Innovators Under 35: Leslie Dewan, Chief Science Officer, Transatomic Power

 

Innovators Under 35: Leslie Dewan, Chief Science Officer, Transatomic Power

Published on Nov 7, 201 3 • What if we could build a nuclear reactor that costs half as much, consumes nuclear waste, and will never melt down? Trans Atomic Power

 

© 2014

Reality of National Security State Trumps 'Delusions' of U.S. Democracy

In the halls of U.S. government, "policy in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions," political scientist argues in new book

"I think the American people are deluded."

So says Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon, whose new book, National Security and Double Government (Oxford University Press), describes a powerful bureaucratic network that's really pulling the strings on key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

The 'double government' explains why the Obama version of national security is virtually indistinguishable from the one he inherited from President George W. Bush.

The American public believes "that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change," Glennon told the Boston Globe in an interview published Sunday. "Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy... But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions."

Glennon argues that because managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies operate largely outside the institutions meant to check or constrain them—the executive branch, the courts, Congress—national security policy changes very little from one administration to the next.

This explains, he says, why the Obama version of national security is virtually indistinguishable from the one he inherited from President George W. Bush. It's also why Guantanamo is still open; why whistleblowers are being prosecuted more; why NSA surveillance has expanded; why drone strikes have increased.

"I was curious why a president such as Barack Obama would embrace the very same national security and counterterrorism policies that he campaigned eloquently against," Glennon said. Drawing on his own personal experiences as former legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as conversations with dozens of individuals in U.S. military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies and elected officials, Glennon drew the following conclusion: "National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy."

To dismantle this so-called "double government"—a phrase coined by British journalist and businessman Walter Bagehot to describe the British government in the 1860s—will be a challenge, Glennon admits. After all, "There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can’t affect, policies that you can’t change."

But he is not hopeless. "The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people," he said. "The people have to take the bull by the horns." More

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

 

© 2014

Mismanaging Climate Change

Pakistan’s extreme vulnerability to climate change is not a scientific secret but is, in fact, a logical certainty owing to its geographic location, inclined elevation, as well as demographics.

Former Minister Malik Amin Aslam Khan

The issue directly impacts upon the country’s already volatile water dynamics driven by the northern glaciers and the seasonal monsoon rains and, if not managed properly, could burden our economy to the tune of $6-14 billion per year (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change NEEDS study 2010). In response to this challenge, Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy has laid out a comprehensive ‘to do’ list for the government, which was approved by the government but, unfortunately, has not been acted upon by the authorities. Oblivious to this apathy and inaction, Pakistan continues to face a mammoth challenge to not only climate-proof its future development path, but also take steps to cope with an issue, which is here to stay. These steps include establishing early warning systems, effective flood plain management, improving weather forecasting with cross-border data exchange and enhancing the disaster preparedness, as well as emergency response capabilities to deal with predicted climate-induced natural disasters.

To their credit, previous governments did begin to take concrete institutional building measures, such as establishing a very high-level Prime Minister’s Cabinet Committee on Climate Change, setting up a dedicated Ministry of Climate Change built on the debris of a misguidedly devolved Environment Ministry and creating a focused climate research centre i.e., the Global Change Impact Studies Centre. However, in one stroke of convenient denial, the present government has undone and dismantled all those measures by downgrading the ministry to a division level, drastically cutting the funds for the division, leaving it headless without an appointed minister and also drying up all finances for the climate research centre. It is, thus, not surprising, that the country received a rude wake-up call when, during the recent floods, the forces of nature once again caught it totally off guard and institutionally ill-prepared to deal with a situation, which had been predicted and forewarned time and again by climate experts.

The 2014 flood came in two surges. The first surge occurred due to exceptionally high rainfall in the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and their catchments. It is a recorded fact that the Pakistan meteorological office gave clear warnings about this enhanced rainfall activity, which were not heeded to in a timely manner. The result of this negligence was that the Mangla Dam remained filled to the brim, while storm waters gathered upstream and, subsequently, the floodgates were forced open at the worst possible time when water levels were already dangerously peaking downstream. Had the water been incrementally released, as advised, the massive flood surge that eventually occurred could have been effectively prevented. Dams remain a double-edged sword — if used intelligently, they can be the best tool for controlling and regulating floods, but if used improperly, as they were on this occasion, they can quickly convert floods into mega human disasters.

This first human-induced deluge was followed by the second flood surge that occurred due to the unpredictably high ‘cloud-burst’ in Indian-held Kashmir. The information about this second surge was also received hours in advance as the water roared down River Chenab. Again, our own meteorological office issued a timely flood peak warning, but again, the reaction time and response measures of our government were found severely lacking.

The floods were triggered by climate-induced cloud-bursts and monsoonal shifts, but the human tragedy and destruction got multiplied due to poor government planning, human negligence and a criminal mixture of absence and apathy of relevant institutional response mechanisms.

Climate related calamities, including more flooding and an enhanced frequency of freak natural events are, unequivocally, predicted for Pakistan and it is time to take these warnings seriously, and for the government to heed to them by planning to deal with the consequences, limiting the damage and adapting to this shifting scenario. The recent floods, which are surely not the last one, have also rudely exposed the human, economic and environmental costs to be paid for our politically motivated aversion to building large dams, as well as the suicidal trend of encroaching upon flood plains and continuing to challenge the flood water boundaries.

Pakistan lies at the geographic crossroads of melting glaciers, shifting monsoons and enhanced disaster activity. This locational risk cannot be changed, but how we deal with this looming catastrophe can certainly be changed. What it requires is better responsive measures and heeding to technical advice and scientifically based warnings with timely decisions.

The political optics of wading through floodwaters and post disaster bear hugs with destitute and frustrated victims is beginning to lose its vote-gathering lustre. As we haplessly subject millions to avoidable disasters, it is time to face up to reality. Climate-proofing of infrastructure, conserving the yearly deluge of water that is callously flushed into the Arabian Sea and effectively enforced flood plains management needs to get the priority it deserves. The politics of underpasses and overpasses has to give way to the politics of common sense, based on what Pakistan’s real challenges are and what it is predicted to face up to in the near future. Governing with confused priorities and institutional mismanagement will continue to worsen the responses forced upon us as we face up to the unpredictability of climate change. More

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19th, 2014.

 

 

© 2014

Ebola and Climate Change: ‘We Are Running Out of Time,’ says World Bank President

Not acting on climate change could have the same results as the inaction on Ebola with significant human and economic impact, warned World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim in a speech Friday to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group annual meeting. He said that addressing both would further the World Bank’s goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

Jim Yong Kim President World Bank

“In a world where natural disasters, conflict, financial shocks and epidemics are becoming more frequent and destructive, we at the World Bank Group must do everything we can to become even more relevant,” he said. “Indeed, we’ve been fully engaged lately in fighting two of these global threats: the Ebola epidemic and climate change.”

“Ebola and climate change have a few things in common,” he said. “Most importantly, we are running out of time to find solutions to both. Also, until very recently, the plans to fight them were either nonexistent or inadequate. And inaction is literally killing people–one because of the rapid spread of a deadly virus, the other from the poisoning of the atmosphere and the oceans. And finally, perhaps most critically from our point of view, resolving these problems is essential to development, whether from the perspective of human suffering, economic growth or public health.”

Kim, an infectious disease physician, called the initial global response to Ebola “inadequate and slow” but said “Once engaged, we’ve moved with creativity, speed and purpose.” He said that the World Bank’s world on climate change over the last two years provided a blueprint for its response to Ebola.

“Soon after I started at the World Bank [July 2012], I asked my team a simple question: What’s the plan to fight climate change?” he said. “The responses received from our staff and even from leaders in the climate change community were mostly tactical: new technologies here, some efficiencies there. While important, they were not equal to the challenge of keeping a global increase in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. So, working with others, we developed our own strategy that we hoped could take us a long way toward achieving this objective.”

That five-part plan including carbon pricing, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, building cleaner cities, encouraging climate-friendly agriculture, and investing in renewable energy sources. He described in detail the World Bank’s campaign on carbon pricing: building a coalition of cooperating governments and businesses.

“At the start of the campaign, we counted 22 countries that would support this goal,” said Kim. “With lobbying, the number kept climbing. Less than a week before the deadline, China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, agreed to support carbon pricing. It became the 54th country to endorse the statement. In the four days before the [UN Climate] summit, 20 more countries signed on. At the time of the announcement, 74 governments and more than 1,000 companies and investors had agreed to put a price on carbon. Together, the countries account for up to 54 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, 52 percent of the world’s GDP and nearly 50 percent of the world’s population.”

“Later today, ministers, CEOs and the World Bank Climate Group will join me to turn this pledge into action,” he said.

“We must maintain this commitment because increasing global fragility and volatility will challenge us more and more every day,” he concluded. “In our march to end extreme poverty, conflict, typhoons, floods, droughts, financial shocks and epidemics may at times slow us. But they will not stop us. The Bank will be aggressive and creative and apply large-scale solutions to help states manage, prepare for, recover from and conquer these risks, so they can grow and flourish.” More

 

© 2014

Online Course: Climate Change Science and Negotiations

Climate Change Science and Negotiation

Course Summary

Humanity has just about run out of time to address climate change. Scientists have pointed out that a rise in mean surface temperature of 2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels will put the Earth in dangerous, uncharted territory. Yet we currently are on a path toward an increase of 4º or more this century. The last chance for action has arrived. That chance lies in Paris in December 2015. Either governments will agree to decisive action, as they have promised, or we will look back at 2015 as the year when climate sanity slipped through our fingers.

Fortunately, solutions exist to deeply decarbonize the global energy systems, and put the world on a 2°C pathway: improvements in energy efficiency in the building, transport and industry sectors; the generation of low-carbon electricity, through a mix of renewable energies (wind, solar), nuclear, and fossil fuels with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS); and the shift to low-carbon energy carriers in energy end-use sectors, such as electric vehicles.

"Climate Change Science and Negotiations" is a two-semester course, with the first semester launching in fall 2014. During the first semester, you will learn about these solutions, and how they can be applied in different national contexts, based on the results from the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP), a global initiative to show how countries can transition to a low carbon economy by 2050, and how the world can stay within the 2°C limit.

The second semester of the course, which will open for registration in late fall 2014, will be a dynamic online climate change negotiation. The negotiation will be modeled on the real negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which are scheduled to reach an agreement in Paris in December 2015, at the 21^st Conference of the Parties (COP21). The outcomes of the second semester simulated negotiations will be presented to global leaders in advance of COP21.

We need you to show the world how an ambitious, fair and effective global agreement on climate change can be achieved. More

 

 

© 2014