On a day when a UN panel warned of growing peril from climate change, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards accused the oil and gas industry of deploying hundreds of lobbyists to Washington to resist efforts to free the nation from its dependence on fossil fuels.
The threat from global warming demands urgent action, the former senator said at a forum in which Democratic presidential rivals Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dennis Kucinich also outlined plans to confront climate change. Edwards said measures are being hindered by a broken political system in Washington that bends to corporate power and feeds off its money.
"I see the oil and gas companies blocking progress by spending millions of dollars and deploying hundreds of lobbyists in Washington to make sure that America stays addicted to foreign oil and fossil fuels," Edwards said.
PHOTO: AFP
Meanwhile, foreign companies are seizing opportunities in wind, solar and other alternative energy sources, he said, with 90 percent of solar panels being produced overseas.
"We're also missing an opportunity to lead the world and reclaim the spirit of American ingenuity that has driven great advances and helped us overcome great challenges in the past," Edwards said.
The three candidates were attending a climate change forum sponsored by Grist, an online environmental magazine, and Public Radio International's Living on Earth, a nationally broadcast program on environmental concerns, in partnership with the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and other environmental groups.
In Valencia, Spain, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that as early as 2020, Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water because of global warming. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the US and China -- the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters -- to do more to fight it.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS