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1. 

   littleriver Posted 4:34 am
   08 Jul 2007

   Al Gore. Call Home.The planet can wait a few days.
   Your kids in jail for speeding and for possession of illegal drugs. Better head back to bail him out and have a little man to drug addict talk.

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2. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 5:36 am
   08 Jul 2007

   Heh.Pot. Kettle. Black.
   President Bush's twin daughters Jenna and Barbara have had numerous legal and personal problems due to violations of underage drinking laws, and college student friends of the Bush girls say the famous pair also enjoys marijuana.
   Ashton Kutcher, star of That 70's Show, recently told Rolling Stone the Bush daughters got high at a party at his home in 2003.
   "I go upstairs to see another friend, and I can smell the green wafting out under the door," Kutcher said. "I open the door and there he is, smoking out the Bush twins on his hookah."
   
   http://cannabisculture.com/articles/3426.html
   Then again, I guess they take after their father, with his crack habit, and multiple DUIs ;D

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3. 

   littleriver Posted 10:50 am
   08 Jul 2007

   Uhhh.. Geee Maybe it's OK..Good point Grey.  GW's daughter's like to have a little fun so apparently it's ok for Al's son to drive drunk and have a whole bunch of different versions of illegal drugs in his automobile.
   In the Gore family case a real cop arrested the addict while in the Bush family case we have a whole bunch of accusations (some of which may be true) from various sources who may or may not have an axe to grind.  But what the heck.  If you can just drink enough Koolaid it all seems to be comparable.

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4. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 11:20 am
   08 Jul 2007

   InspiringThe Internet is bringing billions of minds together to problem solve--the combinatorial power of intellect linked by a planet wide neural web.
   I just returned from rural America, which is always depressing, rubbing elbows with my God fearing, environmentalist hating, fun loving but ignorant as dirt fellow citizens. They have no answers. They are unwilling, uncooperative passengers, along for the drunken ride.
   On the topic of Gore's child. Parents have far less control over their children than they want to believe. Peer groups weild far more influence. That is the power of these concerts. Home schooling works, until the children leave home.
   We are a hateful and violent species.
   
   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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5. 

   Billhook Posted 1:38 pm
   08 Jul 2007

   Leadership ? To where ?If Al had serious proposals for the basis of an equitable and effective treaty,
   
   his pronouncements might be taken more seriously outside America.
   In his recent letter in the NYT he declared that
   
   there is "no other way" than to base the treaty
   
   on each nation's liability
   
   (being their sum of pollution output plus the ongoing resulting global damages )
   
   and on each nation's capacity to provide assistance
   
   (being their [variable] wealth in finance and other forms).
   This seems a sure fire recipe,
   
   If any such treaty could be negotiated at all, let alone in two years
   
   this seems a sure fire recipe
   
   for guaranteeing annual reviews mired in diplomatic deadlock,
   
   and generating pernicious distrust and animosity,
   
   and little of the essential creative co-operation urgently required,
   
   and giving a high probability of the treaty's collapse in desperate acrimony.
   As such, Al's proposal is a gift to the prevaricationists.
   Which is not to say that I don't respect te man's work on the film, as far as it went.
   He is of course dead wrong to claim that there is "no other way" than to base the treaty
   
   on nations' liability and capacity to pay.
   Ambassador Estrada of Argentina, who chaired the marginally successful Kyoto Conference,
   
   described the viable alternative climate policy framework as follows :
   "Contraction & Convergence . . . is the logical conclusion of an equitable approach to resolving Climate Change."
   This framework embodies the requisite effectiveness and equity at the level of principle,
   
   in that the nations' ghg output entitlements would Contract in total,
   
   over an agreed period of years,
   
   to a level set to avoid exceeding 2dC of GW,
   
   while national shares in each year's global GHG budget would Converge over the years
   
   from reflecting financial wealth to reflecting population size,
   
   i.e. to global per capita parity of emissions entitlement.
   As a means of optimizing the rate of change
   
   from dependence on deforestation & fossil fuels (the twin main delinquents)
   
   C&C is drafted (by Global Commons Institute, its developer) to accomodate the trading of emission entitlements,
   
   as this would calm the curve of developed nations "cold turkey"
   
   and help to price malign carbon off their markets,
   
   while also serving the curve of sustainable energy RD&D in developing countries.
   In reality Al Gore cannot claim ignorance of C&C,
   
   given that the European Parliament has voted that it should be the basis of EU diplomacy,
   
   and that the Africa Group of Nations have long called for it to be the basis of UNFCCC negotiations,
   
   and that a very senior Indian politician (Pradip Ghosh)
   
   recently made a very frank public assertion of his county's commitment to it,
   
   and that there are strong indications backing his report
   
   that India's commitment to C&C is shared by China.
   In this light, for Big Al to tell the world that "there is no other way" (than his way)
   
   is not plausibly ignorant, it is just plain offensive.
   One of the things he didn't say holographically
   
   was the America is going to be held to account for its wanton pollution,
   
   and that seeing as it can hardly afford the tab it's already run up,
   
   it would be wise to stop adding to it real soon.
   So just why is Big Al so tongue-tied when it comes to the solutions to the global predicament ?
   Is he perhaps a closet America-Firster ?
   Regards,
   Bill
    

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6. 

   cce Posted 3:49 pm
   08 Jul 2007

   GW & CheneyGeorge W and Cheney have 3 DUIs between them.  Bush 1, Cheney 2.  That is the President and Vice President themselves, not their offspring.  And if only there had been an actual investigation of Cheney's hunting "mishap" we would have learned just how sloshed he was then.  But, of course, we'll never officially "know" what we all know to be true.

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7. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 3:52 pm
   08 Jul 2007

   Well I'd cut that shorterHow about a simpler metric?
   
   CO2-per-year-per-Capita
   Well I'd cut that shorter, and just call it liability.
   Thats clear-cut enough.
   Obviously those nations which have spewed out the most carbon, over the most years, are the ones which should have the highest debt to the world.
   And consequentally, the nations which have burnt the most fossil fuels are almost unanimously the ones which are currently in the best economic shape to address the issue.
   _
   I guess what it all boil down to is.
   "USA needs to move first, or else noone else is gonna budge."
   Or rather "You made the mess, You clean it up."
   _
   That said, if they wanted to normalize it.
   
   Basing it on GDP might not be the best measure.
   Instead they could just as easily measure it based on CO2 per capita.

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8. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 4:18 pm
   08 Jul 2007

   Heh, or basically thats what you just said ;DIf I may reiterate:
   
   
   
   Yearly Global Carbon Budget to set things on course for a 2°C reduction in CO2.
   
   Split that Carbon budget up inbetween nations based on the country's relative CO2/Year/Capita.
   
   
   The game-theory-loophole to this would be to scrap abstinence/contriceptive programs, and encourage population growth.
   Also, what gets done to countries which go over their "Carbon Budget"?
   Who decides what level the carbon budget will be?

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9. 

   planetthoughts Posted 7:02 pm
   08 Jul 2007

   Good discussionIt is good to see some serious discussion of alternatives for action globally.  I do not have a recommendation, as I need to absorb these approaches more carefully.  I do wonder if the world is going to wait for the USA forever.  Being an American it is embarrassing how backward the government is, but eventually, as the world continues to move ahead, we will be so shamed as a nation that action will start.  Meanwhile, every individual should do what she/he can do, and vote with a mind to the future.
   My comment about the Children: it is unfortunate that kids can lose their way sometimes.  Hopefully all the above (Bush, Cheney, Gore kids) will straighten themselves out.  I would rather not use the childrens' actions against ANY of their parents, as many factors go into child behaviors, and those folks all live under a media microscope.  This is not to condone any kind of drunk driving, underage drinking, and so on. Let's hope they will all find the right way.
   
   David Alexander
   
   PlanetThoughts.org
   
   
   
   Love your Planet.

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10. 

    caniscandida Posted 5:31 am
    09 Jul 2007

    Cheney's daughterFunny, David Alexander, that you seem to have allowed Dick Cheney to slip into the company of parents with problem kids.
    In fact Mary Cheney is guilty of a sin far worse than the thoughtless sensationalist peccadillos of the Bush twins and the young Al Gore.  Hers is a sin of the intellect: choosing to do nothing to defend the rights of the LGBT community, when she is an excellent position to do so.
    On the holograph: I like the way Al Gore got to play with the planet Earth.  It would be interesting to see a brief documentary showing Al in the studio, or wherever, wherever the thing was made.  Will it be possible to buy small souvenir holographs of Al Gore, like the one Data has of Tasha Yar?
    
    Chickens are our cousins!
    
    So are other sensitive animals!
    
    Enough is enough!
    
    No more factory farms!

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11. 

    Tom Athanasiou Posted 1:34 pm
    09 Jul 2007

    OK, about Contraction and Convergence...Bill;
    Look, C&C was a good idea.  It got me and lots of other people off their butts and moved them to take "equity for survival" seriously.  And it's still useful in lots of ways, including as a teaching tool.  But there are real reasons why it hasn't taken off, and something about your tone tells me that maybe it's time for you to take a step back and think about them.
    Don't mistake me.  I don't mean to be a piss ant.  It's just that I think that we in the "equity party" have got to get serious.  To that end, and in case it helps, here's a link to a little report -- it sports the snappy tile of A Brief, Adequacy and Equity-Based Evaluation of Some Prominent Climate Policy Frameworks and Proposals -- that EcoEquity just wrote for the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin.  HBF, in case you don't know, is the major German Green foundation and has supporters of C&C on its staff.
    In this report, we briefly consider six approaches to a post-Kyoto climate regime, all of which claim to be fair.  We evaluate each of them on its own terms, and also in terms of its ability, or potential ability, to deliver the all-important quality that we call "developmental equity."
    We say "frameworks and proposals" because one of our six, the Climate Action Network's "Viable Framework for Preventing Dangerous Climate Change," is too general to be a taken as a proposal.  In fact, two of the others, the South-North Dialogue's "Equity in the Greenhouse" proposal and our own "Greenhouse Development Rights," can be considered as attempts to flesh out the CAN framework.
    In any case, these six (the others include "Contraction and Convergence" and the Vatttenfall Proposal, which is notable because it was just made by a major European utility) were chosen because they all have something of a political profile, and, of course, because they all claim to be based on explicit equity principles.  In this they're notably different from most other approaches now in play and under development, and considering them as a group turns out be instructive.
    And, yes, one of the six is our own Greenhouse Development Rights, but we think that you'll find that, in evaluating it, we've been fair.  I hope that you'll also appreciate the we've tried to be fair to C&C.
    
    Tom Athanasiou
    
    (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
    
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