Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Article: Rebuilding Sandcastles (The World Today)
Environment: Rebuilding Sandcastles
The World Today, Volume 67, Number 6
Risk assessments are supposed to lead to decisions that provide more security. However, after a series of tragic failures such as the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the deadly blowout on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, and the destruction caused to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are serious problems with our ability, or willingness, to accurately evaluate and mitigate risk. The question is, why? And what can be done about it?
An area that encapsulates many of the myriad facets of the challenge is the issue of what to do about United States (US) military installations put at risk by environmental change. The US Department of Defense’s (DoD) 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report explained that: “In 2008, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) judged that more than thirty US military installations were already facing elevated levels of risk from rising sea levels. DoD’s operational readiness hinges on continued access to land, air, and sea training and test space. Consequently, the Department must complete a comprehensive assessment of all installations to assess the potential impacts of climate change on its missions and adapt as required.”
Sounds logical, and forward thinking, and the US military certainly has the expertise and funding to do a proper job of it. However, there are multiple systemic barriers standing in the way of accomplishing the essential goal of ‘climate proofing’ those critical installations.
The first issue is technical. Predicting the behaviour of the physical world is an increasingly complex challenge. The science is good, and getting better, but already it is often marginalised in calculations. Add in the new variables caused by environmental change and it gets even more complicated. Does one plan coastal infrastructure for a 15cm or 50m total sea level rise by 2050? It depends not only on how local hydrology affects sea level rise, but also if there is regional subsidence, seismic uplift, siltation, and other factors. Then there is the question of how that rise could affect storm surges and other forms of flooding. With environmental change, past indices are no longer reliable guideposts for future events.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Quote: Cleo on Russian Arctic shipping for Bloomberg
In a widely pick-up article originally for Bloomberg, Ilya Khrennikov quotes Cleo on the Russian shipping in the Arctic. An excerpt:
“The thinning and retreat of Arctic ice is combining with the thawing of the permafrost in northern Russia to make shipping via the Northeast Sea Route increasingly attractive and active during the lengthening summer season,” said Cleo Paskal, associate fellow at Chatham House, a policy adviser in London. “This raises a series of urgent security, political and economic issues, and has the potential to turn the Bering Strait into a critical strategic chokepoint.”
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Article: World's #9 Most Powerful Person Now Accused of Corruption -- Will She Fall? (Huffington Post)
Cleo's latest Huffington Post column looks at the global importance of recent anti-corruption activity in India:
New Delhi. Some of India's biggest fish are getting caught up in the country's fast-growing wave of anti-corruption activity. In what could be India's equivalent of a judicial jasmine revolution, previously invulnerable politicians, business icons, and pillars of the community are all nervously keeping their lawyers on speed-dial.
The anti-corruption push is an unprecedented coming together of myriad facets of Indian society. Religious leaders are concerned about the effects on morality and spiritual growth. NGOs speak of the effects on the poor. The middle class is angry about its future being stifled by a smothering blanket of day-to-day corruption. The intelligence services see corruption a clear threat to national security. And the business community, thanks to globalization, has seen how efficiently things can operate without having to constantly pay bribes or be tangled in red tape, and they want the same thing at home.
Even the Supreme Court is fed up, with Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy saying about the vast sums of Indian money being illegally hidden away in Liechtenstein Bank:
We are talking about the huge money. It is a plunder of the nation. It is a pure and simple theft of the national money. We are talking about mind-boggling crime.
The scandals are bursting on to the front pages fast and thick. Suresh Kalmadi, a Congress Party politician and the former head of the corruption-plagued Commonwealth Games, was arrested April 25. According to a report by the Indian Comptroller and Auditor General, the 2G spectrum scam alone, in which 2G licenses were sold off in a manner that was, to say the least, less than transparent, cost close to $40 billion in lost revenue.
All across India, people are saying enough is enough. And suddenly the unthinkable is starting to happen. People considered above reproach, or at least untouchable, are coming under the judicial cross-hairs. 2G alone has seen charges laid against one former government minister and several captains of industry.
And the latest high profile target is one of the biggest fish of all, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, currently #9 on Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Article: US-Pacific Relations: Pacific-Minded (The World Today)
Cleo has just published an analysis of geopolitics in the Pacific for in Chatham House's magazine The World Today. You can see it online here. And below:
In early March, United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made unusually direct comments to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about America's position in the Pacific. "Let's just talk straight real politik. We are in competition with China," she said. All over the Pacific, China is trying to "come in behind us and come in under us."And it is working. China's influence in the island nations of the Pacific is growing dramatically, and the repercussions are global.
But the fault does not lie completely with the US, and the win is not completely China's. The door for China's dramatic increase in influence in the island nations of the Pacific was opened by decades of mismanagement of Pacific affairs by western allies Australia and New Zealand. And if the US and the west want to regain ground, the two Pacific partners are going to have to rethink how they engage with the region.
It should not have come to this.
Article: Why We Build Nuclear Power Plants in Earthquake Zones (HuffPo)
Cleo's latest HuffPo blog entry has been published here. You can also read it below:
The nuclear tragedy currently unfolding in Japan started decades ago on a piece of paper. Before any infrastructure project that size is approved, a risk assessment needs to be done. Hazards are identified and a cost/benefit analysis is made about how to approach those risks.
If constructing in a seismic zone that hasn't seen an earthquake above a magnitude of M6.5 in 100 years, do you build to withstand a magnitude of 7? Or put in extra the millions upfront to protect against a magnitude of 8 that may never come? Or do you simply choose not to build a nuclear power station in an earthquake zone at all?
Every critical energy installation (and much of all infrastructure) is built on the basis of such risk assessments. In the case of the energy sector, getting it right is crucial not only for the ability to generate power, but also for site integrity. However, there are increasingly problems, both physical and economic, with the way the risk assessments are done.
Article: Tonga leading in the fight for Energy Security (Tonga Chronicle)
THE earthquake in Japan is a heartbreaking human tragedy. It is also a clear indicator of the interconnectedness of global energy infrastructure, and could affect energy prices here in the Kingdom of Tonga. Luckily, Tonga has a plan in place that could lead the world in finding solutions.
But first the problem. Once the damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant was obvious, global oil prices reacted quickly. While price is also affected by events in the Middle East, speculators seem to be assuming that, with its nuclear power generation impaired, Japan will have to import more oil and gas. And so prices looked up.
If the disaster causes a global rethink of nuclear power (already Germany seems to be moving away from nuclear and China is cautious), this could cause a long-term rise in oil and gas prices – something that is not good for a country like Tonga where close to 100% of the electricity is currently diesel generated.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Video: Grantham Award
Global Warring won the $5000 Grantham Award of Special Merit. This is the video produced for the award ceremony:
Review of Global Warring by Bill Hinchberger
Bill Hinchberg reviewed Global Warring, interestingly pairing it with James G. Workman's book Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.It makes sense as, as Hinchberg puts it, both books look at people (Sumerians in the case of Global Warring, Bushmen in the case of Workman) who "demonstrate how human beings have coped, and failed to cope, with localized water scarcity." To read the thoughtful review, click here.
Global Warring mention in Forbes.com
Gordon G. Chang mentions Global Warring in his interesting column on global food wars. You can read it here.
Cleo Paskal wins NATJA Award
Cleo Paskal's feature on Haniteli and Lucy Fa'anunu's garden in the Kingdom of Tonga, written for the Toronto Star, won silver at the North American Travel Journalists Association annual awards :) You can see the article here.
Global Warring In Grand Forks
Global Warring is the Current Affairs book club book of the month in April at the Grand Forks Public Library. Grand Forks is a city that knows better than most the cost of environmental change -- and so it the sort of place likely to help find solutions to the challenge. Take care, Grand Forks, and thanks for inviting in Global Warring.
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