Get serious Peter,

"Hopefully, with the failures of 2009 in mind, a shift towards such institutional change can seriously begin in 2010."

Why should 2010 be any different from any other year? People will still be doing the "hopefully" dance 10 years from now. As Kurt Cobb put it so well in his essay "Hope, hopelessness and faith" (http://www.energybulletin.net/51101):

"For those involved in issues of sustainability, peak oil, climate change, and relocalization it might be better to feel a certain hopelessness in our situation. For hope implies dependence on forces outside ourselves. Once we abandon that hope, we can get down to the tasks at hand, the tasks that need to be done--for which we need to ask no politician or government official permission--tasks that we can get started on today. In this way hopelessness concerning the current political and economic arrangements becomes an ally."

Stop wasting time hoping Peter and do something constructive.

Michael, Do no be so harsh on Peter, besides which you have no idea as to what he does altogether.

Meanwhile there is great resistance all over the world by "conservative" interests to the necessary changes that need to occur.

The entrenched power groupings in Iran and their brutal crushing of dissent and change. And the resistance to change in Islamic countries altogether, especially Saudi Arabia.

Plus the mirroring of the above examples (of resistance to real change) in the USA via the hysterical right-wing response to the election of Obama and his politics of hope.

Meanwhile these related references affirm and extend the ideas and actions that Peter writes about.

http://www.globalcooperationproject.org

http://www.dabase.org/GCF.htm

Note that in the GCF reference there are hardly any (even none) outfits and organizations that are on the right or so called conservative side of the culture wars divide.

Also: http://dabase.org/p4formula.htm

Micheal: I wrote: Hostname: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3349&page=3

(I commenced my career as a farmer on my family farm. I remember once standing along side 2 empty semis, facing about 500 bales of hay, the temperature was around 90°F and was expected to top 105. My father climbed onto the trailer, signaled the driver to commence, looked ot my grandfather and I and said.

"It's not gunna get loaded, by standing here lookin at it")

Stopping the Global Govt at Copenhagen was a brilliant success.Many more people are questioning AGW because of Climategate.

Let's get serious about giving liberty back to ordinary people.This means stopping the wars,and spending arms money on education in developing countries.Educated people have small familes and know how to look after the environment.We do not need eco-facists running our lives.

A world centralised Govt will be our worst nightmare,especially when we will not have single vote on the decisions they will be making.

An excellent analysis of the challenge facing us Peter.

Obama has had trenchant opposition from broken, out dated and out of control institutions that at best pay lip service to the common interest.

To change the status quo, Obama needs to create the right conditions that will enable him to terminally weaken these archaic obstructionists.

The trisk is to sap their power whilst at the same time building effective alternative decision making structures that you mentioned in your article. A key step will be to engage the people who can help him deliver the changes that are urgently required.

Obama is already pursuing some promising new pathways. For example, his demand for a major cultural change to a pro-active disclosure of information by government and an active on-line enagement with the public by public servants.

In my view he also needs to counter the megaphone of Murdock's Fox empire's constant attacks with a massive boost to public broadcasting resources similar to that given to the BBC to produce top draw journalism and programs.

By engaging the powerful regulatory controls through the EPA, he has an opportunity to curb greenhouse gas emmissions without dealing with senate obstructionists. He can work with change agents to transform the energy landscape in the US and show the kind of world leadership expected from him by his core election base and his supporters elsewhere.

I am going to agree with every one.

I agree with Micheal about hope, hope implies despare, and using hope to solve despare will not work as hope does nothing. (I aplogise to all those people named Hope)

My father occasionaly fell from that semi's trailor I spoke about as it rode across the rough paddocks. He would dust himself off, and get back up.

Peters statement "The national representatives who failed to find a solution to the global warming threat at Copenhagen were operating within a 20th century paradigm. This was the way of bargaining for self-advantage, not the common good." just about sums it all up.

We have farmers wanting the government to compensate them for not being allowed to dam and re-route every last drop of water that falls on their properties. Would they compensate the landholders downstream if they could, I don't think so.

Oil and fuel companies have grown rich and fat since the industrial revolution, they have done little to ensure the sustainabilty of anything except their profits.

They have even had the arogence to say that pricing now reflects the fact that reserves are not unlimited so we need to get a greater profit now while we can.

Oil companies want to be compensated for having to "clean up their act", do they compensate small independant fuel suppliers they undercut.

Power companies too, what happened to capitalism, survival of the fitest, growth, development, creating sustainable enterprise, serviceing you customers, research. All the things that capitalists rave on about.

Oh no, they are only too happy to have "The State" bale them out. Large corporations that pay their senior execs pornograhic sums of money just before they crash into oblivion, and just EXPECT "The State" to pay out their employees entitlements.

The problems are clear, in general, we are a bunch of arogant, self centred, greedy, lazy buck passers.

Lets get off of our RRRRs, dust ourselves off and get this bloody hay loaded, don't you know it's going to reach 105°F
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3349&page=3

Poor Arjay, he is so obsessed and committed to his one-dimensional adolescent "libertarianism" that he finds it impossible to begin to see the bigger picture.

Yes big-brother government is undoubtedly a problem, but what about these related quotes.

" The power of industry and money has actually become senior to the power of governments, and is now controlling the entire world".

By the way this is essentially the thesis of The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

" The modern "idealization" of the individual is, actually, a social and political device for isolating, fragmenting, and dis-empowering EVERYONE--so that humankind as a whole has no collective power.....Thus, the global promotion of the notion that people should focus on their individual interests and concerns--inclined toward "self"-indulgent purposes and illusions of "self"-fulfillment--is a global power-game that subverts both the integrity of the human person and the inherent power and rightness of the totality of humankind.

In the present-day, the culture and politics of illusion controls the world. The underlying idea that personal and collective egoic "self"-fulfillment is what life is supposed to be about is the root-source of the current global chaos.. As a result, there are more than six billion human individuals....that are, characteristically, and even strategically, out of touch with each other---like dust, and bombs, and petty traffic, all blowing in the wind. That wind steadily blows all prior unity into the bits and particles of human chaos."

And of course TV IS the principal generator of this "culture" of illusions.

"If anything lasts one generation beyond your lifetime, you imagine it is eternal.
Humanity is like rubble in its present state. You are destroying the Divine Gift.
All is Energy---and Energy Is all there is. But you are using Energy as if it were mud.
Look again, and find the Beautiful, the Unlimited, the Bright of Consciousness Itself."

Peter referenced the ongoing lack of availability of basic food and water supplies, and in particular cited the newly rising powers of China and India as countries facing serious water shortages.

As Vandana Shiva points out in the following Reith 2000 lecture, western corporations have continued their insidious creep into traditional societies changing farm practices and destroying the rich diversity and sustainable systems of food production that have supported communities for hundreds of generations.

www.http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture5.stm

It honestly should not require so much public funding for education if these academic experts can do nothing more than stating the bleedin' obvious. Why for crying out loud don't they for once come up with their own findings before getting into parrot mode & wait for someone to do all the work first & then repeat it all.
Of course there's more disasters as time goes on, more people perish & go hungry because there simply are more people to perish & go hungry. Yes climate change is happening & it doesn't matter one iota what causes it because we simply do not have the mentality & technology required to do so. To date, the only real obvious side effect due to global warming is the near cooking of academics' brains.

oops ! I meant to say to change it instead of to do so. Appololgies.

I'll have to disagree with the author of this article.

Anyone who thought that some magic would emerge from Copenhagen,
IMHO lacks understanding of humans as a species. As Keating
once observed, in the race of life, always back self interest.

I don't think that Obama has been a disappoinment at all. His
one claim for office was, that he shows good judgement. I think
that he continues to show that. Obama never claimed to own a
magic wand, he's a realist, working within the system that is
there, trying to repair the absolute disaster that Bush/Cheney
left behind. That will not happen overnight, but till take
years to sort out.

So anyone who was disappointed in 2009, IMHO had unrealistic
expectations to begin with.

Poirot, I read the Reith lecture and it seems to me that its a
bit simplistic, to simply blame Indias troubles on those "evil"
corporations.

Globalisation has reduced the cost of food for those Indians living
in cities. What country Indians practised, was more like a system
of permaculture and they can continue to do so if they wish, to
feed their families. OTOH, Indians living in city slums, cannot
be expected to subsidise their country cousins, whose main problem
is an ever growing population.

When farming gets down to farming a couple of acres, because those
farms became smaller and smaller over the generations of rising
population, its little more then a large veggie patch. India should
have addressed its population issues 50 years ago, its all a bit late
now.

Yabby,

Many of India's troubles do indeed stem from massive overpopulation and, therefore, it may seem simplistic to you to blame globalization and "evil corporations". There is, however, a noticeable link between development projects initiated by the centralized Indian Government and the flight of rural peasantry to the cities.
People don't just migrate to the slums because they think they have any kind of future or opportunity there - they migrate out of a desperation, usually initiated by forced displacement.
One of the major catalysts for displacement in India this century has been the modern practice of building dams.
In Arundhati Roy's book, "The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile", it is stated that: "Forty percent of the big dams that are being built in the world today are in India. Tens of millions of Indians have already been displaced. India has constructed thirty-three hundred dams in the last fifty years".
Roy says, "What happens to the people that are driven from their village by these development projects and by the general garrotting of India's rural economy? They migrate to the cities".
She cites an example: "One day they just filled the reservoir. One hundred and fourteen thousand people, almost twice the governments projection, were displaced and one hundred and sixty-two villages were submerged...Ten years later, that dam irrigates five percent of the land they said it would - it irrigates less land than it submerged...No irrigation project has ever been more than thirty-five percent efficient in India".
Many development projects, including those of dam construction undertaken by the Indian government are initiated in partnership with organizations like the IMF, WTO and the World Bank, which then act as doormen to let in the "evil corporations".
The sort of opportunistic pressure exercised on developing countries by powerful organizations only serves to make the poor in this world even more dependent - like the slum dwellers in India.

*People don't just migrate to the slums because they think they have any kind of future or opportunity there - they migrate out of a desperation, usually initiated by forced displacement.*

Poirot, in just about every country that I can think of, including
Australia, migration from the country to the cities is a common
occurance. There are many reasons. Just look around Australian
country towns, a large % of youth never return. It is not
desperation that drives them.

Peasanthood is hard work for little reward. Young people often
flee the conservative and strict rule of their parents. Those
bright lights give people hope for a better life, so they take the
risk. Hope is a major factor in driving human behaviour.

Personally I don't really think that dam construction in India is
such a bad thing, if I look at the bigger picture. For of course
their rainfall is very seasonal and a peasant is not going to
produce much at all from a couple of acres, without water for
irrigation.

Which brings us back once again to the real problem of India and
other developing countries, ie too many people to be sustainable

Well. yes. Yabby, I would agree with you that peasant farmers need water for their crops - and a dam would be fine - if yours was not one of the villages that was submerged, or if you managed to find access to the irrigation water before it was sucked away upstream by larger farms which grow thirsty crops like sugarcane and cotton.
Capital intensive projects can raise yields in the short term for larger farmers in the limited areas that receive irrigation water. But poor farmers living beyond the irrigated lands end up being starved of their most precious resource.
In India 60-70 percent of the population are extremely poor and have a direct dependence on their environment for survival. Rural India is, in fact, not lying down on this one. It has one of the largest, most dynamic vocal environment movements in the world. They realise that smaller projects which keep all aspects of their environment in balance gives more autonomy to ordinary people. They promote things such as the construction of water harvesting structures. These, mainly earthen structures, trap rain water which soaks into the ground and recharges the groundwater. the water is then drawn from the wells. It costs 340 times less per irrigated hectare to provide water than the massive dam building projects promoted by the likes of the World Bank.

I don’t understand why you are so disappointed Peter. Copenhagen confirmed the utter absence of consensus, the lack of scientific support, the emergence of a push for a wealth distribution tax and the emergence of common sense.

We now realize that water shortages are due to the lack of investment in dams and the energy crisis is due to lack of investment in base load power generation. We have confirmed that the IPCC assessments are rubbish science and Obama is lurching to the right with absolutely no hope of enacting any form of carbon trading that will disadvantage the US.

The EU is out on a limb and has no hope of enforcing their carbon compliance on the US, China or India. The grubby dictatorships in the rest of the developing and underdeveloped nations will not be getting funds by direct deposit from us into their Swiss Bank accounts.

We can only hope that 2010 will see the icing on the cake through legal action against those who have obtained huge sums of taxpayer monies by fraudulent means. It would be a hope too far to see the “partial commentariat” lose what is left their reputations and careers, but we can still hope.

What a wonderful 2009 and an equally wonderful prospect for 2010

You're sounding shriller with every post, spindoc. Fortunately, at this rate we won't be too far into 2010 before we won't be able to hear you.

Poirot, nations build dams for many reasons, including hydro power,
water for cities,industry etc, as well as irrigation. It would
be up to the Indian Govt to make an informed decision on this.
If the world bank supports them with finance, well good on them.

I can't see why channeling water underground, as well as large
dams, can't both happen at the same time.

Fact is that there are some problem with the former, like salt
rising to the surface with the rising water table. Its a problem
in Pakistan, I am not sure about India, but I would be suprised if
it was much different.

If Govts build dams, compensating those whose land is affected would
be a fair thing, but that is internal Indian politics, not the
business of the World Bank.

The fact remains that more irrigation has certainly helped feed the
ever growing population. My old 1960s geography book, which
I still have, mentions the Indian population being a "dense
population of 440 million" Now they have 1.17 billion!
So in reality its quite amazing that they have been able to
increase food production, given that enormous increase.

The problem is, when you push things to the limit, as they have
in India and as they did in Rwanda, with an ever increasing
population meaning ever less land per family, eventually its
solved by bloodshed, as more and more people fight over less and
less resources.

Who inspired with the chant 'Yes We Can'. Who said they're for 'Change' without saying what shape that change would take ... apart from they'd get a fairer understanding of the USA by the rest of the world?

We who understand the rhetoric of politicians knew he wouldn't and that we'd see a change. Not in circumstance but in stance by Obama himself. He's even adopted many of the policies of Bush and proposals of McCain.

Now that has become obvious we see the chanters resorting to the age old response of blaming the previous incumbants, the banking system and eventuallly they'll blame Western Liberal capitalism itself.

Climate change was scuttled by the climate change 'adaptors' at East Anglia, politicians like Obama who promised what they couldn't achieve, the blizzards in the north and a return to weather patterns of 30 years ago in the south.

The economic crisis origins were in legislation introducted in the US by the Democrats ... specifically the Community Re-investnent Act and by Clintons abolishing provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The authors opinion on so many issues shows a complete ignorance of fact and an embracing of bias. In many cases his opinion is simply wrong.

Obama and Copenhagan were always going to fail the expectations of so many because both expectations were built on lies, wind and spin not on facts.

The economic crisis is worst in Britain where there was no economic stimulus. They have had six quarters of recession. Their economy after six quarters hasn't changed since the day of the collapse.

We smarties who have had stimulus have had six quarters of very low growth. The general concensus is the stimulus has achieved those 'milestones'. But basically our economy hasn't changed since the day of the collapse except the Governmentnow has massive debt.

Do the British expect their economy to pick up in the seventh quarter? No! Yet we optimitists, when we are about to see the end of the effect of the stimulus, expect our economy to be rejuvenated ...!

Yabby,

I appreciate your views and you make some valid points.
My main problem with the mentality of organizations such as the world bank is its agenda to gain access to third world markets and then to put profit before human need.
In many countries this has had disastrous consequences, with the poorest in host nations experiencing minimal improvements to conditions (if any) and in some cases experiencing detrimental effects. The countries involved are often left with debt payments that take up up more than one third of their annual domestic incomes.
The fundamentals of these problems sometimes become skewed and lead to false assumptions - this makes it difficult to get to the heart of the matter.
For instance, it is accepted belief that countries like India need more dams for irrigation because it has so many people it cannot provide food for all - but hunger arises, not because they cannot grow enough food, but because many millions of people are too poor to buy it.
It is interesting to note that in the year 2001-2002, India stockpiled 62 million tonnes of surplus grain, most of which was stored in the open at the mercy of the weather.. In 2003, India boasted another huge surplus in food grains - it held one quarter of the world's food stocks. (This was achieved through new systems of unsustainable farming which employ GM crops, overuse of pesticides and over watering by large farms leading to increased soil depletion).
It is obvious that those who pull the economic strings would rather stockpile the surplus than release it into the marketplace.
The poor of India cannot afford to pay the market price for food, so must rely on growing their own - and here again, access to water for irrigation for peasant farmers is not the Indian Government's first priority.

Poirot, if you read the FAQ about the World bank, it hardly sets out
to rip off poor countries:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTSITETOOLS/0,,contentMDK:20147466~menuPK:344189~pagePK:98400~piPK:98424~theSitePK:95474,00.html#13

Hopefully that link will come through ok, its pretty long.

As to individual issues in India, it would be easy to sit on the
sidelines and form an uninformed opinion. At the end of the day,
India is a democracy, so people can influence Govt and the decisions
that Govts make. If it was up to me, the first thing that I would
do in India, is make the caste system illegal!

I watch quite a bit of BBC tv, they venture into some of the poorest
regions of the world and interview people, so I watch and learn.
What is common is that couples who have 5-10 children, complain that
they can't feed them! Well I could not feed them either!

So I campaign very loudly for the rights of third world people to
have access to modern day family planning, so that they can choose
the size of their families. But frankly for those who have this
option and still pop them out like rabbits, they are going to have
to start addresing the fact that they themselves are to blame,
if some of them go hungry. All very sad but that's the reality of it.

Now to correct the misinformation that you have injected into an otherwise worthless piece.
You were no doubt the first to congratulate Obama for his elections to the presidency, which by the way is democracy not that tide off of human rights to convenience you, call a democracy.
The Chinese should stop; along with the Indians driving the economy is that what you’re saying??
Why? Because they’re getting drier? Or consuming too much water? What a joke your logic is!
The global economic meltdown now you’re an economics expert I suppose?
The GEM, which of course ad nothing to do with the Indian or Chinese demand for goods and services, or the banks corrupt management policy.
The only company btw to achieve any sort of real financial reversal is the Fomoco; explain that one in your weeties economic degree terms!
The only USA Company that didn’t take a bail out from the government.

The USA (G.E. ) Has its headquarters run on solar derived energy, where’s the equivalent Australian company doing that?
Oh that’s right Australia’s biggest employers the government. Duh!! How remiss of me. This is the Australian government that a refused to sign Kyoto 1 & 2 and Copenhagen, yet will soon introduce taxation on the pretext of GW/ETS that is predicted to triple the costs of power. And guess what you can t complain because you think your part if the GW issue, and therefore must be guilty of unsustainable development in the coal, oil and gas arenas. What a load of BS.
Get off the grass your nothing but another tossel basher.
To accept without knowledge is ignorance to justify without knowledge is stupidity.
So go back to the weeties Packet University you received your pretend degree at , and enroll in a science course, you might learn something. Here’s a; link in case you can find one
http://www.anu.edu.au/index.html

Yabby,

I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree on the agenda of the World Bank.
I do, however, agree with your opinion on the population problem.
I read your last link - here's mine.

http://www.celsias.com/article/the-food-crisis-misery-is-profitable/

... is a democracy, so people can influence Govt and the decisions
that Govts make.
Yabby,
your words describe the workflow of the real problem. People are so sucked in by the hype of the fairness of democracy & the consumerism it offers & that their vote can influence Government decision making. It most certainly gives the authorities a mandate for for getting more & more control over our lives under the guise of democracy & as Government gains more & more control the more contend the masses appear to become. In my days this was called brainwashing & social engineering. India is the world's largest Democracy & look at the present chaos there & they haven't really started educating the masses yet. Just you wait till they start to really aspire to reach the western level of consumerism & subsequent manufacturing industry. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting smaller !