SALON EVENT – President Obama’s Energy Plan
Tuesday, July 21, 7pm
Venue:
Norwood Club, New York

Introduced by Professor James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting and Innovation, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK and coauthor of Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation

Rather than disputing the nature and extent of climate change Professor Woudhuysen will analyze humankind’s response to it. Why have we so far failed to deliver an intelligent response to the problem?

Statement from Professor Woudhuysen:

“In L’Aquila, Italy, China’s Hu Jintao had to leave the G8 summit to try to fix unrest back home. But the Summit’s commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 would have been unconvincing even if Hu had stayed the course. Nobody has yet found computer models that can correctly predict the world economy for next week, let alone 41 years away.

“Obama’s recent Bill to deal with climate change, running to 1300 pages and passed by the slenderest of majorities, is equally unconvincing. His central, market-based ‘cap and trade’ mechanism, designed to penalize emissions, will be regulated by no fewer than three different federal authorities. Based,
bizarrely, on the European Union’s torrid experience with its Emissions Trading System, Obama predicates his scheme on a price per ton of CO2 of $13 in 2012 – a triumph of capitalist ‘hope’ over sober rationality. Likewise, his plans for one million plug-in hybrid vehicles will do little for America’s fleet of 240 million cars, minivans and pick-up trucks.

“In March, Obama proposed that the US become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. Again he lacks realism. With the Pickens Plan for wind turbines cancelled for Texas, leadership in wind and solar power has already been ceded to Beijing – quite decisively, and despite the suits heading the Chinese Communist Party.

“Unlike China, Obama is ambivalent about nuclear power and indecisive about cleaning up coal – not least, with Carbon Capture and Storage. Similarly, the G8’s refusal to believe that human societies can adapt to temperature rises higher than 2 degrees reveals a fashionable alarmism and, just as zeitgeisty, an underestimation of mankind’s capabilities. But one can be both hopeful and realistic in forecasting that, by 2050, millions of Chinese and Indian engineers will have developed technologies to bring cheap, forget-about-it energy to billions – and, in the process, technologies both to check and adapt to global warming.”

Other readings

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html?_r=1
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/energy_and_environment/
http://www.pddnet.com/news-obama_biden-new-energy-for-america-plan-061609/
http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=2&storyid=18736
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/markets-mainmenu-45/1221-obamas-energy-plan

Introduced by Tama Starr

Saturday, May 30, 2009, 3pm
The beloved, bestselling international author of The Alchemist returns with another haunting novel—a thrilling journey into our constant fascination with the worlds of fame, fortune, and celebrity.

A profound meditation on personal power and innocent dreams that are manipulated or undone by success, The Winner Stands Alone is set in the exciting worlds of fashion and cinema. Taking place over the course of twenty-four hours during the Cannes Film Festival, it is the story of Igor, a successful, driven Russian entrepreneur who will go to the darkest lengths to reclaim a lost love—his ex-wife, Ewa. Believing that his life with Ewa was divinely ordained, Igor once told her that he would destroy whole worlds to get her back. The conflict between an individual evil force and society emerges, and as the novel unfolds, morality is derailed.

Meet the players and poseurs behind the scenes at Cannes—the “Super Class” of producers, actors, designers, and supermodels, as well as the aspiring starlets, has-been stars, and jaded hangers-on. Adroitly interweaving the characters’ stories, Paulo Coelho uses his twelfth novel to paint an engrossing picture of a world overrun by glamour and excess, and shows us the possibly dire consequences of our obsession with fame.

Introduced by Dr. Alex Standish

Introduce by Emily Gibbons

Saturday, January 31, 2009, 3pm

Excerpt of review by Publishers Weekly: “Set of eight stories… In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen’s reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist.

An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri’s stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals.”