We’re celebrating a … nevermind what we’re celebrating, it’s not about us. It’s about you!
Thanks for supporting us in all the ways that you do. Thanks to Motorola for giving us a Droid to thank you with. Here’s the deal: Post a comment to this story and you’ll be entered to win. The winner will be picked at 12 pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, May 4 2010. Posting more than once will not increase your chances of winning. And that’s pretty much that.
If email, comments on CP, and some eco-bloggers are to be believed, conservative Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been planning to walk on the climate bill for a long time — perhaps, nefariously, from the very beginning! And I certainly understand where that sentiment is coming from, given that the GOP strategy on health care and financial reform has been to feign interest and then bolt.
In fact, however, that view lacks plausibility, as The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait explained in his Sunday column, “Lindsey Graham Is Right.” Indeed, the WashPost’s Ezra Klein argues today that Graham, “is not only right to be annoyed, but as far I can tell, is actually right.”
I spoke to a Senate staffer today who is familiar with Graham’s multi-month efforts with Kerry and Lieberman and the White House to develop a bill. He said Graham has been “completely genuine.” Long-time readers of this blog know that Graham has made stronger statements than almost anybody on the Democratic side about this bill (reposted below). He could easily have walked away months ago, say, when Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election or when the Dems used the reconciliation process to pass health care.
As Klein writes, “He’s taken a huge risk to be the lone Republican on climate change.” Chait goes further, saying it “seems unfair” to accuse Graham of having “negotiated in bad faith,” pointing out:
Graham has been painstakingly attempting to assemble a political and business coalition for legislation to mitigate climate change. He has also been working on immigration reform, but the Democrats’ weak signals of interest before last week have helped contribute to an atmosphere where nobody expected a bill to advance this year, and thus little headway has been made. There has been no House immigration bill, whereas the House has passed a climate bill already. Graham was set to unveil his bill on Monday when Harry Reid pulled the carpet out from under him by announcing that immigration would come first and climate — which gets harder to do as the elections gets closer — probably never.
As for bad faith, Graham is a Republican Senator from South Carolina. His highest risk of losing his seat, by far, comes from the prospect of a conservative primary challenger. Indeed, I’d say that prospect is far from remote, and Graham is displaying an unusual willingness to risk his political future. He has little incentive to negotiate on these issues except that he believes it’s the right thing to do. So when Democrats put climate change on the backburner to take up immigration, and so so for obviously political reasons, Graham has every right to be angry. He’s risking his political life to address a vital issue, and Harry Reid is looking to save his seat.
If you don’t think Graham can get a serious challenger from his right because of this, one need look no further than his good friend John McCain, who went from being his party’s standardbearer to just another insufficiently-hard-line-ideologue for the Tea Partiers in a matter of months.
And consider Graham’s various statements on this subject. Back in January, he said:
But the idea of not pricing carbon, in my view, means you’re not serious about energy independence. The odd thing is you’ll never have energy independence until you clean up the air, and you’ll never clean up the air until you price carbon.
And he also said:
“Six months ago my biggest worry was that an emissions deal would make American business less competitive compared to China,” said Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been deeply involved in climate change issues in Congress. “Now my concern is that every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.”
He added: “China has made a long-term strategic decision and they are going gang-busters.”
This just isn’t the language of somebody who is acting in bad faith, who has been planning to bolt for months. Indeed, I expect we’ll be waiting a long, long time to hear such blunt language about pricing carbon from any significant number of moderate Democrats.
Finally, the fundamental difference between the GOP bad-faith feints on healthcare and what Graham is doing on the climate bill is that, as we saw, the Democrats in the Senate could get 60 votes for a health care bill. They never actually needed the Republicans. It was only (misguided) Democratic desire for bipartisanship that led them to being suckered by Republicans into wasting several months trying to get a single GOP vote. Dems wanted Reps, they didn’t need them.
From the start, however, supporters of climate action needed multiple Republicans, as I pointed out many times. But Olympia Snowe, the most obvious candidate, never was successfully engaged. And Maria Cantwell helped enable Susan Collins to avoid negotiations on a bill that could plausibly pass the Senate. Absent Graham, Dems had no plan B.
In short, if Graham wasn’t doing this because he firmly believed in it, then none of his actions this year actually make any sense. Now it is sometimes [often] the case that politicians repeatedly do things that make no sense. But Graham certainly knew that the Democrats needed him infinitely more than he needed them.
Based on most of what I’ve heard in the past 48 hours, I’m currently expecting that Kerry-Lieberman-Graham will shortly send their bill to EPA to be modeled and Reid will put their bill in play before immigration. At that point, the story can move from being about Lindsey Graham’s alleged bad faith, to the actual bad faith of the anti-science ideologues who are the primary obstacle to passing a serious climate and clean energy jobs bill.
If that doesn’t happen, I think it will be mostly due to the ongoing wishy-washiness of the White House — see Brad Johnson’s latest Wonk Room post: White House: Immigration Is ‘Important’ And Energy Is ‘Critical,’ But Reid ‘Sets The Agenda’, which notes:
When it comes to setting the national agenda and leading the Democratic Party, the buck stops at the President’s desk, not at Harry Reid’s. The real people who need real action on immigration and climate reform need the White House to assert leadership.
GM's Renaissance Center in Google Maps "Earth View"
While Earth Day may have come and gone, the Google Earth and Google Maps team was working hard to bring “Earth View” capability to Google Maps.
“When we first launched Google Earth back in 2005, it revolutionized the world of digital mapping,” Google said in a blog post. “In the years since, Earth has been getting faster and lighter while adding large amounts of imagery, more ambitious features and an ever-expanding roster of platforms, including support for Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and even the 2011 Audi A8!”
If you already have Google Earth on your laptop, you should be able to see Earth View in Maps right away. Otherwise you can just install the plugin and enjoy Google Maps in a whole different experience with Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming.
We of course visited GM’s Renaissance Center while surfing in Earth View – check out our screenshot.
– By: Omar Rana
Mozilla has released an update to Contacts, its fantastic little contact management add-on for Firefox. The new version includes quite a few nice improvements, most notably added support for Facebook and Yahoo contacts. The Facebook integration works via the new Facebook Graph API, which despite the developer saying it could still be buggy seems to be working fine for me.
An interesting new feature is the“person:” URL, which you can use to look up people in your contacts list — or anybody on the web, for that matter. Firefox will combine information from your the address book on your computer with that found on the web to create a profile page about the person — for example, you could try “person:http://facebook.com/simonmackie/”
The update also adds support for auto-completion of contact names in the Awesome Bar. Just start typing a name and it will suggest possible matches, as the screenshot below shows:
Although Contacts is still classed as “experimental” by Mozilla, it’s an incredibly useful free add-on that I highly recommend installing, particularly if details of your contacts are currently spread across a few different services. You can download it here.
What do you use to manage your contacts?
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution
GUANTANAMO BAY — The first surprise of the first full-blown hearing of the military commissions under President Obama? The presence of David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney from New Mexico purged by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for insufficient political fealty to the Republican Party. Iglesias, a reservist Navy captain, is serving as a legal adviser to the military commissions’ convening authority and a prosecutor here, although he’s not prosecuting the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen whose pre-trial hearing will begin Wednesday morning. “This is my most recent incarnation as a prosecutor,” he told the press corps here.
I asked Iglesias if the absence of a manual instructing officers of the court how to interpret the Military Commissions Act of 2009 — the statute governing this latest version of the commissions — would negatively impact Khadr’s hearing.”We expect the impact to be negligible right now,” Iglesias said, contending that the Act itself provides sufficient guidance for the case to proceed. “That being said,” he continued, “both sides expect there to be rules assigned very, very soon.”
That didn’t satisfy Jennifer Turner, a human rights researcher with the American Civil Liberties Union here to observe the proceedings. Federal courts have “years of experience” in interpreting statute and precedent and acting accordingly at trial, she said. The result of years of inventing the commissions, subsequent court challenges, legislative action, court challenges to that legislative action, and finally legislative responses to those challenges is that the officers of the commissions don’t have the same body of law to call upon to guide the proceedings. As Turner put it, “the problem is there are currently no rules for the military commissions.”
Well, not entirely. One rule currently in place is that whoever requests an action of the court has the burden of demonstrating the validity of its case. In Khadr’s case, his attorneys have asked the judge to suppress any statements he made during his post-2002 detention at Bagram and then Guantanamo Bay, contending that those statements describing his actions on the battlefield of Afghanistan’s Khost Provice are the result of torture, degrading treatment and coercion. So since Khadr’s lawyers filed a motion to suppress their client’s statements, “it’s their burden, by a preponderance of the evidence,” admittedly a low standard for demonstrating that Khadr’s treatment in detention represents what lawyers call the “fruit of the poisoned tree,” a legal doctrine stating that initial impropriety in extracting information renders whatever information ultimately results inadmissible in court.
Washington D.C. — The U.S. Army’s Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, responded quickly to accusations in a New York Times article published over the weekend accusing the Army of mistreating soldiers in its warrior care units at Fort Carson, Colorado. “The Times article focused upon a select number of soldiers and families that had encountered problems…it’s wholly unrepresentative of the totality in the context of what we’ve done for warrior care, especially in the last three years,” Schoomaker told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Monday afternoon.
In perhaps the most damning line of Sunday’s front page story, the New York Times described Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Unit as a “warehouse of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers.” Schoomaker responded to that line directly, saying “Of all of the descriptions in there, with the exception perhaps of the suffering that individual soldiers and families have had, that sentence alone is among the most offensive to us.”
Warrior Transition Units were formed in wake of the Walter Reed barracks scandal of 2007. The intent was to comfortably house active duty soldiers suffering from mental and physical wounds from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Patients are meant to feel that they are still part of an Army unit and that they can get full time support from peers, squad leaders and nurses.
Yesterday’s New York Times article quoted one soldier in the Fort Carson Warrior Transition Unit who said, “Being in the W.T.U. is worse than being in Iraq.” It said soldiers at Fort Carson complained doctors prescribed drugs too quickly and too often, turning many soldiers to harder drugs such as heroin. It also pointed out that Fort Carson has the highest suicide rate of all the programs, with 4 deaths since 2007.
Lt. Gen. Schoomaker said a survey taken within the Fort Carson Warrior Transition Unit shows satisfaction is high, “at about 90 percent.” Throughout the country he said WTU satisfaction is at 81 percent. He did, however, acknowledge some problems.
“With 9,300 soldiers in the program, we dont always get it right. To that end, we take every criticism and concern seriously and continuously strive to to improve our program.” And suicides, Schoomaker said, are more frequent in WTUs because it’s a “higher risk population.” As for criticism that the non-commissioned officers are abusive, Schoomaker said that concerns him. “Just as medical professionals, caregivers, can — can encounter problems of burnout and compassion fatigue, these soldiers are — certainly can fall victim to that.”
Schoomaker said the Army is constantly evaluating its own performance and that there is an ongoing inspection by the Army’s Inspector General into warrior care. But no new investigations into abuse from non-commissioned officers, prescription drug abuse, or illegal drug abuse will be conducted as a result of the New York Times story.
The Sirius XM application has been available for the iPhone and iPod touch for about a year. According to Engadget, a Sirius app is on its way to the Android platform, but the press release is littered with “DROID and Nexus One users”. I’m not sure why there would only be support for these two devices, but I’m sure the matter will clear up in the coming weeks as we approach the actual release of the application. Here is part of the press release:
The SIRIUS XM App for DROID and Nexus One will allow users to:
The SIRIUS XM App for DROID and Nexus One will be available as a free download through the Android Market on the handset or by visiting www.siriusxm.com/android. After downloading the free App, users will then be able to register for a 7-day free trial to SIRIUS XM Premium Online on their compatible smartphones.
The full press release for the application can be found here. To subscribe for email notifications on the availability of the application for Android visit www.siriusxm.com/android
I have enough subscriptions as it is, and I love my Pandora radio, but I could definitely see myself jumping ship and signing up for Sirius. Is anyone with me?
Via Engadget
Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Videos, Lamborghini
The Texas Mile sounds like a totally kick ass event. You get one mile on flat, straight airport runway to go as fast as possible, with a half mile to bring your vehicle to a halt. This year’s big winner was Richard Holt; the lucky owner of a fire-breathing, street legal twin turbo Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera. The 1,000 horsepower super bull turned in an official time of 250.1 miles per hour, or fast enough to make even the most ardent of speed demons a bit leery. To make matters a bit more interesting, Holt drove his twin-turbo Gallardo for the first time ever during his first run on the track.
Hit the jump to watch Holt’s pavement-scorching run. If you thought the Gallardo Superleggera looks fast standing still, wait to you see it passing the 250 mark. And Holt reportedly managed his Texas Mile record breaking run with the air conditioning on and the radio blasting. We can’t think of a much better Sunday afternoon.
[Source: YouTube via AutoWeek]
Video: Underground Racing Lamborghini Gallardo shatters 250 MPH barrier in Texas Mile originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Oh, my. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, here you go. As Dieter mentions above (you did watch the video first, right?), we’re now giving away TWO T-Mobile Nexus Ones.
And, so, after the break is the fourth batch of entries. And just like the previous three batches, we’ve got five more gems here. Check ’em out after the break. A reminder that you still have the rest of this week to get your entries in. Remember, you are the ones voting. You’ll decide who wins my (and Dieter’s!) Nexus One. Now, on to the vids.
We hear you, folks. The Verizon HTC Droid Incredible that you all pre-ordered over the weekend are shipping now (if you’re not one of the uber-lucky folks who have gotten yours already, that is).
If you haven’t yet ordered yours, or you’re still in mourning after finding out that the Nexus One isn’t coming to Verizon and you’re going to have to slum it with this 8MP monster instead, take heart and take the time to enter one of our two Droid Incredible giveaways. We’re picking winners Wednesday morning, so time’s running out to enter. Details here.
After shutting down countless PCs around the world last Wednesday with a botched update, McAfee has stepped up to offer reimbursement of “reasonable expenses” associated with repair. But that’s not all! More »
If you were anywhere near a techy site on the internet last week, you probably noticed the sensational story of how a prototype of a forthcoming iPhone got left behind in a Silicon Valley bar, and eventually ended up in the hands (and on the pages) of gadget site Gizmodo. Given Apple’s history of cracking down on new product leaks, it wasn’t too surprising to see the company ask for the phone back, nor to hear rumors that police were looking into the matter. However, it was a little surprising to read today that California police have seized computers and other gear from one of Gizmodo’s editors, breaking down his door in the process. The COO of Gizmodo parent Gawker Media alleges that the search was illegal, as the editor is protected under California’s shield law, which protects journalists from revealing their sources. Gawker founder Nick Denton says the case should let us find out if “bloggers count as journalists”, but that’s not completely clear. The shield law exists to protect unnamed sources, not to let journalists commit crimes (such as receiving stolen property) and then cover them up under the guise of their work. So while the case may not settle if bloggers are seen as journalists in the eyes of the law, it should settle once and for all that age-old question of whether or not an iPhone prototype left in a bar by an Apple employee constitutes stolen property.
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For now this is just a rumor but it does kind of make sense. The HTC EVO 4G is rumored to be priced at $199 on contract from Sprint. This price puts the EVO on the same ground as the Incredible and other smart phones that has been recently released.
Darrin Morton from ozcarguide claims a Best Buy representative gave him this information. He apparently went to a Best Buy outlet and asked if they had information on the EVO and that is what they told him. None of this is confirmed by anyone who has real knowledge of the device nor did he get any ninja screenshots of official documents. This does seem like the perfect price point though.
Even if this is untrue, Sprint needs to stick to this price point. This phone is supposed to be the handset that keeps them afloat. Most people don’t really want to spend over that amount for any phone. Cell phones have gotten so powerful and cheap that the $199 is the sweet spot most carriers aim to hit. If this device is $299, there will be a lot of people that will pass on it even though it does have the best specs and features of any phone to date.
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Climate activist James Hansen is urging the public and Congress to reject the “smoke and mirrors” of energy bills now pending in Congress and embrace a “simple, honest” carbon fee instead.
Fees collected from fossil fuel-burning industries would help pay for their polluting emissions and could be redistributed to the public to help cover the cost of shifting from dirty to clean energy generation, Dr. Hansen told the crowd at Washington’s Earth Day Climate Rally on Sunday.
Such a plan would not only level the playing field for emerging clean energy projects by forcing carbon-emitters to pay for their pollution, said Dr. Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It also could help build public support for climate action because the carbon fees could be redistributed to the public.
Dr. Hansen’s proposal is supported by the Carbon Tax Center, which advocates a simple carbon fee plan to help end greenhouse gas emissions. The Carbon Tax Center highlighted Hansen’s remarks in a news release today.
Dr. Hansen is among a growing list of scientists, economists and advocates that support a carbon tax, or carbon “fee-and-dividend” program that puts a price tag on carbon-pollution and returns the money to the taxpayers.
Advocates of the carbon tax say it is straightforward and would move the economy quickly toward a clean energy future. By contrast, they say, a cap-and-trade plan such as the one pending in the Senate, could be manipulated by Wall Street traders and would allow polluters to find loopholes in the elaborate system.
Along with Dr. Hansen, known for sounding the alarm about climate change to Congress 20 years ago, others who support a carbon fee according to the Carbon Tax Center include: former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Columbia University Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs, and many others in academia.
The website also lists several public officials who endorse a carbon fee plan, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and conservative U.S. House Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), who is quoted as saying that a “tax swap” in which carbon fees were returned to families could make conservatives “the new administration’s best allies on climate change.”
“We need to impose a tax on the thing we want less of (carbon dioxide) and reduce taxes on the things we want more of (income and jobs),” Inglis once wrote in a New York Times Op Ed co-authored with Arthur Laffer. “A carbon tax would attach the national security and environmental costs to carbon-based fuels like oil, causing the market to recognize the price of these negative externalities.”
All of which raises the question, if a carbon fee plan can appeal to conservatives, why is Congress pushing the cap-and-trade bill?
Steve Valk, communications director for the Citizens Climate Lobby, thinks it’s partly because too many in Congress are listening to fossil fuel industry leaders instead of scientists like Dr. Hansen.
“How are you going to pass something effective, if the people who stand to profit are the ones you’re listening to?”
Valk, whose group trains volunteers to speak to elected leaders about sustainability, thinks Congressional leaders who’ve worked on the cap-and-trade bill should be lauded for their efforts to address carbon pollution.
But “ultimately,we’re talking about a fatally flawed proposal and if it’s passed, people will think it’s done something when in fact we haven’t done enough to avoid the tipping points that are right around the corner here.”
Cap-and-trade, with its elaborate auctioning system has built-in market volatility, he said, which leave clean energy projects without a clear way to project the future — a key issue thwarting their development today.
The cap-and-trade plan also allows companies to buy offsets against their pollution, which some studies have shown vary in quality, and sometimes don’t even represent new climate mitigation efforts.
A carbon “fee and dividend” plan, Valk says, presents clear benefits over cap-and-trade, by providing a more reliable path ahead. That stability would encourage utilities and energy companies to make the needed investments in non-polluting alternative energy like wind and solar farms.
If Hansen’s idea of setting up an escalating, staged-in price schedule for carbon emissions were put into place, Valk said, it would also give citizens a big cushion against any rising electricity costs.
He offered this example: If the price for carbon were set at about $115 per ton by 2020, it could return $1,500 to every American citizen (assuming the country had reduced its emissions to around 4 billion tons of carbon by then and the population remained steady.)
The Citizens Climate Lobby is trying to get that message out, that clean air could come with a $1,500 rebate.
“Any politician who can’t sell that,” Valk says, “needs to find another line of work.”
Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network
Charles Smith at Seeking Alpha has an interesting post estimating that the number of people living in their homes but not paying their mortgages — people delinquent on their mortgages, people in foreclosure, strategic defaulters and others — might be as high as 4.4 million. He uses FDIC and Foresight Analytics data to extrapolate:
14 percent of the approximately 52 million residential mortgages outstanding in the U.S. were delinquent in the first quarter. This amounts to 7.3 million mortgages. Only 5.5 percent were on nonaccrual status, however. This amounts to 2.9 million mortgages. Nonaccrual means the lender is no longer posting income on the loan. Depending on the length of time the loan has failed to accrue, foreclosure proceedings may have already begun (with eviction to follow at some point), but not necessarily. Assuming that all loans on nonaccrual status represent vacant properties, it means at least 4.4 million (7.3 – 2.9 = 4.4) are occupied by people who are not paying for them, for whatever reason. This number has increased by 3 million since the end of 2007.
I’ll note that if we presume that each household contains around 2.5 people (I don’t know whether households in foreclosure tend to be bigger or smaller than others), that works out to 11 million people. Other “squatter” estimates are similarly big. Moody’s Economy.com has guessed that 6 million people continue to live in their homes during delinquency or foreclosure, and a further 1 million are undergoing mortgage modification. Regardless of the exact count, it underscores the severity of the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the parlous state of the housing market — as well as the need for Congress to press for principal reduction.
After watching Shaq consistently average 8 and 6 in the playoffs this year, it’s easy to forget the type of player he was in his prime and the dominance he commanded as a 21 year old.
I had never seen Shaq play in high school, but in this compilation he sincerely looks like a hybrid of Lebron James, Dirk Nowitzki, and of course, Shaq. I remember Shaq being able to run the court early in his career, but not like this.
Check it out and get weepy for what was and will never be again.
Related posts:
Tech website Gizmodo’s Jason Chen may have scored the industry’s biggest scoop this month, with the exclusive on Apple’s next generation iPhone 4G, but nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath. This morning we reported on rumors that the police were investigating Gizmodo’s purchase, for $5,000, of the lost iPhone. Now, Gizmodo has revealed that Chen’s home was broken into by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team last Friday. The cops, part of a task force that investigates crimes related to high-tech businesses, proceeded to seize four computers and two servers from Chen’s home. The cops were in possession of a warrant from a San Mateo judge, but Gawker Media, the company that owns Gizmodo, claims that the cops’ warrant was invalid. Gawker argues that the search-and-seize action violates California’s journalist shield law. In his original scoop, Chen dished the details on Apple’s upcoming phone using a prototype that the company bought from the mysterious person who found the device, which had been left behind in a bar by an Apple employee. Gizmodo then coughed up the $5,000 to get its hands on the phone–which has since been returned to Apple after the company’s lawyers formally claimed it and asked for it …
Professional brawler Tito Ortiz is facing felony charges and expulsion from the UFC after allegedly assaulting the mother of his twins, former porn queen Jenna Jameson, in an early morning throwdown in the couple’s Huntington Beach, California home on Monday.
And speculation is already mounting over just what led to the bust-up between the once loving couple.
According to a ZackTaylor.ca snoop close to the couple, mutual suspicions of side hos and hanky panky are to blame for the early morning melee.
“Jenna accused him of cheating on her after he came home late last night. Tito then accused her of cheating on him. One thing lead to another, and they both lost their cool. Jenna is as much of a hot head as Tito. They have been having serious problems since their sons were born.”
Jenna — who has vowed to press charges against the father of her children — claims she suffered injuries to her arm after Tito attacked her.
A couple weeks ago, I took the liberty on this blog to write a open letter in support of my good friend, Christiana Figueres to be the next Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC.
While that selection process is ongoing for another couple weeks it appears, it’s been inspiring in its own right to see the grass roots Facebook upwelling for this truly remarkable woman. When everybody from market profiteers to left of left civil society to diplomats and bureaucrats trying to do implausible jobs in impossible situations are all consistently singing your praises, it has to mean something.
In any event, I was recently passed along a note from one of the creators of that testimonial FB page. I’m taking some liberties and copying it below because its quite inspiring in its own right. Eugene, I look forward to our paths crossing at some point soon – you have a great head on your shoulders.
Eugene Jinyoung Nho
I’m a college student who, like many others, has long felt
passionate about tackling the climate change problem. To that end, I
have been learning about climate change policy at school and involved
myself in various sustainability initiatives. Last December at COP15,
however, amid much frustration, I realized that as much as my small
contribution might be valuable in the long run, what we needed the
most at this moment to have a realistic shot at solving the climate
crisis was a strong and effective leadership in the UNFCCC that could
bring nations together.
I chose to start the campaign to reach out to youth and
civil society in support of Chirstiana because I have been truly
inspired by her. There is no question about her incredible
professional achievement and qualifications, but what really inspired
me was the genuine care she showed for youth and civil society. I met
Christiana as a youth delegate at COP15. In the midst of the craziness
of the COP second week, she still spent an hour with students to help
us understand the issues and hear our thoughts. She is the kind of
person who replies to a random student’s email asking about the Clean
Development Mechanism with loads of helpful information and guidance
faster than the student himself. It was after talking with my friends
who received help from her similarly that I realized my case was not
an isolated incident. How far she went to help each of us was
incredible, and I believe it shows her dedication to youth development
and her belief in the significance of a sound civil society.
The Facebook group in support of Christiana has attracted
almost 2,500 members within a month since its start in mid March.
Hundreds of people have left messages of support, encouragement and
endorsement on the page. As the creator of the page, it was
extraordinary to watch the group grow—reaching out to people from all
walks of life from all corners of the world. Students from the U.S.
and Latin America joined the group at first, but since then, students,
youth activists and civil society members from all around the world
have joined in.
One particular quote I found inspiring was from a student
at Norwalk Community College. He said, “Christiana’s inspiring talk to
over 400 students energized and mobilized our campus in a way that had
seemed impossible before… At every step of their struggle to make the
building green, Christiana was there offering astute advice and
support.” This is exactly how my friends and I felt about her enduring
help and support in our research endeavors. It takes true passion and
dedication in the cause of fighting climate change to help people you
barely know on a daily basis, and that is why I find Christiana simply
inspiring.
The most incredible aspect has been the way this movement reached out
to people around the world like a wild fire. People say the best
innovations don’t need any additional effort to make them work because
those innovations have a way of getting work done themselves. The
youth/civil society movement to support Christiana happened in a
similar way. The way it spread through different social networks and
across different continents—with little effort from the center—has
been truly remarkable, and I believe it is the testimony to the
respect and hope people have for Christiana.
Last week, I had a chance to speak with Dr. Nafis Sadik,
whose work in organizing Cairo Conference in 1994 marked a milestone
in the empowerment of women and championing of family planning. I was
curious how she was able to bring nations together to support this
cause despite the existence of strong conservative lobbying forces,
and she replied in one word “civil society.” Having civil society
present in negotiations and recognizing their role in the process, she
said, kept negotiations on track and moving forward. Having witnessed
the frustration at COP15 in person, I sincerely hope to see the UNFCCC
that recognizes the important role of civil society, and hope that the
civil society’s support for Christiana is heard at the highest ranks
within the UN.
If you would like to take a look at the Christiana Figueres Facebook group, please visit and join
Eugene Jinyoung Nho
Stanford University, Class of 2010 (senior), major in Economics, minor
in Environmental Engineering. Study focus on climate change and energy
policy.
Co-founder & Co-executive director of IDEAS, an environmental
non-profit working with college students in the developing world to
tackle environmental/sustainability problems in their communities.
Born and raised in Korea.
The feel-good March car sales won’t last says Emdunds.com:
————
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — April 26, 2010 — This month’s new vehicle sales (including fleet sales) are expected to be 988,100 units, a 20.9 percent increase from April 2009 and a 7.1 percent decrease from March 2010, according to Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information.
“In March, incentives really helped boost car sales — especially since Toyota’s high-profile recalls led consumers to expect huge bargains,” observed Jessica Caldwell, Director of Industry Analysis for Edmunds.com. “In April incentives averaged nearly $200 less per vehicle industry-wide and sales fell along with incentives.”
“The economy is showing signs of recovery but consumers are still wary, so today car-shopping is largely about bargain-hunting,” commented Edmunds.com Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Anwyl. “Traditionally, summer discounts are worth waiting for but inventory may be spottier than usual this year. The next round of incentives may provide the best opportunity to pick up a great deal on a 2010 model.”
Edmunds.com analysts predict that April’s Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) will be 11.2 million, down from 11.8 in March 2010.
“April’s dip shows the auto industry’s recovery will be a slow and bumpy one,” noted Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Michelle Krebs in her report for AutoObserver.com. “Ultimately, though, car sales are significantly better than the 9.2 million SAAR of a year ago.”
April 2010 had 26 selling days, the same as last April 2009 (The chart below sets forth comparisons.)
The combined monthly U.S. market share for Chrysler, Ford and General Motors (GM) domestic nameplates is estimated to be 44.2 percent in April 2010, down from 46.6 percent in April 2009 and up from 43.5 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Chrysler will sell 90,800 units in April 2010, up 18.9 percent compared to April 2009 and down 1.7 percent from March 2010. This would result in a new car market share of 9.2 percent for Chrysler in April 2010, down from 9.3 percent in April 2009 and up from 8.7 percent as in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Ford will sell 166,500 units in April 2010, up 25.9 percent compared to April 2009 and down 8.3 percent from March 2010. This would result in a new car market share of 16.8 percent of new car sales in April 2010 for Ford, up from 16.2 percent in April 2009 and down from 17.1 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts GM will sell 179,200 units in April 2010, up 4.1 percent compared to April 2009 and down 4.7 percent from March 2010. GM’s market share is expected to be 18.1 percent of new vehicle sales in April 2010, down from 21.1 percent in April 2009 and up from 17.7 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Honda will sell 110,200 units in April 2010, up 9.1 percent from April 2009 and up 1.8 percent from March 2010. Honda’s market share is expected to be 11.2 percent in April 2010, down from 12.4 percent in April 2009 and up from 10.2 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Hyundai will sell 80,400 units in April 2010, up 35.1 percent from April 2009 and up 3.8 percent from March 2010. Hyundai’s market share is expected to be 8.1 percent in April 2010, up from 7.3 percent in April 2009 and up from 7.3 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Nissan will sell 71,400 units in April 2010, up 51.3 percent from April 2009 and down 25.2 percent from March 2010. Nissan’s market share is expected to be 7.2 percent in April 2010, up from 5.8 percent in April 2009 and down from 9.0 percent in March 2010.
Edmunds.com predicts Toyota will sell 167,800 units in April 2010, up 32.6 percent from April 2009 and down 10.2 percent from March 2010. Toyota’s market share is expected to be 17.0 percent in April 2010, up from 15.5 percent in April 2009 and down from 17.6 percent in March 2010.
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