The phrase “climate change denier” has a nasty ring to it. It links those who dispute mainstream science on global warming with “Holocaust deniers”. They are not just wrong, it implies, they are evil.

But the climate change lobby is in the grip of its own form of dangerous fantasy. It is in denial not about science – but about international politics.

At the moment, efforts to deal with global warming are focused on a huge international summit in Copenhagen in December. But the chances of Copenhagen delivering a deal that meets the goals for carbon dioxide emissions set by the United Nations Panel on Climate Change is vanishingly small. In private, many climate change activists will admit this. But Copenhagen is the only game in town – so they keep playing.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Human Rights Watch hold Obama to account:

Beyond Guantánamo - Sarah E. Mendelson in the Democracy Journal

David Seaton muses on Obama:

Today’s America is a class act - From David Seaton’s News Links

The Wall Street Journal sides with India over climate change:

Listening to India - The Wall Street Journal

Back in February I blogged about a seminar I had gone into Paris devoted to the subject of “Is there a China model?” The organisers of the forum have now made a film of the whole event. It will appeal to anybody who is interested in:

a) The debate

b) Seeing a lot of Chinese intellectuals in action.

c) Watching me talking very slowly and deliberately, as I attempt to moderate.

You can find the film here.

The worst suspicions of liberal supporters of Obama are liable to be confirmed by the delighted reception some eminent neo-cons have given to the new Obama foreign policy team.

Here is a comment from Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations:

“As someone who was skeptical of Obama’s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain’s, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for “neo-liberalism” which is not so different in many respects from “neo-conservativism”. Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia.” Continue reading "Neo-cons for Obama"

I was re-viewing the opening episode of “The World at War” (as one does) - and was struck by the footage of Hitler looking cheerful, surrounded by yapping German shepherd dogs. The great dictator was a dog lover, and had a pet Alsatian called Blondi.

Churchill, by contrast, was a cat man.

Is there a political moral here? Obviously. Dictators like dogs because they are obedient, pack animals. Democrats like cats, because they are free spirits.

Once you start looking for the evidence, the trend becomes clear. Other famous cat-haters include Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Cherie Blair and Napoleon - the latter was once caught stabbing a wall repeatedly, because he believed there was a cat concealed behind it. By contrast, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were well-known cat lovers.

Churchill’s political secretary, John Colville, made this diary entry at the height of the Battle of Britain:

“I went into the PM’s bedroom at around 10. He was lying in bed in a red dressing gown, smoking a cigar and dictating to Mrs Hill, who sat at his feet with the typewriter. The PM’s black cat Nelson, which he brought from the Admiralty and which has quite usurped the position of No.10’s official black cat, was stretched out across the bedcovers, and from time to time Winston would look at it lovingly and murmur: “Cat, darling”.

In the 1950s, Colville gave Churchill a ginger cat - which the great man called “Jock”, after Colville himself. In his will, Churchill provided a bequest for a ginger cat called Jock to live at his home, Chartwell, in perpetuity.

I will reluctantly acknowledge that there a a few exceptions to my dogs-dictators/cats-democrats theory. Lenin was apparently a cat lover. And so was Cardinal Richelieu - who went to the lengths of building a cattery in Versailles, and whose favourite beast was named “Ludovic le Cruel”. But Richelieu lived in a pre-democratic age. His heart was clearly in the right place.

Obviously, I am a cat lover. But I have thought hard before acknowledging this on my blog. When the FT first handed out some suggestions for blog-writers, one of them was - “Do not write about your cat.”

But why not? He is a magnificent beast - far more interesting than most of the people I write about. Here is a photo of him. (I also have four children, but I’m not going to bother you with photos of them).

And actually, there is a vestigial international-relations connection to my cat. He was adopted from a cat’s home in Brussels. We named him Louis, after the then Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel - on the grounds that both the cat and the minister were hairy, over-weight, aggressive Belgians. Michel is now EU commissioner for overseas aid; and Louis has moved to London.

Here is a proposal for the next American president. The US should take the lead in setting up a massive, publicly funded research project to tackle climate change. The American government has, in the past, shown that it is capable of sponsoring pioneering science – from the Manhattan project that produced the atomic bomb to the space programme. Why not apply American energy, money and know-how to a new Manhattan project on global warming?

The secrets of the bomb and space programmes were kept closely guarded for security reasons. But climate change is a security issue for the whole world. So a US-led research project on technologies to tackle global warming could be a much more open and international affair. It would also have to be much more wide-ranging than the bomb or space programmes – sponsoring research on everything from alternative energy to carbon-capture and geo-engineering (such as efforts to create a stratospheric shield in the atmosphere).

The main purpose of any such programme would be to combat the obvious threats posed by climate change. But it would also have the incidental benefit of blunting one of the main sources of global anti-Americanism – the idea that the US is too casual about climate change.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

I get the message. The fact that my last post attracted all of nil comments suggests to me it is time to go on holiday. I intend to fall silent for the next 10 days or so - before re-surfacing in the US, on January 3rd - the day of the Iowa caucus. If I blog before then, it’s probably a bad sign.

But before I quit, here are a couple of things I would like to draw to your attention. First, a delightfully unreverential account of interviewing Al Gore, by my friend Stephen Sackur of the BBC. I normally hate that back-scratching formula, "my friend x of the x". But Stephen really is a friend, he had the office next door to me in Brussels for several years. However, I have learnt that I have to be cautious about admitting friendship with Stephen Sackur. Although he is naturally a rather mild-mannered person, he is the host of a television show, "Hardtalk", which demands an aggressive and adverserial pose from the interviewer. This often leaves the interviewee distinctly pissed off. When I interviewed Michel Platini of Uefa recently and mentioned conversationally that Sackur is a friend of mine, Platini’s face darkened _"Ard Talk..", he exclaimed contemptuosly and I realised it was a good idea to drop the subject.

I probably shouldn’t mention Sackur to "my good friend, Al Gore" either - to judge from Stephen’s account of their post-interview chat.

Continue reading "Christmas, Al Gore and Italy"

I won’t make sarcastic comments about the "carbon footprint" caused by all those world leaders convening in Bali to discuss climate change. Everybody else has already made the same point. Plus, I hate the phrase "carbon footprint". And I have some sympathy with the urge to visit Bali. Its a really nice place - the Four Seasons in Bali is probably the best hotel I have ever stayed in. I wish the delegates joy of it.

But all the bitching about Bali is in danger of obscuring the real point. Climate change is a really, really serious threat - and it is good that world leaders are at least trying to do something about it - even if they have chosen to meet in a luxury resort. Let me direct you to two articles that I think give a good idea of what is at stake.

Continue reading "Bleating about Bali"