Nation-Building

I saw it this weekend, and must say, it was magnificent. My timing is certainly appropriate given the release of the IPCC report on Friday. To me the two things that stood out the most were the Greenland melting, and the emphatic point that reducing carbon emission is probably an opportunity for immense economic growth, not a burden. I guess I have more faith in Yankee ingenuity and the free market than the critics do; at any rate the counterargument by Gore using automobile standards in China vs the US (specifically California) was utterly devastating. Excellent additional reading is the Stern Review Report on the economics of climate change . I'm going to buy this DVD ; it's that good. And I'll chip in another ten bucks to the Draft Gore ActBlue page besides. I'd appreciate any link to "response" pieces by critics, as long as they actually address the specific arguments and don't try to do an end-run by attempting to ad-hominem the scientific process ...

Some of you may remember that we are currently fighting a war in Afghanistan against people who attacked us on September 11. Here's a news clip related to that: "The US-led coalition in Afghanistan has distributed leaflets calling on people to provide information on al-Qaida and the Taliban or face losing humanitarian aid. The move has outraged aid organisations who said their work is independent of the military and it was despicable to pretend otherwise. "Medécins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity which passed the leaflets to the Guardian, said the threat endangered aid workers. Fourteen aid workers were killed in Afghanistan last year and 11 so far this year. "After examining the leaflets yesterday Britain and the US said they had been a mistake and it was not their policy to link aid with military operations in that way. The decision to distribute the leaflets had been made at a local level, they said. "Last night the Pentagon...