Former NZ PM appointed as UN Development Plan administrator

As mentioned here. But I think this cartoon summarises things nicely:

( Read more... )

Kind of reminiscent of Obama "cleaning up" after Bush. (And I wonder if Time deliberately chose that article title, because I've seen it less-charitably observed by some that things haven't changed that much in the White House from early times, with black men cleaning up the messes left by others).

An alternative view on Earth Hour

A post by Keith Ng that I agree with 100%. My personal view is that the only potential benefit of Earth Hour is the symbolism. If you haven't swapped out all or most of your incandescents - even one - for CFLs or other alternative lighting, it's fairly pointless. If you're going to burn candles, um, they produce CO₂ as well. If you're going to be burning more than a few candles, you're going to emit more carbon than your lightbulb during that time. Especially if you live somewhere (unlike Australia) where your electricity is not predominantly generated by burning coal. Sorry.

Ok, maybe the symbolism will enhance consciousness, but I'm afraid I feel fairly cynical about that. If you're not aware of ecological concerns by now, such as dwindling fossil fuels and climate change, what rock have you been hiding under? Seriously. However, for those morons who are going out of their way to burn more electricity this evening, you can get fucked.

ETA: Actually, I thought of another use for the occasion - peer pressure. Remember how we hardly ever used to recycle (except for glass bottles when someone had a "bottle drive", or we could be bothered taking them back to the shop for 5c), and now pretty much everyone does? Of course, a big driver of that change was kerb-side recycling schemes, but the kerb-side schemes wouldn't have come about without that demand. So I withdraw some of my cynicism about this thing - if it helps people start thinking about their energy consumption, it's a start.

I just wished I saw a bit more publicity of the nature that "you saved so many g of CO₂ for an hour - you could save 10x that a day by switching that lightbulb for a CFL". Well, maybe that message will get out there - directly or indirectly - in the media coverage.