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The European Union revealed on January 23rd how it plans to save the world. A mammoth climate-change plan spells out in detail how much pain each of its 27 members will have to beat if the EU is to meet ambitious targets set by national leaders last March.The aim is to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 by at least a fifth, and more than double to 20% the amount of energy produced from renewable sources such as wind or wave power. If fuel from plants proves green enough, 10% of the fuel used in transport must come from biofuels by the same date. The new plan turns these goals into national targets. This will surely start much grumbling and months of horse-trading, as the European Commission"s recommendations are turned into binding law by national governments and the European Parliament.Countries with greenery in their veins are being asked to take more of the burden than newer members. Sweden, for example, is being invited to meet 49% of its energy from renewables. At the other end, Malta gets a renewables target of just 10%. It is a similar story when it comes to cutting greenhouse gases; by 2020, Denmark must cut emissions by 20% from 2005 levels; Bulgaria and Romania, the newest members, may let their emissions rise by 20%.EU leadership on climate change will not come cheap. The direct costs alone may be C 60 billion ($87 billion), or about 0.5% of total EU GDP, by 2020, said the commission"s president, Jose Manuel Barroso. But this is still presented as a bargain compared with the cost of inaction, which Mr. Barroso put at ten times as high. "Oh, leading the world in the fight against climate change need not cost jobs. Even in the most heavily polluting branches of heavy industry. We want to keep out industry in Europe," insisted Mr. Barroso.The trick to achieve the seemingly impossible targets is the EU"s emissions-trading scheme (ETS). This obliges big polluters such as power companies or manufacturing giants to trade permits that allow them to emit CO2 and other climate-change nasties, within a steadily tightening overall cap. If countries such as the US do not sign binding international agreements by 2001, then the heaviest greenhouse-gas emitters inside the EU may be given these allowances free, the commission suggests. Or, it threatens, firms to buy ETS permits. With those national goals set, the governments will expect from companies and industries lots of______
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Culture is transmitted largely by language and by the necessity for people in close contact to co-operate. The more extensive the communications network, the greater the exchange of ideas and beliefs and the more alike people become--in toleration of diversity if nothing else. Members of a culture or a nation are generally in closer contact with one another than with members of other cultures or nations. They become more like each other and more unlike others. In this way, there develops "national character", which is the statistical tendency for a group of people to share values and follow similar behavior patterns.Frequently, the members of one culture will interpret the "national characteristics" of another group in terms of their own values. For example, the inhabitants of a South Pacific island may be considered "lazy" by citizens of some industrialized nations. On the other hand, it may be that the islanders place a great value on social relationships but little value on "productivity", and crops grow with little attention. The negative connotation of the label "lazy" is thus unjustified from the point of view of the island culture.Stereotypes, such as "lazy", "inscrutable", and "dishonest" give people the security of labels with which to react to others in a superficial way, but they are damaging to real understanding among members of different cultures. People react more to labels than to reality. A black American Peace Corps volunteer, for instance, is considered and called a white man by black Africans. The "we--they" distinction applies to whatever characteristic the "wes" have and the "theys" do not have-- and the characteristics attributed to the "theys" are usually ones with a negative value.The distinction becomes most obvious in times of conflict. For this reason, it is often suggested the only thing that might join all men together on this planet would be an invasion from outer space. "We", the earthlings, would then fight "them", the outsiders.Given the great diversities- real and imagined- among people of the world, is there any foundation for hope that someday all men might join together to form a single and legitimate world government The outcome will probably depend on the political evolution of mankind. "National character" is built among people who______
Our trouble lies in a simple confusion, one to which economists have been prone since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Growth and ecology operate by different rules. Economists tend to assume that every problem of scarcity can be solved by substitution, by replacing tuna with tilapia, without factoring in the long-term environmental implications of either. But whereas economies might expand, ecosystems do not. They change--pine gives way to oak, coyotes arrive in New England--and they reproduce themselves, but they do not increase in extent or abundance year after year. Most economists think of scarcity as a labor problem. Imagining that only energy and technology place limits on production. To harvest more wood, build a better chain saw; to pump more oil, drill more wells; to get more food, invent pest-resistant plants.That logic thrived on new frontiers and more intensive production, and it held off the prophets of scarcity- from Thomas Robert Malthus to Paul Ehrlich- whose predictions of famine and shortage have not come to pass. The Agricultural Revolution that began in seventeenth-centur) England radically increased the amount of food that could be grown on an acre of land, and the same happened in the 1960s and 1970s when fertilizer and hybridized seeds arrived in India and Mexico. But the picture looks entirely different when we change the scale. Industrial society is roughly 250 years old: make the last ten thousand years equal to twenty-four hours, and we have been producing consumer goods and CO2for only the last thirty-six minutes. Do the same for the past 1 million years of human evolution, and every thing from the steam engine to the search engine fits into the past twenty-one seconds. If we are not careful, hunting and gathering will look like a far more successful strategy of survival than economic growth. The latter has changed sc much about the earth and human societies in so little time that it makes more sense to be cautious than triumphant.Although food scarcity, when it occurs, is a localized problem, other kinds of scarcity are already here. Groundwater is alarmingly low in regions all over the world, but the most immediate threat to growth is surely petroleum. What does the author think of ecosystems
Our trouble lies in a simple confusion, one to which economists have been prone since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Growth and ecology operate by different rules. Economists tend to assume that every problem of scarcity can be solved by substitution, by replacing tuna with tilapia, without factoring in the long-term environmental implications of either. But whereas economies might expand, ecosystems do not. They change--pine gives way to oak, coyotes arrive in New England--and they reproduce themselves, but they do not increase in extent or abundance year after year. Most economists think of scarcity as a labor problem. Imagining that only energy and technology place limits on production. To harvest more wood, build a better chain saw; to pump more oil, drill more wells; to get more food, invent pest-resistant plants.That logic thrived on new frontiers and more intensive production, and it held off the prophets of scarcity- from Thomas Robert Malthus to Paul Ehrlich- whose predictions of famine and shortage have not come to pass. The Agricultural Revolution that began in seventeenth-centur) England radically increased the amount of food that could be grown on an acre of land, and the same happened in the 1960s and 1970s when fertilizer and hybridized seeds arrived in India and Mexico. But the picture looks entirely different when we change the scale. Industrial society is roughly 250 years old: make the last ten thousand years equal to twenty-four hours, and we have been producing consumer goods and CO2for only the last thirty-six minutes. Do the same for the past 1 million years of human evolution, and every thing from the steam engine to the search engine fits into the past twenty-one seconds. If we are not careful, hunting and gathering will look like a far more successful strategy of survival than economic growth. The latter has changed sc much about the earth and human societies in so little time that it makes more sense to be cautious than triumphant.Although food scarcity, when it occurs, is a localized problem, other kinds of scarcity are already here. Groundwater is alarmingly low in regions all over the world, but the most immediate threat to growth is surely petroleum. Economists are prone to______
The European Union revealed on January 23rd how it plans to save the world. A mammoth climate-change plan spells out in detail how much pain each of its 27 members will have to beat if the EU is to meet ambitious targets set by national leaders last March.The aim is to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 by at least a fifth, and more than double to 20% the amount of energy produced from renewable sources such as wind or wave power. If fuel from plants proves green enough, 10% of the fuel used in transport must come from biofuels by the same date. The new plan turns these goals into national targets. This will surely start much grumbling and months of horse-trading, as the European Commission"s recommendations are turned into binding law by national governments and the European Parliament.Countries with greenery in their veins are being asked to take more of the burden than newer members. Sweden, for example, is being invited to meet 49% of its energy from renewables. At the other end, Malta gets a renewables target of just 10%. It is a similar story when it comes to cutting greenhouse gases; by 2020, Denmark must cut emissions by 20% from 2005 levels; Bulgaria and Romania, the newest members, may let their emissions rise by 20%.EU leadership on climate change will not come cheap. The direct costs alone may be C 60 billion ($87 billion), or about 0.5% of total EU GDP, by 2020, said the commission"s president, Jose Manuel Barroso. But this is still presented as a bargain compared with the cost of inaction, which Mr. Barroso put at ten times as high. "Oh, leading the world in the fight against climate change need not cost jobs. Even in the most heavily polluting branches of heavy industry. We want to keep out industry in Europe," insisted Mr. Barroso.The trick to achieve the seemingly impossible targets is the EU"s emissions-trading scheme (ETS). This obliges big polluters such as power companies or manufacturing giants to trade permits that allow them to emit CO2 and other climate-change nasties, within a steadily tightening overall cap. If countries such as the US do not sign binding international agreements by 2001, then the heaviest greenhouse-gas emitters inside the EU may be given these allowances free, the commission suggests. Or, it threatens, firms to buy ETS permits. To its member nations, the EU"s plan means ______
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