Pope’s Climate Letter Is a Radical Attack on the Logic of the Market
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/popes-climate-letter-is-a-radical-attack-on-the-logic-of-the-market
What makes Pope Francis and his 183-page encyclical so radical isn’t just his call to urgently tackle climate change. It’s the fact he openly and unashamedly goes against the grain of dominant...
The Economics of Climate Change
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-economics-of-climate-change
Shifting away from an emphasis on global economic growth toward local economies provides a means to increase meaningful employment, shrink the gap between rich and poor, and tackle climate...
Climate funds for coal highlight lack of UN rules
▻http://bigstory.ap.org/article/07b1724c91604b0d8a3d272424912580/climate-funds-coal-highlight-lack-un-rules
About $1 billion in loans under a U.N. initiative for poor countries to tackle global warming is going toward the construction of power plants fired by coal, the biggest human source of carbon pollution.
Japan gave the money to help its companies build three such plants in Indonesia and listed it with the United Nations as climate finance, The Associated Press has found. Japan says these plants burn coal more efficiently and are therefore cleaner than old coal plants.
[...] Japan’s coal projects highlight the lack of rules to steer the flow of climate finance from rich to poor countries — a critical part of U.N. talks on global warming, which resume Monday in Lima, Peru. There is no watchdog agency that ensures the money is spent in the most effective way, and no definition of what climate finance is.
[...] Even the newly launched Green Climate Fund, a key channel for climate finance in the future, still only has vague guidelines on how to spend the money. Board member Jan Cedergren said he didn’t believe the fund would support fossil fuels but acknowledged no decision has so far been made.
China Needs New Laws to Tackle Illegal Logging
▻http://www.ecc-platform.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=5055:china-needs-new-laws-to-tack
The Chinese have a saying about drinking poison to quench a thirst, used to warn against hasty remedies with consequences worse than the problem itself. A recently proposed method of tackling illegal logging is just such a case. China is one of the world’s largest importers of timber products. So whether or not the country takes measures to ensure those products are obtained legally affects the survival of the world’s forests and ecologies and China’s international reputation.
H5N1 : UN has ’moral responsibility’ to tackle Haiti cholera : Ban
▻http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2014/07/un-has-moral-responsibility-to-tackle-haiti-cholera-ban.html
commentaire de « crof », l’auteur de ce blog :
One of the sorrows of being 73 is that you now know all too well that the wisdom of your fellow-elders is largely bullshit; like you, they’re just lucky dopes. Dr. Ban has just turned 70, and he ought at least to have the wit to seek advice from smarter young advisors.
So Ban wants “donors to contribute” to getting rid of cholera in Haiti. That’s a genteel way of saying he wants someone else to pay for the damage the UN has done to a wretchedly poor country.
(...) the UN continues to shirk its responsibility.
‘Forget the cost – tackle climate anyway’ | Climate News Network
▻http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/04/forget-the-cost-tackle-climate-anyway
By Alex Kirby
Forget the cost of mitigating climate change, say two researchers. It’s impossible to work out how much it will be – and whatever it is, we should do it anyway.
LONDON, 3 April – Two researchers who tried to work out the economics of reducing global climate change to a tolerable level have come up with a perhaps surprising answer: essentially, we do not and cannot know what it would cost.
Even more surprising, probably, is their conclusion: not knowing is no excuse for not acting. “Mitigating climate change must proceed regardless of long-run economic analyses”, they conclude, “or risk making the world uninhabitable.”
The boy who grew up in North Korea’s labour camp 14 | Film | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/19/north-korea-prison-camp-14-documentary
The boy who grew up in North Korea’s labour camp 14
Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a North Korean punishment camp, where he endured appalling brutalities until he escaped, aged 23. Now his story is told in a harrowing documentary
Stephen Applebaum
The Guardian, Thursday 19 September 2013 17.01
’Executions were happening every week’ … Shin Dong-hyuk in an animated scene from Camp 14: Total Control Zone
Documentary-makers generally tackle torture at a distance. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, for instance, introduced us to a charismatic killer from Indonesia’s anti-communist genocide who dances the cha-cha on the rooftop where he murdered hundreds of victims almost 50 years earlier. Camp 14: Total Control Zone is different. The German film-maker Marc Wiese’s film tells of horrors that could be happening as you read this, in North Korea, in prison camps so vast that they show up on Google Earth.
Exclusive: TIME Talks to Google CEO Larry Page About Its New Venture to Extend Human Life | TIME.com
▻http://business.time.com/2013/09/18/google-extend-human-life
Can Google, the technology giant best known for search and free email, tackle aging?
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is planning to launch Calico, a new firm that will attempt to solve some of health care‘s most vexing problems. One of the independent venture’s major initiatives will be significantly expanding human lifespan. Arthur Levinson, the former chief of biotech pioneer Genentech, is an investor in Calico and will serve as its CEO.
The Sept. 30 issue of TIME profiles Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page as well as his decision to launch Calico.
The Irish Bic Lighter
Mick and Paddy were fishing on the Irish shoreline when Mick pulled out a cigar. Finding he had No matches, he asked Paddy for a light.
’Ya, sure, I tink I haff a lighter,’ Paddy replied and then reaching into his tackle
box, he pulled out a Bic lighter 10 inches long.
’My God, man!’ exclaimed Mick, taking the huge Bic lighter in his hands. ’Where’d yew git dat monster?’
’Well,’ replied Paddy, ’I got it from my Genie.’
’You haff a fecking Genie?’ Mick asked.
’Ya, sure. It’s right here in my tackle box,’ says Paddy.
’Could I see him?’
Paddy opens his tackle box and sure enough, out pops the Genie.
Addressing the Genie, Mick says, ’Hey dere! I’m a good pal of your master.
Will you grant me one wish?’
’Yes, I will,’ says the Genie.
So Mick asks the Genie for a million bucks. The Genie disappears back into the tackle box leaving Mick sitting there waiting for his million bucks.
Shortly, the Irish sky darkens and is filled with the sound of a million ducks flying directly overhead.
Over the roar of the one million ducks Mick yells at Paddy, ’What the hell? I asked for a million bucks, not a million ducks!’
Paddy answers, ’Ya, I forgot to tell yew dat da Genie is hard of hearing. Do yew really tink I asked for a 10 inch Bic?’
#Mobile phones help tackle cholera in inaccessible parts of #Somalia | ReliefWeb
►http://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/mobile-phones-help-tackle-cholera-inaccessible-parts-somalia
In Somalia, one of the most difficult and dangerous places for aid agencies to work, the conflict has left many communities hard to reach. Mobile phones offer an innovative way of educating such communities with life-saving information.
Oxfam and our partner Hijra started a pilot project to provide public health information to people’s mobile phones, timed to coincide with the peak #cholera season
Corporations Create the Problem, Co-Ops Offer the Solution
►http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11618-corporations-create-the-problem-co-ops-offer-the-solution
Cooperatives offer a means by which to change the economic and social landscape and directly tackle issues of wealth inequality, outsourcing of jobs and high unemployment. Our current economic and political systems benefit the wealthy. Change will not come from the top down, but from building over and replacing these systems with organizations that directly advance, and are responsible to, the communities they are a part of. By bringing democracy to our communities - in our workplaces, grocery stores and beyond - we can transform society and the economy.
In honor of the 2012 International Year of Cooperatives, and ahead of October, which is Co-Op Month, here are just five reasons why co-ops rock (based on our “10 Reasons Co-Ops Rock” poster):
1. Cooperatives are democratic businesses and organizations, equally owned and controlled by a group of people. There are worker co-ops, consumer co-ops, producer co-ops, housing co-ops, financial co-ops and more. In a cooperative, one member has one vote.
The greatest thing about co-ops is, perhaps, simply what sets them apart from other businesses: They are democratic institutions, controlled equitably by the people who depend on them. There’s no one right way to do a co-op - they can fit different community and individual needs. Some co-ops, such as Red Rabbit Bakery, are owned and managed by the workers. Others, like the Brattleboro Food Cooperative, are controlled by their consumer members.
Contrast this with typical corporations, which are about earning profits for those at the top, often at the expense of the environment, their workers and consumers. Cooperatives aim to benefit the people who use and rely on them. Each member of a cooperative owns one share in the business, and therefore has one equal say over how it works. In addition, if the co-op is doing well, members - not some absentee stock owners - benefit.
Très bon site. Surtout les podcasts mensuels
Tackle Tax Havens
►http://www.tackletaxhavens.com
Half the world’s trade passes through them.
Right now they’re hiding trillions of dollars on behalf of criminals, dictators, wealthy individuals and multinationals.
Find out what tax havens are, why they’re so damaging and what we can do about it.
ECB’s Mario Draghi Takes Tough Line on Austerity - WSJ.com
►http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577241221244896782.html
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned beleaguered euro-zone countries that there is no escape from tough austerity measures and that the Continent’s traditional social contract is obsolete, as he waded into an increasingly divisive debate over how to tackle the region’s fiscal and economic troubles.