar City’ with a capacity of 5 gigawatts. More >>>

Five ex-secretaries of state urge talks with Iran

September 15, 2008 - WASHINGTON (AP) - Five former secretaries of state, gathering to give their best advice to the next president, agreed Monday that the United States should talk to Iran.


The wide-ranging, 90-minute session in a packed auditorium at The George Washington University, produced exceptional unity among Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III. More >>>

Dear Ambassador Bolton …

15 Sep 2008: Rather than making a case for an Israeli strike against Iran the US could find a more amendable partner in Iran by toning down the virulent rhetoric.

Your recent opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, Israel, Iran and the Bomb, makes the case for a preventive Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. In the article, you state that doing so will buy the West some much needed time. I agree with you that a nuclear Iran is a decidedly unpleasant subject and would constitute a direct violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. All the same, your approach is dangerously myopic. This response argues in favor of an alternative approach, one that more carefully considers Iran's perspective.
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Danger in South Asia

If most Americans think Iran and Georgia are the two most volatile flashpoints in the world, one can hardly blame them.

The possibility that the Bush administration might strike at Tehran's nuclear facilities has been hinted about for the past two years, and the White House's pronouncements on Russia seem like Cold War déjà vu.

But accelerating tensions between India and Pakistan, coupled with Washington's increasing focus on Afghanistan, might just make South Asia the most dangerous place in the world right now, a region where entirely too many people are thinking the unthinkable. More >>>

Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming

Reducing tropical deforestation is feasible, affordable, and essential to avoid dangerous global warming

Slowing tropical deforestation, which currently accounts for about 20 percent of heat-trapping gas emissions worldwide, can make an important contribution to the global emissions reductions that are necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. An international team of eleven top forest and climate researchers, including UCS director of science and policy, Peter Frumhoff, found that cutting deforestation rates in half by mid-century would amount to 12 percent of the emissions reductions needed to keep concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere at relatively safe levels.

The paper, published in the 18 May 2007 issue of Science, provides new evidence that tropical forests will persist in the face of climate change, especially if nations make needed cuts in both industrial and deforestation emissions. More >>>

Bush drops 123 Agreement with Russia

American leaders have put a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia on hold, directly linking the move to the recent troubles concerning Georgia and South Ossetia.

The deal, known as a 123 Agreement after the section of the US Atomic Energy Act which requires it before nuclear trade can take place, had been signed in May by Sergei Kiriyenko and William Burns for the Rosatom agency and the US diplomatic mission to Russia respectively. The signing was accelerated because Kiriyenko was about to leave his post to take charge of the Rosatom corporation and Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to leave office. Its exact text was never revealed, with observers concluding that it must still have been in draft stages. More >>>

Bangladesh seeks billions to fight climate change

DHAKA (AFP) 7 September 2008 — Bangladesh wants rich nations to pay the billions of dollars it says it needs to help fight the effects of climate change because they are the biggest environmental culprits.
The impoverished South Asian nation -- one of the world's lowest emitters of greenhouse gases -- will highlight its plight to the British government and other international donors in London on September 10.

Bangladesh environment secretary A.H.M Rezaul Kabir told AFP that a study by the World Bank, leading donors and the Bangladeshi government had found the country urgently needed huge amounts of money to ensure its survival.

"We need at least four billion dollars at least by 2020 to build dams, cyclone shelters, plant trees along the coast and build infrastructure and capacities to adapt to increasing number of natural disasters," Kabir said.

Environmental experts say Bangladesh is experiencing more rainfall, flooding and droughts, as well as cyclones as a direct result of climate change. More >>>

UK diplomat compares climate change to Cold War

LONDON: AP -September 3, 2008 - The United States and Europe should treat the challenge of fighting climate change even more seriously than they responded to the threat from the Cold War, a British diplomat said Wednesday.

John Ashton, the British foreign secretary's special representative for climate change, said industrialized countries should essentially put their economies on a war footing to tackle the problem of man-made global warming.

"What's needed is a greater and more urgent mobilization of financial, technological, intellectual and political resources than it took to win the Cold War — a degree of mobilization across the economy of which we have no experience in peacetime," Ashton told a conference on climate change and security at the Royal United Services Institute, a military think tank in London. More >>>

U.N. chief warns against waiting for climate deal

The world should not wait until next year to cobble together a new climate change pact, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.

Ban, addressing diplomats and officials at a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the U.N. climate panel, said countries negotiating a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol should aim for a meaningful breakthrough in Poznan, Poland, in December.

Delaying major advances until the end of 2009, when a Copenhagen summit will aim to finalize an accord to tackle rising global temperatures, may be ill-advised, Ban told the event in Geneva. More >>>