Obama focuses on green economy in speech before Congress

Barack Obama greets members of the U.S. Congress before addressing a joint meeting of the two legislative houses. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Barack Obama presses Capitol Hill on energy reforms
• Budget will include $15bn a year for alternative fuels

* Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Barack Obama raised the development of a green economy to the top of America's agenda tonight, calling on Congress to pass a law cutting the carbon emissions that cause global warming.

The president, in a rousing speech to both houses of Congress, tried to put to rest fears that the economic recession would force him to scale back ambitious plans for energy reforms.

Instead, he made it clear that he sees a direct link between America's long-term economic interests and the development of clean energy, budgeting additional funds for research into wind and solar power.

The president also pressed Congress to push ahead on a new law to cut greenhouse gas emissions, defying critics who say cap-and-trade measures could be a brake on economic recovery.

"To truly transform our economy, protect our security and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," the president said. "So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."

Barely a week after the passage of his $787bn economic rescue plan, Obama came back to Congress with plans for further green investment.

The recovery plan devoted more than $100bn to making private homes and government buildings more efficient, developing wind and solar power and spending money on public transport.

But the president promised even more tonight, saying his budget, which will be announced on Thursday, would allocate $15bn a year to develop wind and solar power and more fuel-efficient cars.

"We are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry," he said. "The nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

Obama also set out a plan to modernise the electric grid.

He said America needed to re-establish its leading role in the development of solar and other renewable energy technologies, after losing ground to China, Germany and Japan.

"I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again,"

The direct appeal for climate change legislation could re-energise efforts to produce legislation before global climate change talks get underway in Copenhagen next December.

White House officials admitted on Monday it was increasingly uncertain such legislation could pass in time, and that the deadline might slip to 2010.


* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

OBAMA VOWS TO RENEW US

Link to the full text of the speech:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7909271.stm

Image: Courtesy BBC

Obama's stimulus bill green lights green spending

Obama's stimulus bill green lights green spending

BusinessGreen.com takes the microscope to the environmental spending in President Obama's wide-ranging economic stimulus package
John Sterlicchi, BusinessGreen, 17 Feb 2009
Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama will today sign the $787bn (£551bn) economic stimulus package in Denver, Colorado with proponents of green business celebrating that a tenth of the money will be directly targeted at environmental initiatives.

Echoing the sentiments of many environmentalists, Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy during the Clinton Administration, hailed the bill as a landmark in America's transition to a lower carbon economy.

"Years from now, long after the economy has recovered, this moment may well be remembered as the time that progressives, led by Obama, began the transition to a sustainable economy built around green jobs," he said.

The final compromise on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed the House on Friday by 246-183 without a single Republican vote, having passed the Senate by 60-38 with the help of three Republican senators.

The stimulus bill initially passed by the House had a projected cost of $820bn and the Senate's was even higher at $838bn, but the lower final figure was agreed in an attempt to bring the Republican senators on board and assure the bill's speedy passage.

Environment America, a federation of state-based, environmental advocacy organisations, analysed the final bill and said there were $32.80bn in funding for clean energy projects, $26.86bn for energy efficiency initiatives and $18.95bn for green transportation, giving a total of $78.61bn directly earmarked for green projects.

Obama has said that he hopes the act will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, and a sizable chunk of these jobs are now expected to be so-called "green-collar jobs".

While some popular projects took a hit as a result of the compromise deal, environmentalists were as pleased almost as much at what did not make the final cut as what did.

For instance, in the Senate version of the package there was a provision for $50bn in federal loan guarantees that could have been utilised by the nuclear and coal industries. Its original inclusion caused 243 advocacy groups to send a joint letter to senators expressing their "dismay and anger over the inclusion by the Senate Appropriations Committee of a provision in the economic stimulus bill to provide up to $50bn in additional taxpayer loan guarantees that could be used for construction of new nuclear reactors and 'clean coal' plants" .

The provision was subsequently ditched from the final bill, in a move that Kevin Kamps of campaign group Beyond Nuclear hailed as "a big victory for common sense and the American taxpayer".

"This toxic nuclear pork had no place in a bill designed to put Americans back to work and salvage our economy," he said. "Our legislators are to be applauded for getting their priorities right and saying no to yet another blatant attempt to prop up an industry that has never stood on its own financial feet."

However, less contentious green investments also took a hit with the plan to upgrade the country's electricity transmission system to better take advantage of renewable energy and improve efficiency seeing proposed funding of $11bn cut to just $4.5bn. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acting chairman Jon Wellinghoff said the funding was "seed money... but it really isn't enough money to make huge advances in the overall backbone grid that we're talking about to integrate substantial amounts of wind."

The full investment to meet the type of renewable growth that Obama's targeted would cost more than $200bn, he said, but added that based on the proposals already submitted to the agency he now expected the rest of the funding to come from the private sector.

The need for private capital to piggyback the US government’s initiatives was highlighted by University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin writing in this week's Nation magazine. Banks could be required to devote a percentage of loan portfolios to green investments, he wrote, while expanded tax credits could be provided to homes and businesses for installation of solar and other renewable energy. Funds from a cap-and-trade emissions programme or a carbon tax could also be recycled back to the public in rebates to spend on energy saving measures, he predicted.

Pollin also joined with green groups in praising a stimulus package that will simultaneously cut carbon emissions and create jobs.

"The central facts here are irrefutable: spending the same amount of money on building a clean energy economy will create three times more jobs within the US than would spending on our existing fossil fuel infrastructure," he observed. " The transformation to a clean energy economy can therefore serve as a major long-term engine of job creation."

His comments were echoed by the Solar Energy Industries Association, which forecasts that the stimulus package will create 67,000 solar jobs in 2009, and 119,000 in total through 2010. The stimulus plan will "catapult the US to be the world's largest solar market by the end of 2010", predicted Suvi Sharma, chief executive of Solaria, a solar-cell maker.

Striking a similarly upbeat note was Kevin Surace, president and chief executive of Serious Materials, a Silicon Valley company that makes green building materials. With the final document providing $5bn for a Weatherization Assistance Program, enough to supposedly prevent 9.7 million tons of global warming pollution and create 375,000 jobs, he predicted that the company would "be hiring hundreds of people over the next 12 to 18 months".

Plans to invest $8bn in new high-speed rail projects also secured praise from an unlikely quarter, when Florida Republican House representative John Mica, who voted against the package, issued a statement praising the focus on high-speed rail.

"I applaud President Obama's recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America's future," he said.

A spokesman for Mica said that he voted against the bill as he saw the high-speed rail provisions as just a "silver lining". It has become a popular tactic for politicians to tout in press releases local benefits of legislation they voted against in the hope that voters did not follow the debate too closely.

As well as green initiatives, the new act will provide money for road building, new bridges, new schools and the expansion of broadband networks to rural communities, all of which it could be argued could help curb overall emissions. There are also funds to computerise healthcare records, extend federal unemployment benefits and boost healthcare funding for low-income and disabled Americans. It also provides an estimated $280bn in tax cuts.

The White House is establishing a website to track the spending, and green groups can now be expected to be keeping a close eye on how and where the new funding will be spent.

"This historic step won't be the end of what we do to turn our economy around, but the beginning,'' President Obama said over the weekend. "The problems that led us into this crisis are deep and widespread. Our response must be equal to the task."

He could of just as easily been talking about climate change, as well as the economic crisis – and given the make up of his stimulus package, perhaps he was.

Obama green stimulus to cut US emissions by at least 61m tonnes

Obama green stimulus to cut US emissions by at least 61m tonnes

New research finds "Green New Deal" spending plan could have equivalent effect on cutting carbon emissions as taking 13 million cars off the road
Tom Young, BusinessGreen, 10 Feb 2009
Barack Obama

The proposed "Green New Deal" environmental measures proposed as part of President Obama's $800bn economic stimulus package will deliver minimum greenhouse gas emissions savings of 61 million tonnes a year – equivalent to taking 13 million cars off the road – and could result in far deeper emission cuts.

That is the conclusion of a new report from climate change consultants ICF International (ICFI), commissioned by Greenpeace, which aimed to measure the impact on US carbon emissions of the president's wide-ranging green spending plans.

The report concluded that the impact of many of the proposed measures on carbon emissions were too difficult to quantify, and as a result the ultimate long-term savings arising from the plan could be far higher.

The proposed spending, which is still being debated on Capitol Hill and is expected to be passed by the Senate later this week, breaks down into 18 key areas. But while they are all expected to result in net carbon emission reductions, ICFI was only able to quantify the savings that will arise from seven proposals.

The report says that much of the estimated saving will come from building efficiency measures, calculating that plans to provide $6.9bn in grants to support local government energy efficiency schemes will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20.1m tons a year, while proposals to invest $6.7bn in improving the efficiency of federal buildings, $6.2bn in "home weatherisation" and $2.5bn in domestic energy efficiency efforts should cut emissions by 17.5m, eight million, and 7.28m tonnes respectively.

Proposed energy efficiency grants and loans to schools and other government institutions worth $1.5bn should cut emissions by 4.6m tonnes, according to the report, while $500m of investment in industrial energy efficiency programmes designed to pilot combined heat and power technologies promises to cut emissions by up to a quarter of current levels for those firms involved.

Moreover, plans for up to $300m in rebates for consumers who buy energy efficient and smart appliances that carry the Energy Star label are estimated to deliver emissions savings of more than 100,000 tonnes a year.

However, speaking to news agency Reuters, Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, said that as the study focused only on those areas where carbon savings could be accurately quantified, the total savings were likely to be far higher.

ICFI concluded that there were too many variables attached to a raft of investment proposals designed to bolster clean technologies for it to accurately attach emission-savings figures.

For example, Obama's flagship plans to invest $11bn in rolling out smart grid technologies, provide $8bn in loan guarantees to renewable energy and transmission projects, and offer $2.4bn in funding to carbon capture and storage projects all have the potential to deliver huge emissions savings, but it is too early to estimate the precise scale of the savings and the timeline for their delivery.

Similarly, it is also difficult to quantify emissions cuts that will arise from a raft of projects to help cut transport emissions, such as the $2bn in loans to be offered to developers of advanced battery technologies; $600m earmarked for greening federal vehicles; $400m initiative for the government to purchase more fuel efficient buses and trucks; $300m in funding to help develop cleaner diesel technologies; and $200m to promote the adoption of electric vehicles and provide recharging infrastructure.

This President’s Escape Is Sweet Home Chicago

copyright: The New York Times

This is great!

UK government announces green makeover for every home by 2030

UK government announces green makeover for every home by 2030

Environment minister unveils 'great British refurb' to cut household emissions one-third by 2020 with insulation and low-carbon technologies

* Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 February 2009 13.25 GMT

Loft insulation

Millions of British homes will be insulated under government plans. Photograph: Graham Turner

All UK households will have a green makeover by 2030 under government plans to reduce carbon emissions and cut energy bills.

Cavity wall and loft insulation will be available for all suitable homes, with plans to retrofit 400,000 homes a year by 2015. Financial incentives for householders will also be available for low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps, paid for by a levy on utility companies.

The government wants a quarter of homes (7m) to benefit from the schemes by 2020, extending to all UK households by 2030.

The strategy could help cut household carbon emissions by a third by 2020, part of its target to reduce overall UK emissions by 80% by 2050. Currently, homes account for 27% of the UK's carbon emissions through heating and power.

The plans were welcomed in principle by green groups and energy campaigners, though many were still concerned by the lack urgency in the proposals – which might only begin in 2013 – or detail on how the majority of the plans will be funded.

Energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: "We need to move from incremental steps forward on household energy efficiency to a comprehensive national plan – the Great British refurb."

"We know the scale of the challenge: wasted energy is costing families on average £300 a year, and more than a quarter of all our emissions are from our homes. Energy efficiency and low-carbon energy are the fairest routes to curbing emissions, saving money for families, improving our energy security and insulating us from volatile fossil fuel prices."

Under the proposals, a Renewable Heating Incentive would tax utility companies and then use the money to build up smaller-scale energy networks. A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the levy, intended to start in 2011, would not affect today's household bills. "We have to consult on how it will work and, in fact, our proposals would have little impact on prices for many years, apart from cutting billing for those who take up the offer of help."

In addition, householders could be paid for any electricity they feed into the national grid from their power-generating facilities.

Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) said the proposals were suitably ambitious but also needed the Treasury behind them. "As Lord Stern said yesterday, energy efficiency in homes and buildings should be part of a green stimulus. Financial incentives are needed to encourage major green refurbishments – the precedent has already been set with stamp duty rebates for zero-carbon homes."

According to Greenpeace UK, a programme to upgrade the housing stock alone would require £3.5-£6.5bn per year until 2050. Nathan Argent, head of energy solutions at Greenpeace, said: "Tackling energy efficiency is the fastest way to cut emissions, boost our energy security, revitalise the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs. And, obviously, this will cut household bills too. But this plan needs much more investment right now. The government needs to put their wallet where their mouth is."

Andrew Warren of the Association for the Conservation of Energy was concerned that the government had redefined the meaning of insulation to meet the target, set by Gordon Brown last year, of getting 6m homes fully insulated over three years.

"Most people think of insulation as the stuff you shove in your loft or put around your walls," he said. The current DECC definition, he said, can also include draft-proofing of letterboxes or replacing windows. "At the moment, even by the most generous interpretation, you're not even halfway towards the 6m [target announced by Gordon Brown].."

Danny Stevens, policy director of the Environmental Industries Commission said that setting targets for energy efficiency was not enough. "All we have today is the launch of yet another consultation. This undermines the urgency of tackling climate change and ignores the huge economic benefits of ambitious environmental protection measures."

That sentiment was echoed by Philip Sellwood, chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust (EST), who said the time for talking is now over. "We are not short of ideas; we just need action and now. Armed with the knowledge that 70% of our current housing stock will still be around in 2050, we know we need to be bold."

He added: "If we throw everything at our existing housing stock – based on today's technologies only – we could reduce household carbon emissions by 50%."

The EST said there are 7.3m cavity walls that could be filled with insulation, 7m solid walls that could be insulated, and 12.9m lofts which do not have the recommended depth of insulation, and 4.5m G-rated (the least efficient) gas boilers.

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Greg Clark said the government was "delaying rather than getting on and adopting our scheme immediately, when it is desperately needed." Last month, the Conservatives proposed giving an allowance of up to £6,500 to every household in the UK for energy efficiency improvements.

Today's DECC strategy also includes ideas to encourage microgeneration, where homeowners and local communities generate their own heat or power.


Public building CO2 footprints revealed

2 Oct 2008:

The Palace of Westminster and the Bank of England have been exposed as some of the UK's least energy efficient public buildings by a new law to measure carbon dioxide emissions from the national estate. Find out how other public buildings fared

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Obama 'must act now' on climate

BBC NEWS
Obama 'must act now' on climate

The planet will be in "huge trouble" unless Barack Obama makes strides in tackling climate change, says a leading scientist.

Prof James McCarthy spoke on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which he heads.

The US president has just four years to save the planet, said Prof McCarthy.

If major policy changes do not happen within Mr Obama's term of office, they will not happen at all, he warned.

"We have a moment right now of extraordinary opportunity, with a new president, positioned with scientific leadership that has known no equal in recent times," the AAAS president told BBC News.

"The calibre of scientific advice that is close to this man is truly exceptional.

"If in his first term, in the next four years, we don't make significant progress in these areas, then I think the planet is in huge trouble.

"Without US leadership, which has been sorely lacking, we will not get to where we need to be."

Moment of opportunity

Climate change is high on the agenda of this year's AAAS meeting in Chicago.

Former US Vice President Al Gore is among the speakers at the event, with 10,000 scientists expected to attend across the five days of the meeting.

On the eve of the conference, Prof McCarthy told BBC News there was now a moment of opportunity to draw up policies that would be effective in combating climate change.

He said: "Many scientists have wondered whether President Obama will be able to make commitments to investments in energy technology and understanding climate change - that were an important part of his campaign.

"I know many of my colleagues looking at the fiscal situation, have felt that these good ideas might be put on the back burner.

"That would be a terrible thing if that happened.

"This is our window, with the science advice he has, with the realisation that these issues are pressing, if they are made second order I think we have really lost it."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7885036.stm

Published: 2009/02/12 02:36:06 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Former US vice-president told Senate that environmental initiatives would help job growth

* Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Al Gore reprised his role as environmental prophet today, laying out a road map for Barack Obama to push through his ambitious green agenda and re-assert American leadership on global climate change negotiations.

The former US vice-president and Nobel prize laureate called for swift passage of Obama's economic recovery plan, with its emphasis on green jobs and renewable energy.

He said Barack Obama's multibillion-dollar stimulus plan was a first step to moving America away from fossil fuels and reaching an international treaty on climate change in Copenhagen later this year.

"The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it," Gore told the Senate foreign relations committee.

Gore urged Congress not to be distracted by the economic recessions. Recent opinion polls have also shown a decline in concern about the environment as economic worries take hold.
Gore said the plan would spur economic recovery - not stand in its way.

"The solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well," he said. "The plan's unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas - energy efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy grid and the move to clean cars - represent an important down payment."

He went on to call for "decisive action" towards mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, saying the reductions achieved under the short-term economic recovery plan would make it easier for America to meet subsequent targets.

The knock-on effect would lay the foundation to a successful negotiation of a sequel to the Kyoto agreements later this year, Gore said.

"The United States will regain its credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and effective treaty."

He said the scientific consensus of recent years would ensure support in Congress for an international treaty. Congress refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol a decade ago.

"The scientists are practically screaming from the rooftops," Gore said.

The largely reverential reception for Gore, from Republicans as well as Democrats on the Senate committee, was further evidence of the dramatic shift in thinking on the environment.

With Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, there is now broad support for dealing with climate change.

John Kerry, the incoming chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, has said he intends to use his new role to help further efforts for an international treaty on climate. "The committee is going to be relentless and super-focused," he said.

"As the new administration sets a new tone with the global community, this issue will be an early test of our capacity to exert thoughtful, forceful diplomatic and moral leadership on any future challenge that the world faces," Kerry said.

With Bush's exit from the White House, there was little sign today of the once formidable constituency of climate change deniers. Instead, the committee room was reduced to respectful silence as Gore deployed his now famous slide show on the urgency of dealing with climate change.

He included data showing that if emissions rise at current levels, the earth could see an 11 degree Fahrenheit rise in global average temperatures.

"This would bring a screeching halt to human civilisation and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on Earth," Gore said. "And this is within the century, if we don't change."

Obama took his first steps to make good on an election promise to put the environment at the top of his agenda on Monday.

In a pair of executive orders, Obama asked the Environmental Protection Agency to review its refusal to allow California and more than a dozen other states to enact stringent emission requirements.

Gore's testimony was part of a broader strategy by Obama to get Congress behind his stimulus package, but also to line up support further down the road for legislation to promote clean energy and counter the effects of climate change.

Since the success of his film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has launched a public campaign for America to stop using fossil fuels entirely and move to clean energy sources within 10 years. Such targets are more ambitious than those set by Obama.

However, Gore did not refer to those targets today.

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

THINK AGAIN by Stanley Fish

February 8, 2009, 10:00 pm
The Two Languages of Academic Freedom

Last week we came to the section on academic freedom in my course on the law of higher education and I posed this hypothetical to the students: Suppose you were a member of a law firm or a mid-level executive in a corporation and you skipped meetings or came late, blew off assignments or altered them according to your whims, abused your colleagues and were habitually rude to clients. What would happen to you?

The chorus of answers cascaded immediately: “I’d be fired.” Now, I continued, imagine the same scenario and the same set of behaviors, but this time you’re a tenured professor in a North American university. What then?

I answered this one myself: “You’d be celebrated as a brave nonconformist, a tilter against orthodoxies, a pedagogical visionary and an exemplar of academic freedom.”

My assessment of the way in which some academics contrive to turn serial irresponsibility into a form of heroism under the banner of academic freedom has now been at once confirmed and challenged by events at the University of Ottawa, where the administration announced on Feb. 6 that it has “recommended to the Board of Governors the dismissal with cause of Professor Denis Rancourt from his faculty position.” Earlier, Rancourt, a tenured professor of physics, had been suspended from teaching and banned from campus. When he defied the ban he was taken away in handcuffs and charged with trespassing.

What had Rancourt done to merit such treatment? According to the Globe and Mail, Rancourt’s sin was to have informed his students on the first day of class that “he had already decided their marks : Everybody was getting an A+.”

But that, as the saying goes, is only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath it is the mass of reasons Rancourt gives for his grading policy and for many of the other actions that have infuriated his dean, distressed his colleagues (a third of whom signed a petition against him) and delighted his partisans.

Rancourt is a self-described anarchist and an advocate of “critical pedagogy,” a style of teaching derived from the assumption (these are Rancourt’s words) “that our societal structures . . . represent the most formidable instrument of oppression and exploitation ever to occupy the planet” (Activist Teacher.blogspot.com, April 13, 2007).

Among those structures is the university in which Rancourt works and by which he is paid. But the fact of his position and compensation does not insulate the institution from his strictures and assaults; for, he insists, “schools and universities supply the obedient workers and managers and professionals that adopt and apply [the] system’s doctrine — knowingly or unknowingly.”

It is this belief that higher education as we know it is simply a delivery system for a regime of oppressors and exploiters that underlies Rancourt’s refusal to grade his students. Grading, he says, “is a tool of coercion in order to make obedient people” (rabble.ca., Jan. 12, 2009).

It turns out that another tool of coercion is the requirement that professors actually teach the course described in the college catalogue, the course students think they are signing up for. Rancourt battles against this form of coercion by employing a strategy he calls “squatting” – “where one openly takes an existing course and does with it something different.” That is, you take a currently unoccupied structure, move in and make it the home for whatever activities you wish to engage in. “Academic squatting is needed,” he says, “because universities are dictatorships . . . run by self-appointed executives who serve capital interests.”

Rancourt first practiced squatting when he decided that he “had to do something more than give a ‘better’ physics course.” Accordingly, he took the Physics and Environment course that had been assigned to him and transformed it into a course on political activism, not a course about political activism, but a course in which political activism is urged — “an activism course about confronting authority and hierarchical structures directly or through defiant or non-subordinate assertion in order to democratize power in the workplace, at school, and in society.”

Clearly squatting itself is just such a “defiant or non-subordinate assertion.” Rancourt does not merely preach his philosophy. He practices it.

This sounds vaguely admirable until you remember what Rancourt is, in effect, saying to those who employ him: I refuse to do what I have contracted to do, but I will do everything in my power to subvert the enterprise you administer. Besides, you’re just dictators, and it is my obligation to undermine you even as I demand that you pay me and confer on me the honorific title of professor. And, by the way, I am entitled to do so by the doctrine of academic freedom, which I define as “the ideal under which professors and students are autonomous and design their own development and interactions.”

Of course, as Rancourt recognizes, if this is how academic freedom is defined, its scope is infinite and one can’t stop with squatting: “The next step is academic hijacking, where students tell a professor that she can stay or leave but that this is what they are going to do and these are the speakers they are going to invite.” O, brave new world!

The record shows exchanges of letters between Rancourt and Dean Andre E. Lalonde and letters from each of them to Marc Jolicoeur, chairman of the Board of Governors. There is something comical about some of these exchanges when the dean asks Rancourt to tell him why he is not guilty of insubordination and Rancourt replies that insubordination is his job, and that, rather than ceasing his insubordinate activities, he plans to expand them. Lalonde complains that Rancourt “does not acknowledge any impropriety regarding his conduct.” Rancourt tells Jolicoeur that “Socrates did not give grades to students,” and boasts that everything he has done was done “with the purpose of making the University of Ottawa a better place,” a place “of greater democracy.” In other words, I am the bearer of a saving message and those who need it most will not hear it and respond by persecuting me. It is the cry of every would-be messiah.

Rancourt’s views are the opposite of those announced by a court in an Arizona case where the issue was also whether a teaching method could be the basis of dismissal. Noting that the university had concluded that the plaintiff’s “methodology was not successful,” the court declared “Academic freedom is not a doctrine to insulate a teacher from evaluation by the institution that employs him” (Carley v. Arizona, 1987).

The Arizona court thinks of academic freedom as a doctrine whose scope is defined by the purposes and protocols of the institution and its limited purposes. Rancourt thinks of academic freedom as a local instance of a global project whose goal is nothing less than the freeing of revolutionary energies, not only in the schools but everywhere.

It is the difference between being concerned with the establishing and implementing of workplace-specific procedures and being concerned with the wholesale transformation of society. It is the difference between wanting to teach a better physics course and wanting to save the world. Given such divergent views, not only is reconciliation between the parties impossible; conversation itself is impossible. The dispute can only be resolved by an essentially political decision, and in this case the narrower concept of academic freedom has won. But only till next time.

copyright: The New York Times

The ripple effect of cutting water

The ripple effect of cutting water

Clare Davidson, BBC News
Port Sunlight, Merseyside

Less water meant smaller bottles and less packaging

"For far too long, businesses like ours have been effectively shipping water around the globe," says Gavin Neath, a spokesperson for Unilever.

He leans across a table in the firm's London office, as if confiding something secretive.

Like other multinational firms, Unilever is assessing its environmental impact, including how it uses water.

In doing so the firm is reassessing the way it does business, but this also creates a number of benefits.

The firm singles out two detergents - Small and Mighty, and Surf Excel - as examples of this shift. Small and Mighty, for example, requires half as much water per bottle and half as much packaging.

Shift in size

As we arrive at the firm's Port Sunlight factory, near Liverpool, Keith Rutherford - who has been closely involved in developing small & mighty in the UK - has set up a display of detergents to illustrate the change.

Brands sold in different countries over the years are neatly arranged.

What would have been considered the norm now appear absurdly big in scale.

"In the past, especially in the US, big was always best," explains Mr Rutherford.

Old and new versions of detergent
In the past, especially in the US, big was always best
Keith Rutherford, a director of Unilever's laundry R&D

"And the more bubbles and foam the better."

Making goods smaller challenges such assumptions.

As we enter liquid factory number one, we are hit by an intense waft of perfumed detergent.

As a robotic arm lifts bottles into a cardboard box, Mr Rutherford lists the benefits across the supply chain of making the detergent more concentrated.

Smaller bottles mean less packaging, meaning fewer carbon emissions.

"It also means more can be transported on fewer lorries which reduces fuel, which in turn lowers emissions.

"And making a more concentrated liquid means more goes further, so customers don't have to lug as much detergent from the supermarket as often."

'Whole puzzle'

As part of its overall environmental assessment, the firm has also looked at the consumer's role.

This is effectively about looking at water used across the supply chain. While embedded carbon has been much talked about, embedded water, the water that is used in the life cycle of the product, has not. It is also called virtual water.

Water consumption at all stages is calculated; irrigation of the raw materials, the manufacturing process, water per consumer use, waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

"By looking at water we have an opportunity to look at the whole puzzle," says Mr Rutherford, gleefully.

A brief look at the firm's range of goods, from brands such as Knorr stock to Dove soap, underlines how important the end user's role is.

"It might be through boiling a kettle for tea, or making stock cubes or putting on the laundry", he lists.

Even pasta in tomato sauce needs water, albeit indirectly, since pasta needs to be boiled in water.

In fact, Unilever estimates that the water added by end users represents around 45% of the total water used for its products.

For detergent that figure is even greater - around 95% of the water is used by the consumer, mostly for rinsing.

Education

"But you can't just abdicate that aspect, you need to raise awareness," says Mr Neath.

In countries such as India, washing clothes can represent around a quarter of the domestic water used and most water is used in the rinsing phase.

ENVIRONMENTAL SAVINGS SMALL & MIGHTY
Water: 41 million litres
Shelf space: 36 football fields
Carbon dioxide: 1 030 000 kg
Plastic: (equivalent) 272 million bags
Card: (equivalent) 383 million A4 sheets

Surf Excel Quick Wash, used in India, produces less lather, so the clothes need less rinsing, saving around two buckets of water per wash.

Some parts of the world where Unilever operates are water stressed, and many areas have no piped water.

Reducing the amount of water needed not only cuts the water required, it also means less physical work, with women and girls standing to benefit the most since they do most of the water carrying, said Mr Neath.

So reducing the water in goods not only stands to benefit the environment. It also has social implications.

Much has changed since the days of William Hesketh Lever, who co-founded the eponymous soap firm with his brother long before it was incorporated into Unilever.

But he might smile to think that aspects of his mission statement had been carried out.

"To make cleanliness commonplace; to lessen work for women; to foster health and contribute to personal attractiveness."