According to the official Xinhua news service, China is sending a new deployment of 315 military engineers to Darfur.

With a third group of Chinese peacekeepers sent to Sudan to replace their predecessors, China has sent more than 10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions.

At the request of the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, China decided to participate in a hybrid force of the United Nations and the African Union.

China promised to send a 315-member engineering unit to Darfur. So far, the first group of 143 engineers has been dispatched to Darfur, where it is at work.

I'm not entirely sure how Xinhua came up with the claim that China has sent "10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions" as China is only the 13th largest (pdf) troop contributor with nearly 2000 military and police in the field. Still, China's stepped up participation in the Darfur - African Union mission is certainly welcome. Welcome too would be Beijing using its diplomatic suasion with Khartoum to help lift restrictions on the Darfur mission.

Meanwhile, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations announced a French successor to Jean-Marie Guehenno, the very capable Undersecretary General who headed peacekeeping operations since 2000. Alain Le Roy, who cut his teeth in the Balkans, will succeed Guehenno.

I was unable to tape a UN Plaza diavlog this week, but New York Sun national security reporter Eli Lake stepped up. In the segment below, Eli surprises by offering two reasons why American neoconservatives (like himself) should love the United Nations.

Good to see the neocons are on board! Next stop, libertarians.

(Cross-posted at On Day One)

At long last, Congress has passed the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill -- and it includes $665 million to help fund UN peacekeeping missions, pay back U.S. debt to the UN, and contribute to key international organizations like NATO and the World Health Organization. In response, the Better World Campaign expressed cautious optimism in a press release that it issued on Friday:

"At a time when the United States is asking the United Nations to take on more and more responsibilities for peace, security and progress around the world, it is imperative that America honor its financial commitments to the UN," said former Senator Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Campaign. "America is a great nation and as such needs to pay its bills on time and in full. This legislation is an important step toward reducing America's nearly $2 billion debt to the UN," Wirth said.

"If the President approves this budget request, U.S. debt to the UN will fall to $1.734 billion," said Deborah Derrick, Executive Director of the Better World Campaign. "In order to further reduce U.S. debt to the UN, and enhance America's reputation in the world, the Better World Campaign is calling on Congress and the Administration to prioritize payment of unpaid bills to the UN in the fiscal 2009 appropriations process," she said.

"Fall to $1.734 billion" may seem depressingly ironic, as such a sum means that the country with the world's largest economy still harbors an unacceptably bloated debt to an organization that it asks to take on so much around the world -- from Darfur to Iraq to, most recently, Zimbabwe. Even with this funding, the U.S. is still dangerously underfunding peacekeeping missions in places like Chad, Kosovo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, jeopardizing the ability of these missions to be effective. Furthermore, the upcoming FY 2009 funding bill threatens to undo all of the gains that will be made by this $665 million.

Nonetheless, there is a positive sign in Congress' decision of how to appropriate funds in the supplemental. The $665 million for UN causes will go not just to high-profile issues like the peacekeeping force in Darfur, but also to the less "sexy" -- but no less important -- cause of paying back the U.S.'s debt to the UN. Congress has made the statement that fully funding the UN is a worthwhile endeavor, and, in its work on the 2009 budget, it needs to make sure that this step forward is not canceled out by two steps back.

At this week's African Union summit leaders may not be condemning the "sham election" in Zimbabwe, but Ban Ki Moon wades where Secretary Generals typically do not and calls the presidential election in a member state "illegitimate." From the UN News Center:

"The outcome did not reflect the true and genuine will of the Zimbabwean people or produce a legitimate result," Mr. Ban's spokesperson said in statement issued today in Tokyo, where the Secretary-General is currently on an official visit.

"The Secretary-General has said repeatedly that conditions were not in place for a free and fair election and observers have confirmed this from the deeply flawed process," the statement added.

Read more.

It seems that speculation about the president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, leaving his country to become UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was a bit premature. Here's how Ramos-Horta explained his decision:

"An early departure from my current responsibility would result in early elections and this would be an unfair burden on a people who went to the polls three times in 2007," he told a news conference in Dili.

The possibility of inadvertently fomenting instability in his country undoubtedly weighed heavily on Ramos-Horta. His role, as one analyst describes it, is an important one of "ensuring there is a link between two groups of people who don't want to talk to each other" in a polarized East Timorese political system. The same analyst, however, sees the potential for more a slightly more cynical motivation on Ramos-Horta's part:

"By refusing this now, he has managed to put himself on the list for the future," said Edward Rees, a specialist on East Timor and a former UN consultant on security issues, speaking from Dili. "The list is constantly being used to fill top spots at the United Nations. His name will be on the list, and maybe in a year from now if something comes up, he'll get it."

The fact remains, though, that Ramos-Horta's name was never officially offered the job from the Secretary-General to begin with. Curious indeed.

Once again, stay tuned.

A New York Times article discusses the Bush Administration's intentional disregard of advice from the Environmental Protection Agency. In this case, the White House refused to open an email reporting on whether or not greenhouse gases are dangerous to the environment or health. In response, the EPA watered down the report.

The original idea was that if greenhouse gases were ruled to be a danger, they could be regulated under existing environmental laws like the Clean Air Act. This, said the chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, could result in a "train wreck" of piecemeal regulation. The EPA's report apparently did not agree with this policy, so the Administration placed its fingers squarely in its ears, tightly shut its eyes, and waited for the report to dilute itself.

This is not the first time the White House has ignored the advice of the EPA and the EPA has rolled over. A similar situation arose when the EPA decided not to let California set tougher emissions standards for vehicles. In that case, the EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, overturned the unanimous decision of his staff, who wanted to allow the California regulations, and said that global, not regional policies are the best way to resolve the problem. This decision came after Johnson had closed door discussions with White House officials, and documents on what led to this decision have been shielded from oversight efforts by "executive privilege."

I've heard that sometimes if you ignore something it will go away. I guess I never realized how true that is.

Over at his blog, On the Ground, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is incensed that the Bush administration has, for the seventh consecutive year, decided to withhold any funding for the United Nations Population Fund. He's not alone, as voices on the Hill are already registering their outcry. Why would the U.S. object to helping fund an organization that provides reproductive health services for women across the world (not to mention assistance in development, human rights, and gender equality initiatives as well)? Kristof explains:

The reason given for withholding the U.S. funds is that the Population Fund (universally called UNFPA, after its old acronym) supports forced abortions in China. Even if that were true, it would be ridiculous to withhold funds for UNFPA activities against maternal mortality in Africa because of its work in China. But in any case, UNFPA has been a major force against compulsion of any kind in China, as the U.S. blue-ribbon committee that investigated the charges found. In the areas in China where UNFPA set up a model program, there is no compulsion and the abortion rate is lower than in the U.S.

It seems that the administration is assuming that, simply because China has a one-child policy -- and because yes, like everywhere else in the world, some women in China do get abortions -- that abortions there must be non-voluntary, and that the UNFPA, merely by operating in the country, is guilty by association. This logic is clearly flawed, its assertions are wholly unsubstantiated by the evidence, and, perhaps worst of all, it contradicts the findings of the U.S. government's own investigative panel. Moreover, as Kristof suggests, depriving UNFPA of support for any of its work -- even in places like Africa, where President Bush has trumpeted his development efforts, such as PEPFAR, as a staple of his legacy -- out of either political or ideological posturing makes for nonsensical policy.

Cross-posted on On Day One.

UPDATE: Tamara Kreinin, the Executive Director of the Women and Population program at the United Nations Foundation, issues a strong statement on UNFPA funding (read it below the fold).

UPDATE II: As commenter Tyler LePard notes, the news only gets worse. Check out Craig Lasher's post over at RH Reality Check for more.

"The United Nations Foundation joins the international community in expressing its deep disappointment that the administration has decided--for the seventh straight year--to withhold the $39.7 million authorized by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the world's leading voice on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

"In a statement notifying Congress of the administration's decision to withhold funds from UNFPA, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte once again cited UNFPA's program in China as a violation of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which bars funding for programming that "supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive or involuntary sterilization."

"UNFPA does not--and has never--supported coercive or involuntary sterilization. In fact, the decision to withhold funds from UNFPA is inconsistent with the reports from the State Department and several other blue-ribbon investigative teams, which included descriptions of UNFPA's work as "a force for good" in China.

"Working in 150 countries, UNFPA is on the front lines reducing maternal and infant mortality, decreasing HIV/AIDS rates, and protecting women and girls from rape and violence, particularly during conflict situations. The $34 million that the United States has withheld each year is close to 10 percent of UNFPA's regular income. The amount withheld every year could have helped UNFPA prevent 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 mothers' deaths, and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths. Approximately 181 industrialized and developing countries, including all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, contribute to UNFPA. The United States is the only country to withhold funding for political reasons.

"The UN Foundation is looking forward to working with the next administration to restore funding for UNFPA and to strengthen the U.S.'s role as a global health leader. During the 2000 UN Millennium Summit, the United States pledged to work to respond to the world's most pressing development challenges, including poverty, gender inequality and disease. It is past time that the administration acknowledges how fundamental UNFPA is to addressing these global challenges and that the U.S. funds UNFPA's work.

The UN Dispatch - Grist collaboration concludes today with discussion of an idea submitted by On Day One userJames Hansen--yes that Dr. James Hansen!

Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defense Fund; Nigel Purvis; Kate Sheppard; Timothy B. Hurstand David Roberts respond below the fold.

Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund

As usual, great issues raised here by Dr. Jim Hansen, whose outspoken leadership on climate change has been instrumental in raising public awareness and creating the opportunity we have now to craft effective solutions at the federal level.

We're clearly not going to fix global warming without addressing the market failure at the very root of the problem -- the lack of a price tag on dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. So a carbon tax on first blush may seem like a sensible way to go, according to basic economics: if you tax something, you get less of it, so we should tax carbon.

But the litmus test of an effective climate policy is not whether it achieves some carbon emissions reductions and drives investment in energy efficiency. The test has to be whether it reduces carbon emissions far enough and fast enough to ward off the serious consequences of runaway global warming. From that perspective, a carbon tax has a basic drawback: it may get you some emissions reductions, but it leaves the amount of reductions up in the air -- literally.

No one knows where to set a carbon tax to drive sufficient pollution cuts, and the political pressure in the U.S. Congress (not to mention a general aversion to taxes) will always be to drive that price down. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we simply can't afford guesswork that will inevitably be muddied by politics.

What we do know is how far we need to reduce emissions to help avoid the worst climate outcomes. That's why a mandatory cap on emissions, coupled with an emissions trading market, is a better approach: it sets a legal limit on pollution to ensure that greenhouse gas concentrations don't reach dangerously high levels in the atmosphere. Emissions trading helps ensure that we meet that cap at the lowest cost - by putting companies and private-sector investment in the hunt for the broadest pool of pollution reduction options across the economy.

That promises to make the renewable energy electricity system advocated by Dr. Hansen about much more than just wind and solar (though we hope they play a huge role). It will also be about innovative new technologies like fuel brewed from yeast, advanced geothermal, and energy harvested from the waves of the sea. Cap and trade establishes a low-carbon playing field that lets them compete. You can get a sneak peek at some of those technologies in a series of short videos from my EDF colleague Miriam Horn.

Nigel Purvis

Dr. Hansen is right that we do need to move as quickly as possible toward renewable energy, understanding that the transition will take decades even under the best circumstances. Government policy holds the key to speeding that transformation of the global economy. Carbon taxes are working in some countries and theoretically might be effective in the United States. The key to success, of course, is urgent action. We are most likely to see action in the United States through a cap-and-trade system, which already has considerable support from industry, environmentalists and many members of Congress. Cap-and-trade is not perfect (although it has some important advantages as Tony noted) but it's the only approach that is seriously in play. The worse thing would be to lose another decade holding out for a better policy framework.

Kate Sheppard

Hansen isn't alone in calling for a carbon tax -- Al Gore and other notables in the climate community have called for it. Heck, even John Dingell, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says that "a carbon tax would be the most efficient way of dealing with global warming." It probably is the most efficient way of dealing with it, but as Tony points out, efficiency and effectiveness don't necessarily win the day with the public in this debate over how to deal with climate change. We live in a country founded largely in protest of taxes, and the aversion remains strong. I don't think anything that involves the word "tax" would fly at this point in time. During the debate of the Climate Security Act earlier this month, Republicans called the bill the "Boxer Carbon Tax" in an effort to malign it. I think that some sort of cap-and-trade scheme is the best option that stands a chance at this point.

But Hansen has a great point about how to gain public support, and how to do this most effectively, in advocating for a return of all the revenues to the public. Tax-and-dividend, or cap-and-dividend, is likely to fare much better with Republican politicians and the public in general. It also takes away the Republican argument that climate legislation is meant to be a new, giant money-suck for government-happy Democrats. Though I may personally favor using a portion of the revenues to invest in technology R&D and green jobs programs, this would probably make legislation more appealing to the general public.

And clearly Hansen's idea that the next president should call for a completely renewable energy electrical system is great. Setting a price on carbon would correct the market in order to make that possible.

David Roberts

I largely agree with Tony on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax question. That debate has taken on a very strange character -- everyone from economists to social justice advocates talks about a carbon tax in reverent tones, as though it's a Blu Ray DVD player while a cap-and-trade system is a Betamax VCR (you younger readers can ask your parents about that one). But it's not exactly fair to compare a real-world cap-and-trade system (like the one in the EU, which admittedly had a very rough start) with the Platonic ideal of a carbon tax as sketched on Greg Mankiw's whiteboard. In the real world, as Tony says, it's just as easy for a tax to be complex and unwieldy, once the lobbyists fill it with loopholes and exemptions. Most of all though, a well-crafted cap-and-trade system gets you certainty on emission reductions, which is the overriding priority here.

That said, if you want to drive a large-scale, short-term shift to efficiency and renewables -- as Hansen does, and I do -- it's important to realize that federal carbon-pricing is only one piece of the policy puzzle, and not even necessarily the most important piece. You also need a large, sustained program of public investment, along with complimentary regulations and regulatory reform.

On the investment front, we need to plow a lot of money into infrastructure, particularly public transit, a smarter electrical grid, and improved water systems. We need to raise our R&D spending tenfold. We need to use the government's full purchasing power to expand markets for new green products and technologies. And we need investment to help seed and nurture nascent industries.

On the regulatory front -- which is boring to talk about, I realize, but vitally important -- we need to fix the perverse regulatory scheme that governs our electricity sector and biases utilities in favor of large central generation plants (which is why they all love nuclear and "clean coal"). We need to radically raise our efficiency standards for buildings, which is where most of the easiest, cheapest reductions can be found. We also need higher efficiency standards on everything from industrial boilers to vehicles to appliances.

And -- tipping my hat to the illustrious Dr. Hansen -- we need an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. That's the biggest prize in the short term, and if anyone's reading this wondering where they should direct their energy, direct it here. No new coal!

Timothy B. Hurst

First, I would like to extend my thanks to Grist, On Day One, UN Dispatch, and all of those who have weighed in on this important project all week. We must understand this whole experiment not just as a thought exercise, but rather as a potential conduit to our elected officials. One of the critical tenets of agenda setting is problem definition and associating the proper frame with that problem - this project is already well on the road to doing that. Another critical component in setting the agenda will be to ensure that the properly framed problem and its concomitant solutions reach our policymakers with the kind of broad-based support needed to affect substantive policy change - and that's next.

Broadly speaking I think Dr. Hansen's suggestions are excellent ones, and I will address them separately. First, the suggestion that we need to move to a "national low-loss electric grid" powered solely by renewable energy sources is a useful one. But considering the incrementalism that is built into our government structure, not to mention the fact that a national grid infrastructure and our multi-layered federalism go together like oil and water, we may not be able to do so within the ten years that Dr. Hansen suggests - but that certainly doesn't mean he shouldn't suggest it. We need urgent action now to simply maintain the kind of investments in renewable energy that will ensure its continued growth. Whether that action comes in the form of investment tax credits, production tax credits, feed-in tariffs, carbon credits, a carbon-tax, or some combination thereof, "the key to success...is urgent action," as Nigel rightly suggests.

Like Dr. Hansen, I am a big proponent of a carbon tax. The cap and trade mechanism (especially ones with soft limits and ten-year phase-ins), would not provide the type of certainty that Tony suggests when he writes, "No one knows where to set a carbon tax to drive sufficient pollution cuts...". One only needs to look at Europe to see the 'effectiveness' of their carbon cap and trade program. I am not opposed to a cap and trade outright, as one was successfully built and implemented to address acid rain. We may even be able to learn from the mistakes made in the European model. But there is just as much "guesswork" involved in formulating a cap and trade as any other carbon policy.

Yes, Americans have an aversion to taxes. But, might that aversion be lessened if a carbon tax replaced personal income tax? A carbon tax would not stifle our economy, it would actually stimulate it. We need to take ownership of this issue and stop letting nay-sayers win the framing battle by continually allowing them to play the economic trump card. Environmental protection and economic vitality are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, transitioning to a revenue stream fed by carbon taxes as opposed to income taxes would require a complete restructuring of our tax code as we know it, something few want to do. But we might be beyond the point of choosing the easy path.

The European Union is again flexing its market muscle to force improvements in environmental regulation. This time, the E.U. has decided to cap emissions from aircraft--and not just European aircraft. Under the agreement starting in 2012, all airlines coming or going in European airports will have to buy pollution credits. The credits are managed under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the largest cap-and-trade program in the world.

The boldness of this move cannot be understated. Airline associations are fuming, as they are already dealing with rising fuel costs and sketchy profit margins. The United States has been vehemently against the measure, and has recently knocked down attempts at establishing its own emissions regulation framework.

The E.U. has said though, that it would consider waiving the credits for airlines covered under similar emissions reduction policies, to avoid double regulation. In this sense, they are encouraging countries to develop their own policies to avoid having to submit to European regulation.

This step also begins to address one of the biggest deficiencies of the Kyoto agreement. Kyoto does not cover air travel, which is one of the fastest growing sources of emissions in the world.

So again, as with chemical regulation, the E.U. is taking a leadership position on environmental issues, and using its market power to force the rest of the world into compliance. Until there are some strong, effective international regimes to manage the global commons, or some real leadership on the part of the United States, I would expect to hear more in the future about the "Europe Effect," and the U.S. had better get used to being a follower.

Cross-Posted to On Day One

(Image from Treehugger)

Via Foreign Policy, North Korea destroys its reactor tower at Yongbyon.

Diplomacy works! And if done correctly, can even lead to adversaries blowing up their own nuclear facilities.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual report (pdf) on global trends in the production, trafficking and consumption of controlled substances yesterday. Most notably, the report gave us some disturbing new figures on the Afghan opium cultivation, which grew by 17% since 2007. Today, some 92% of the opium in the world comes from Afghanistan. Column Lynch has more

The Taliban earned $200 million to $400 million last year through a 10 percent tax on poppy growers and drug traffickers in areas under its control, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. He estimates that Afghan poppy farmers and drug traffickers last year earned about $4 billion, half of the country's national income.

Simply eradicating Afghan poppy fields is not really an option. In a year old LA Times piece, Peter Bergen and Sameer Lalwani explain how counter-narcotics policy can sometimes make for counter-productive counter-insurgency strategy. Cato's Ted Galen Carpenter has more.

Via Security Council Report comes valuable analysis on the state of play of the United Nations Mission to Ethiopia-Eritrea (UNMEE). The mission's mandate is set to officially expire on July 31. In practice, UNMEE has been shuttered since this spring, when it was forced to relocate out of the country after Eritrea cut off the mission's fuel supply.

According to the Security Council Report, Belgium has put forward a proposal that would terminate UNMEE as we know it. In its stead, the Belgium plan recomends: "deployment of a military UN Observer Mission for Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNOMEE), based in Ethiopia, until 31 December. Its mandate would be to report developments that could undermine the peace process promote confidence building measures and help mediate incidents along the border. "

The Belgian plan obviously downgrades an important mission that kept tenuous peace along a hostile frontier. But downgrading UNMEE simply reflects the reality on the ground; the mission cannot operate when its host country is totally uncooperative. That said, both sides are at fault here. The 2000 Algiers Agreement set up a process by which the status of disputed border territory would be apportioned, but when a neutral boundary commission decided in Eritrean favor, Ethiopia simply ignored the ruling. Thus, today, we have a tense stalemate along the border, with the real possibility that the countries return to war.

Clearly, until this underlying issue is resolved, peace will be hard to to come by. Still, obstructing the UNMEE was deeply problematic as it -- at the very least -- provided a buffer to prevent the outbreak of armed conflict. Who knows if a small observor mission based in Ethiopia will be able to do the same?

(image credit: BBC)

There's been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere over the meeting hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week that resulted in the UN Security Council's resolution declaring rape as a weapon of war.

Now that the word is out, there's much to be done, including a push for international law of rape as a war crime. In the meantime, serious kudos goes to the UN Security Council for creating this resolution. As I said last week, while rape as a weapon of war has existed for a long, long, time, it's only begun to be documented and its recognition is a huge step. And now it seems the resolution has already begun to mobilize the international community; UNIFEM's "Say No to Violence Against Women" campaign has signed on ten more supporting countries this week.

One of UNIFEM's goals is to have 1 million names signed before November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, when the signatures will be handed over to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. So get to it and sign your name.

Photo was taken by Hazel Thompson used in NY Times article, of Honorata Barinjibanwa, rape victim of war crimes in the Congo.

Jackie Chan may have just arrived, but is East Timor's president on the way out?

East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta says he is considering the top UN human rights post but is worried how his resignation would affect the country.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate suggested he would decide whether to put his name forward within 24 hours.

Mr Ramos-Horta said he feared snap elections could destabilise the fragile peace built over the past few months.

Presuming that Ramos-Horta is not replying to this ad for the position, he would make a good candidate to succeed Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, whose term expires at the end of this month. Ramos-Horta's departure, which Paul Toohey at The Australian writes "seems almost certain," would leave Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, a once-revered politician whose luminosity has faded somewhat of late, to shepherd over a peaceful transition. It is obviously in the UN's interest to prevent renewed violence in East Timor, so the General Assembly, Secretary-General, and Ramos-Horta himself should make sure that his accepting the post will not create another human rights crisis for him to deal with back at home.

Stay tuned for updates here.

(Photo from Flickr using a Creative Commons license.)

Our collaboration with Grist rolls on today with a discussion prompt submitted by On Day One user teiki:

A key to the massive use of fossil fuels in the U.S. is gross overconsumption. We use way more than necessary, through a combined dependence on the automobile and an infatuation with big, gas-hungry cars, trucks and SUVs., through wasted energy consumption in our homes and offices in everything from their construction to "phantom loads" and light bulbs, and through the amount of green house gas emitted by livestock supplying an overconsumption of food. We must learn to use less.

David Roberts; Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund; and Timothy B. Hurst respond below the fold.

David Roberts

I think you need to be really careful on this one. There's no benefit in framing over-consumption as an issue of American greed or gluttony. If you come out preaching about sin, trying to make people feel guilty and repent, you play to stereotype, get mired in a culture war, and quickly end up preaching only to the choir.

It is true, via accidents of history, economy, and geography, that Americans have incredibly high per capita resource consumption. We're an extraordinarily rich country with lots of land and access to cheap energy, so we've designed our material environment somewhat thoughtlessly. When things are cheap, they get used in heedless ways. It's not a moral defect, it's just human nature.

Now those things are getting expensive, and the damage they're doing to the environment is unavoidable, so it's time to address high per-capita consumption. There are two ways to do it. One is through voluntary reduction in quality of life -- give up vacations, turn the thermostat down, live in a smaller house or apartment. The other is to get more out of each unit of input, maintaining quality of life while driving down net resource consumption. In other words: sacrifice or efficiency.

Pushing the first will get you blowback and very little net gain, in my humble opinion. The second is a gold mine. People don't really understand yet that quality of life and resource consumption are not tightly linked. Plenty of European countries -- and California! -- have per capita consumption lower than the American average and quality of life just as high. With concerted effort, we could slash our resource consumption dramatically and still be perfectly comfortable.

Now, as an addendum: there are plenty of behavior changes I'd like to encourage -- riding bikes, living in dense, walkable cities, growing food or joining a community supported agriculture program, etc. But I don't think of those things as sacrifice, or as "less." They are more: more exercise, more community, more health. The point to make to Americans is that we can improve our quality of life and reduce our ecological footprint simultaneously. Nobody has to shiver in the dark.

Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund

I'm with David: the best way to look at energy efficiency is not as a reduction, but as an increase in supply. It's a new source of power all by itself.

It's also one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to begin reducing global warming pollution, particularly in one of the sectors highlighted here - residential and commercial buildings.

Greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2) from buildings and the appliances in them are expected to rise by roughly 50 percent by 2030. But according to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company the sector offers significant low-cost opportunities to reduce consumption and pollution, primarily because residential and commercial buildings are relatively inefficient, and projected growth provides a lot of opportunities to build in efficient technologies during initial construction (which is cheaper than retrofitting).

McKinsey says pursuing efficiency options in the sector could reduce emissions by 710 megatons to as much as 870 megatons by 2030 - the largest pool of "negative-cost" reduction opportunities among the options it looked at across the economy. Among them are advanced lighting, increased efficiency and reduced stand-by loss in electronics, more efficient HVAC equipment, combined heat and power, building shells, and improved residential water heaters.

But McKinsey also warns that the longer we wait to put the right policies in place, and from EDF's perspective that's a mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas pollution, the more of those low-cost options will slip away. They are "time perishable."

Timothy B. Hurst

I second Dave's response, especially his critique of environmental prostelytizing. Being preachy fuels the fires of resentment towards environmentalists - they come off as elitist. It would be absurd to bad-mouth consumption altogether. A strictly anti-materialist position does not work: the fact of the matter is, people need things. I also support Dave's effort to reframe individual environmental behavior as smart rather than sacrificial. As my colleague Licia Peck, a PhD student in politics at UC Santa Cruz says, "environmental sacrifice isn't."

Dave frames the possible remedies for American over-consumption as improvements in efficiency and changes in individual behavior. All I would like to add is that there is an important third consideration that these solutions do not adequately address; distribution. Regardless of how much we tout making green choices and improvements in efficiency, vast economic disparities also explain global patterns of resource (mis)use.

The struggles to deploy and fully equip the joint UN-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) are well-documented and oft commented-upon. Less frequently does one hear of what the peacekeeping force is doing to protect the people of Darfur. Yesterday, the mission's representative, Rodolphe Adada, took to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to give readers a sense of what peacekeeping on the ground actually looks like.

Writing from Al Fasher, Darfur, Adada confidently assures the world that, despite the international community's slow response in providing equipment and personnel, "We are not sitting on our hands waiting for the troops and material to arrive."

Every day our blue-helmeted peacekeepers carry out patrols right across Darfur, an area the size of Texas. They defend thousands of innocent Darfurians, such as women from the camps gathering firewood to cook meals for their families. One of the most disgusting aspects of this conflict has been the widespread rape of women by armed thugs on all sides. Unamid is carrying out more and more night patrols to increase this protection around the clock.

Critics say we are hunkered down, yet the facts speak for themselves: In January, when our mission began, we carried out 271 patrols. Last month, it was 644, or more than 20 a day.

Our peacekeepers intervene on a daily basis across the length and breadth of Darfur to calm tensions arising from cattle losses, water distribution and land ownership - issues at the heart of the conflict. These missions are critical, successful and welcomed by Darfurians, but they do not make international headlines.

Some of our more impassioned critics call on us to intervene more forcefully. I would remind them that Unamid is a peacekeeping force. We are here to keep a peace that doesn't exist. It is the duty of the belligerents - and there are many - to make peace. As Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, our force commander, stated recently, even if we were at full deployment our peacekeepers are not here to stand between rival armies and militias engaged in full-scale combat.

Adada's last point bears remembering. Peacekeepers are deployed to ensure compliance with an existing ceasefire, something that does not exist in Darfur right now. They are not armies, and are not meant to square off against opposing armies. Given the unwillingness of both sides of Darfur's conflict to commit to a meaningful peace accord, as well as the inability of Member States to furnish UNAMID with what it needs, Adada's peacekeepers are doing the best they can.

Read the whole op-ed here.

To mark the International Day In Support of Victims of Torture, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called on all UN member states to accede to the Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol, which allows international visits to places of detention. From the UN News Center:

"[t]he foundation of international human rights law strictly prohibits torture "under any and all circumstances. And yet, 60 years since the adoption of the Declaration, torture persists, devastating millions of victims and their families," he said, adding that the Day was "a call to speak out and take action on their behalf and against all those who commit torture and all forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

Over at his new digs at FireDogLake, Spencer Ackerman marks the day with a video of Amnesty International's protest on the National Mall.

It appears that yesterday's Guardian Op-ed, in which Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged the international community to back up their "words of indignation...by the moral rectitude of military force," was something of a fraud. In a letter the editor Tsvangirai denies authorship of the piece.

An article that appeared in my name, published in the Guardian (Why I am not running, June 25), did not reflect my position or opinions regarding solutions to the Zimbabwean crisis. Although the Guardian was given assurances from credible sources that I had approved the article this was not the case.

By way of clarification I would like to state the following: I am not advocating military intervention in Zimbabwe by the UN or any other organisation.

This is thoroughly bizarre coming from the Guardian, which has taken down the original op-ed with out explanation. In the meantime, yesterday's post on the implications of UN intervention in Zimbabwe has been updated.

Jackie Chan may be best known for employing his martial arts prowess in Hollywood, but, in his role as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, he is also bringing it to places like Dili, East Timor.

Screen kung fu legend Jackie Chan was greeted by thousands of cheering East Timorese on Wednesday in a UN goodwill visit to promote peace in the young and impoverished nation.

Demonstrating new moves on stage in front of 5,000 martial arts fans at Dili's national stadium, Chan called on Timorese youth to avoid drugs and violence.

East Timor's violent history, young population, and overwhelmingly scarcity of jobs make for a volatile combination. Chan's message will likely resonate with the many East Timorese interested in martial arts and will hopefully convince many youths who may have been tempted to join gangs that the sport is meant to be used in a more positive, helpful way. And as this BBC report notes, the impact of a celebrity visit can only be realized when coupled with a more concerted effort to create valuable jobs in the country.

Our collaboration with Grist continues today with a discussion of the top user-rated idea on On Day One: 'Eat the View,' by Roger Doiron . This idea was so popular, it even found its way into the the New York Times.

Here is what he suggests:

Announce plans for a food garden on the White House lawn, making one of the White House's eight gardeners responsible for it, with part of produce going to the White House kitchen and the rest to a local food pantry. The White House is "America's House" and should set an example. The new President would not be breaking with tradition, but returning to it (the White House has had vegetable gardens before) and showing how we can meet global challenges such as climate change and food security.

Kate Sheppard, David Roberts, and Timothy B. Hurst respond below the fold.

Kate Sheppard

Wow, I had no idea that the White House had eight gardeners. The yard isn't even that big ... it seems like one could work on a vegetable garden. I like this idea because it's not something totally new -- the White House used to have a vegetable garden. It might be nice messaging to the public that we haven't always lived in a world with a globalized food stream, a place where you can get bananas from Nicaragua cheaper than you can apples from Washington. It would be nice if this were something that people visited on their tours of the White House, and if it were used as a conversation starter about local foods and their benefit for planetary and personal health.

I like what the questioner had to say in the Times article: "This would not be a quaint little garden for the White House chef. I have something fairly ambitious in mind, that would make a powerful political statement -- a garden large enough to cover most of what the White House needs, with an overflow to a local food pantry."

I grew up on a family farm, so local, fresh food is something I think that more people should have greater opportunity to access. Unfortunately, many people don't have that privilege. I don't have any expectations that everyone in the country (or many, for that matter) are going to go out and start their own garden just because the White House has one. I think that idea seems a little too quaint for most Americans. This is part of the reason I like the way the questioner frames it. This shouldn't be about a quaint little garden patch, but about a real demonstration that our food source is important, and growing local is possible. I also like the idea of giving a portion to a local food bank -- I think it's important that we link this climate and food initiative to greater ideas about public service, justice, community building, and responsibility to those around us.

David Roberts

This really is a fantastic idea, on a number of levels.

First of all, lawns are an environmental nightmare. Lawns are America's single largest irrigated crop. They cover over 49,000 square miles, three times the area covered by corn, the next biggest crop. (By contrast, concentrated solar power plants covering an area 1/6 that size could provide 100% of U.S. electricity.) They drink up between 30 and 60 percent of urban freshwater and are doused with more than $5 billion in fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and $700 million in synthetic pesticides a year (numbers as of 1993; hard to find anything more recent, but we can assume those numbers have gotten much larger via the housing boom). Most of the water and fertilizers are wasted through poor doseage and timing; both wash into overburdened sewage systems. America's lawnmowers burn 800 million gallons (and spill more than an Exxon Valdez's worth) of gas a year in horribly inefficient engines, producing up to 5% of total U.S. air pollution.

So anything that can replace lawns -- drought resistant landscaping, stones or gravel, or, yes, a food garden -- is a blessing. For the White House to explicitly reject lawn would be epochal.

Secondly, as Kate said, it could be a great model for how to produce local, organic, fresh food. There's enough space on the White House grounds to generate quite a bit; it could be used to feed the staff, visiting heads of state, or best of all, visitors. Imagine if the wide, sterile, and now unused road in front of the White House hosted a farmers market where food grown on the grounds was sold to tourists. Dreamy.

And while we're dreaming, why don't we put those solar panels back up on the roof from whence Reagan tore them down? And let's throw a green roof up there while we're at it. Might as well do a full efficiency retrofit too. Oh hell, just take it off grid!

I'm told someone applying to live there wants to bring us change we can believe in. Well, Ghandi said you should be the change you hope for in the world. Show, don't tell.

Timothy B. Hurst

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I am an avid vegetable gardener, and have maintained one, or helped to maintain one, for pretty much my entire life (excluding the seven years I lived at 10,000 ft above sea level). The garden is where I go in the morning, and on breaks from reading and writing about environmental politics throughout the day. It is an unbelievable way to focus my thoughts about the serious environmental issues of today that often get lost and scrambled from hours of staring at this very computer screen. I am not saying that our next president should be spending hours on his hands and knees pulling stubborn bindweed from the strawberry patch, but the image of a garden on the White House lawn, and the image of a President in that garden could do unbelievable things for home-gardening, community gardens, family and neighborhood cohesiveness, economic well-being, and our collective health.

Presidents have always been able to incorporate their various fits of decorative and recreational whimsy into the Pennsylvania Avenue address. Thomas Jefferson's water closets he built in the upper floor to replace the outdoor privy. Jefferson also created a wilderness museum in the Entrance Hall, with mounted animals and Indian artifacts.

Bowling lanes were first built in the White House as a birthday gift for President Truman in 1947. As it turned out, Truman didn't care for bowling himself, but allowed staff to start a league. But in 1969, President and Mrs. Nixon, both avid bowlers, had a new one-lane bowling alley built.

There have also been theaters built, basketball courts created, horseshoe pits dug, and the avid swimmer President Ford installed a swimming pool. But much like the solar panels Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House (which were later torn down by Ronald Reagan within months of his moving into the residence), a vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House could make the type of political statement that the other recreational additions could not.

For a government that has been so consistently obdurate -- and so unreservedly vocal -- in its refusal to comply with ICC indictments of two of its nationals, any openness toward the Court's work in Sudan understandably comes as a surprise:

The Sudanese government considered turning over two suspects accused of war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a senior Sudanese official told Sudan Tribune today.

The official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said that the leadership of the National Congress Party (NCP) "is getting very nervous over the upcoming announcement by the ICC of new suspects".

...

According to the official, [NCP foreign minister Ali] Karti made a presentation to the NCP leadership in which he outlined the "difficult position" the government will be in if senior officials are charged by the world court of war crimes.

Karti recommended that Haroun and Kushayb being extradited to the Hague "as a protection from further indictments" the official said.

Just three days ago, President Bashir issued this stern rebuke to the prospects of working with the ICC: "I swear to god, I swear to god, I swear to god we will not hand over any Sudanese to the International Court." Previously, Sudan's ambassador to the UN responded to the ICC indictments of his countrymen by asserting that the ICC Chief Prosecutor should himself "be tried in court."

Such aggressive bluster aside, though, the internal machinations of Sudan's ruling cabal seem to indicate that President Bashir and others may be moving toward the more "moderate" camp of Sudanese politicians. If this report is accurate, then it will represent a strong vindication of the Chief Prosecutor's strategy.

Some commentators and analysts have criticized the Chief Prosecutor's suggestion that "the entire state apparatus" of Sudan is guilty of war crimes, arguing that his threat to target government officials higher up the food chain may only increase the regime's stubbornness and impede peace-making and humanitarian efforts. The purpose of making such ambitious proclamations, though, should be analyzed not just as a resolutely ideological pursuit for justice -- which is of course a worthwhile goal -- but also as practical attempts to secure compliance on the no-less-worthy "smaller fish" that the Court is pursuing. If Sudanese leaders feel that giving up the already-indicted suspects will spare them from prosecution, then they will be more likely to comply with the ICC, and, hopefully, to decrease their obstruction of peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts.

The Sudanese government can deny cooperation with the ICC as fervently as it wants, but if this meeting within Sudan's inner ruling circle is any indication, then this prong of the ICC's strategy seems to be working.

(Photo credit: Antony Njuguna/Reuters)

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai writes a powerful op-ed in the Guardian today extolling the international community to intervene in Zimbabwe.

[w]e need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns...

Intervention is a loaded concept in today's world, of course. Yet, despite the difficulties inherent in certain high-profile interventions, decisions not to intervene have created similarly dire consequences. The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong. It is one in which the international community must become more than a moral participant. It must become mobilised.

Even if the cause is just, the big question here is who should intervene? Tsvangirai envisions a UN peacekeeping force, and that very well may be an option down the road. But for now, it is important to keep in mind that the United Nations has no standing peacekeeping force ready to be deployed at the drop of a hat. So far, member states have not yet made that kind of investment in UN peacekeeping, so as a result, UN peacekeeping does not have capacity simply waiting to be deployed.

That said, the Security Council could very well approve the intervention of a multi-national force operating under Chapter VII authority. Eventually, that force might transition to a standard UN peacekeeping mission. This was the model used for East Timor; in 1999 the Council authorized an Australian-led multi-