Climate

"If climate was a bank, it would already have been saved."

Read somewhere on the internet...

About consuming and autenticity

Another movie from TED (I think there was one already here before). This one about consuming and authenticity...it isn't great, but it does mention some interesting points:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html

Climate Justice

"Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one," explained report author Kate Raworth. "Now it is becoming a matter of international justice.

I wonder...if it changes to an international justice problem, then nothing will ever be done about it...I think it is best to leave it in the economic view...

it goes too far…

who needs islamic terrorists, when there are so many already among us?

The real cost of things

I looked at the movie that Bruno recommended, and it made me think about the real cost of things. Indeed we are nowadays able to buy goods which cost so little, it is hard to imagine that the cost one pays pays indeed for the work and materials that went into the making of the product.
When one thinks of selling the product of the own work, to price the product one considers all the costs: raw materials, time cost - how much time went into the making of the product- , tools cost - which tools are required, how much they cost and last -, premises - rental cost of the premises, including utility bills, even if one is working at home, these are costs that should be taken into consideration.
Now, you can argue that by making products in Asia or low cost countries, that you pay less for work, the raw materials having the same cost you achieve a lower cost product. this product still must be brought into our shops in the west, and that costs energy.

We take energy for granted. We go to the gas station, complain about the prices, fill up, turn our light switches on, and energy is always there. But just like any other product, when pricing energy one should take all factors into consideration.

But...how do you put a price on the production of oil or natural gas?

The price of research to find where the oil field is, the cost of getting a drilling platform to the place, people to drill it, and boats to get it to where it is needed (not mentioning the extra costs due to political situations), but, what about the raw material cost? How much does it cost to really produce the oil that is there under the ground? sometime in the past huge forests had to be grown and huge amounts of time had to be invested - by nature - in order for us to have that oil there. We are consuming the work nature did during millions of years, and we are not paying back the real value that nature deserves.

It is just like if we get someone to make the most elaborate work, takes him, days, moths, years to finish it, and at the end, we pat him on the back, and kick him out of the door with no reward, consuming the work of all that time in one afternoon. The result...not only we did not truly appreciate the result, but after all that time with no proper pay...there is nobody that can do the same work...

Is it fair to abuse nature like this?

Police brutality

Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest

(World News. Posted October 29, 2007)

"Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil. "