England’s prayers for a miracle in the Holy Land that would resurrect their Euro 2008 qualifying hopes were answered in spectacular style last night. Indignant and hurt by all the conspiracy theories, of which there were more swirling around in the Tel Aviv night than in the Paris courtroom where the inquest into Princess Diana’s death drags on, Israel raised themselves to post a historic win against Russia in the Ramat Gan Stadium that handed England a reprieve.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml;jsessionid=B5OQLNJIGHYTZQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/sport/2007/11/18/sfnfro118.xml

Britons face a future of green taxes, higher fuel prices and even flight rationing under anti-pollution laws unveiled yesterday. A Climate Change Bill would make the UK the only country with legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The five-yearly goals would cost the UK up to £12billion a year for the next 42 years. The Government was warned that a switch to a low-carbon economy would trigger an economic slowdown and job losses while giving politicians the excuse for unpopular taxes, hike the cost of fuel and even bring in “personal carbon quotas”. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=494367&in_page_id=1770

Britain is experiencing the greatest exodus of its own nationals since before the First World War while immigration has reached unprecedented levels, new figures from the Office of National Statistics have revealed. Last year, 207,000 British citizens, or one every three minutes, left the country.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=4LBGQ0HVFMSBVQFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2007/11/15/view15.xml

Each day, …

Was passiert wenn, wie allgemein angenommen, China, Indien und die USA dem europäischen Alleingang in der Klimapolitik einen Korb geben?

Klimaschutz könnte für Deutschland zum Wirtschaftsrisiko werden: Davor warnt eine neue Studie des Wirtschaftsministeriums. Der deutschen Ökonomie drohen demnach Weltmarktnachteile, die Abwanderung von Unternehmen und Jobverluste - wenn nicht viel mehr Staaten bei der CO2-Reduzierung mitmachen.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,517890,00.html

Zur Erreichung des einseitigen EU-Minderungsziels wird der CO2-Zertifikatspreis auf 30 Euro2005/t ansteigen, was umgerechnet etwa 10 Cent/l Heizöl entspricht. In den nicht vom Emissionshandel erfassten Bereichen sind Instrumente notwendig, um die gleichen prozentualen Minderungen zu erreichen, die in der EU-15 einem CO2-Preis
von 100 Euro2005/t entsprechen. In den neuen Mitgliedsstaaten reichen dazu Preise von 50 Euro2005/t CO2. Die Nutzung flexibler Mechanismen ist in diesem Szenario nicht vorgesehen.

Im Vergleich zum Referenzszenario werden die Volkswirtschaften der EU-27 durch die höheren CO2-Vermeidungskosten belastet. Das …

England Fans hoffen auf den Erfolg israelischer Juden and Araber:

Israel could prove unlikely saviours of England’s fragile Euro 2008 qualification hopes if they foil the Russians in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/patricknathanson/november07/englandpinhopesonsakhninsson.htm

Russen sehen rot
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/euro_2008/article2872844.ece

Die BBC hat mich um einen Gastbeitrag zum Thema Apokalypsen- und Klimaangst gebeten. Heute erschien mein Essay auf der BBC Wissenschaftsseite:

Has climate change become a stark catastrophist vision of global doom? Here, a social anthropologist argues that it is something to be managed, not scared of.

[...] On balance, therefore, I believe that the prophets of doom, including those predicting climate doom, are wrong.

Admittedly, there is no guarantee that we can avoid major mayhem and disruption during our risky transition to become a hyper-technological, type 1 civilisation.

Even so, societal evolution has now reached a level of complexity that renders the probability of human survival much higher than at any hitherto stage of history.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081804.stm

People should stop having babies to combat global warming, a top Liberal Democrat said yesterday.

Chris Davies reckons population control would be far more efficient than trying to cut pollution.

And the North West MEP wants his plan to be considered by the EU.

He said all governments should look at measures to discourage people having large families.

Mr Davies wrote in a local paper: “What’s the single most effective thing couples can do to play a part in combating global warming? It is to have no more than one child.”

Labour MP Sion Simon said: “This is a crazy idea.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2007/11/13/kids-risk-to-climate-89520-20099218/

There are a lot of moral problems linked to the issue of climate change. One of them shows itself clearly in a recent report published by international development agency Christian Aid. Its 19-pages ”Truly Inconvenient” report looks at ways to “tackle poverty and climate change at once” and concludes that developed countries like the US and the EU will have to pay a huge “carbon debt” and that the developing countries (or better their citizens) have a right to move to a “global ‘middle class’ development level” (defined as an individual development treshold or income of $9000 per year).

Starting from the calculations of the Stern report and taking into consideration an index of historical responsibility and capacity to deal with the problem (a “responsibility and capability index”), the report says that the EU will have to pay 164 billion dollars per year to help fix the global …

The Neanderthal extinction some 30,000 years ago remains one of the great riddles of evolution, with rival theories blaming everything from genocide committed by “real” humans to prehistoric climate change.

But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women’s work as well as men’s, so it’s a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital “reproductive core” of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers. http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/11/10/stone_age_feminism/