Our preoccupation with the antics of the nationalistic extremists and the divisive behaviour of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is still being fed by their increasingly provocative behaviour. A couple of days ago Kaczynski led a torchlight procession to the still-in-place wooden cross behind its concrete barriers outside the presidential palace in Warsaw. There he gave what was little short of an incitement to hatred speech(MPs are immune from prosecution for this) saying that Poland was now ‘a condominium of Germany and Russia’, that the new president was illegally elected by means of cooking the results, that he and Tusk the Prime Minister should ‘disappear’ and that they were responsible for the Smolensk disaster along with the Russians because his brother had to arrange his own flight instead of joining the official event to commemorate the Katyn massacre. A fortnight earlier on 31 August, he was publically embarrassed when Lech Walesa refused to attend the 30th Anniversary commemoration of the Solidarity strike. Walesa considers the current incarnation of Solidarity as too political, dominated as it is by PiS and anti-liberal members. “I don’t intend to attend. We struggled and we achieved democracy. So then I proposed that Solidarity finishes with politics,” he said. “But it continues to be political, instead of occupying itself with trade union issues.” One of the original Solidarity women signatories of the ‘round table agreement’ (at that time a tram-driver) that led to the first semi-open election in 1980 went up to the conference stage, took to the microphone and lambasted Jaroslaw (not a signatory) for his recent provocative behaviour and expressed her dismay at his colleagues in the audience who had heckled the Prime Minister as he spoke at the event.
Fortunately splits are beginning to appear in the PiS party of Kaczynski as the more reasonable members see the lurch into extremism as potentially alienating the younger electorate in particular.
Marek Migalski, a Law and Justice MEP, criticised the party leader for being too combative and warning him that his presence as leader could be damaging PiS’s election prospects. “Without you we won’t survive, [yet] but with you we won’t win,” wrote the MEP in a rare and public sign of discontent with the Mr Kaczynski, who has long dominated the party. His aggressive and abrasive politics that have long been a hallmark of PiS have now, for some in the party, become a liability rather than a bonus. Political commentators have said that PiS could benefit from a more moderate face to present it as a party of consensus and conciliation. Reformists in PiS ranks are also aware of the need to expand its pool of voters. In the past Mr Kaczynski has appealed to a strong core of older and conservative voters, often located in rural areas. While this has provided PiS with a bedrock of support, it has also meant the party has struggled to attract new and younger voters. But sources close to PiS claim that Mr Kaczynski plans to remain in control, opting for a long-term strategy. Writing off next year’s elections as unwinnable he will, apparently, focus on winning those in six years’ time.
He has begun to remove from their responsibilities a few of these dissenting voices, including the lady who master-minded his ‘makeover’ as a consensus builder during the presidential election campaign that quickly evaporated. Dorota sees worrying signs of demagogic potential and a cult of Kaczynski who is claiming that PiS and the church must ‘win back Poland’ at all costs. He is courting the extremists and she fears that the threatening language that he is using may encourage hotheads to dangerous levels. It is to be hoped that the economy remains reasonably robust for some time for large-scale unemployment could exacerbate the divisions that are being fomented in the country by this increasingly outrageous political behaviour.
In a similar vein that exposes the intolerant illiberal values of many still in this country, the following report appeared in the New Warsaw Express recently:
A gay rights group has slammed a school text book for suggesting that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured. Intended for high-school pupils, the book, entitled “On the Road to Adulthood”, drew criticism from Association of Diversity owing to its apparent old-fashioned and Catholic view on homosexuality. “(The book) remains silent on the problems of homophobia and discrimination and presents the theory that homosexuality is something one can reject and that one can return to ‘normality’,” said Przemek Szczeplocki, a spokesman from the association. “This kind of attitude deepens the lack of acceptance for gays, lesbians and bisexuals and perpetuates a belief that some sexual orientations are weird, and this is hurtful,” he said about the book intended for sex education classes. He added that he considered the book to be based on a “pseudo science” in which everyone is born heterosexual, and only become gay from either watching too much pornography or opting for it as a lifestyle choice. The book, Mr Szczeplocki claimed, also said that homosexuality was reversible.
The book added fuel to the debate in Poland about homosexuality between a growing liberal voice and conservative Catholics, who remain opposed to what they regard as the insidious and unwelcome advance of relaxed attitudes towards homosexuality from western Europe. Controversies over the portrayal of sexuality or unusual sexual preferences in school books are nothing new to Poland. A few years ago one book generated public attention after it printed an article on how some men like to dress up as women next to a picture of a kilted Scotsman.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Looking for something positive from the Polish disaster
This inspiring article The Glory of Poland by Roger Cohen appeared in today’s New York Times.
“NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn. My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:
“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”
Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.
“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”
Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”
The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.
I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.
It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Ask the Poles. They know.”
An update from a less lofty perspective - the party of the dead President is already moving to make his twin brother a candidate for the next presidential election that will be held within the next 60 days. In my view this would be a backward move for the country in terms of its progress towards liberal modernity and improved international relations. Jaroslaw Kaczynski was the leader of the PIS (Law & Justice) party who, while PM, effectively manoeuvred his brother into power. He was always a tougher and more aggressive figure than his twin and is seen as the real Machiavellian power of the nationalistic and populist PIS party. The party will now win a populist surge of emotional support unrelated to their policies, not only from the sympathy and shock over Lech and his wife's tragic death but also because the majority of the dead members of parliament in the entourage were PIS members personally invited to travel with the President. Lech Kaczynski who notably failed to rise above party political preferences once he assumed presidential office.
Fingers crossed for the warming of Russo-Polish relations to which Cohen’s article refers. This optimistic momentum will be curtailed if another Kaczynski attains presidential office. He would be even less of a 'statesman' than his brother has been and would likely step up the simmering conflict with the Prime Minister that has marred his brother's term in office as well as renewing the animosity towards Russia.
The body of Mrs Kaczynski will be returned in state today with similar ceremony and TV coverage as her husband's received. Hundreds of thousands of people are still out on the streets in Warsaw paying their shocked tributes by lighting their candles and making mountains of flowers. Two marches will take place in Katowice today, one organised by the Institute of National Remembrance whose director died in the tragedy. There are no adverts on TV channels, just emotion-provoking images of the presidential couple, accompanied by uplifting music. It is a remarkable example of media's power to massage the masses and fan the emotions. There is a level of engagement here that is well beyond politics and is deeply tied to a sense of national, even tribal identity with one's leader(s), something perhaps encoded by evolution into our psyches.
“NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn. My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:
“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”
Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.
“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”
Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”
The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.
I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.
It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Ask the Poles. They know.”
An update from a less lofty perspective - the party of the dead President is already moving to make his twin brother a candidate for the next presidential election that will be held within the next 60 days. In my view this would be a backward move for the country in terms of its progress towards liberal modernity and improved international relations. Jaroslaw Kaczynski was the leader of the PIS (Law & Justice) party who, while PM, effectively manoeuvred his brother into power. He was always a tougher and more aggressive figure than his twin and is seen as the real Machiavellian power of the nationalistic and populist PIS party. The party will now win a populist surge of emotional support unrelated to their policies, not only from the sympathy and shock over Lech and his wife's tragic death but also because the majority of the dead members of parliament in the entourage were PIS members personally invited to travel with the President. Lech Kaczynski who notably failed to rise above party political preferences once he assumed presidential office.
Fingers crossed for the warming of Russo-Polish relations to which Cohen’s article refers. This optimistic momentum will be curtailed if another Kaczynski attains presidential office. He would be even less of a 'statesman' than his brother has been and would likely step up the simmering conflict with the Prime Minister that has marred his brother's term in office as well as renewing the animosity towards Russia.
The body of Mrs Kaczynski will be returned in state today with similar ceremony and TV coverage as her husband's received. Hundreds of thousands of people are still out on the streets in Warsaw paying their shocked tributes by lighting their candles and making mountains of flowers. Two marches will take place in Katowice today, one organised by the Institute of National Remembrance whose director died in the tragedy. There are no adverts on TV channels, just emotion-provoking images of the presidential couple, accompanied by uplifting music. It is a remarkable example of media's power to massage the masses and fan the emotions. There is a level of engagement here that is well beyond politics and is deeply tied to a sense of national, even tribal identity with one's leader(s), something perhaps encoded by evolution into our psyches.
The latest Polish tragedy
We awoke on Saturday 10 April to hear on the news an inconclusive report of an air crash near Smolensk. It took a little time to establish that the 20-year old Russian-built plane carrying the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski and his entourage was the plane that has crashed and that all 96 on board were killed. There were initially reports of four gravely wounded passengers but these were later discounted. The enormity of the loss to the nation’s cadre of leaders was revealed only gradually, as it was not clear that the passenger list matched the actual travellers. The invitation to travel with the President’s separately arranged trip to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre was his private initiative and normal ticketing and check-in procedures are not followed on such occasions. The first list was only of those invited. There is an unpleasant history of conflict between the President and the Prime Minister about attending international events and Kaczynski had foregone the opportunity to attend the official international ceremony with PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin two days before. In addition to his disagreements with the Polish Prime Minister, arch-nationalist Kaczynski was disinclined to be seen with Putin and had taken no part in Tusk’s move to rebuild the frosty post-World War II relations with Russia. Putin had taken a major step in acknowledging that it was the Soviets and not the Nazis who had murdered 22000 Polish officers (although without giving a formal apology) and this seemed to herald a better and more open relationship between the two countries.
It is a terribly dark irony that this peacetime disaster happened as a consequence of that much greater wartime tragedy so long ago. "This is so very much like Katyn, where our head was cut off," said former President Lech Walesa. “It could only happen to Poland” said another commentator, reflecting the pessimism arising from the tragic history of this vulnerable nation. Also adding to the irony is the fact that the abrasive and largely unpopular president who was avoiding normal international courtesies to organise his own Polish-only commemoration at Katyn has now been elevated to the status of a national martyr. The tragic accident, possibly an act of Polish aviational bravura, took the lives of the top military commanders, over 30 members of the parliament, the head of the national bank and so many other key people belonging to the ruling class. Russian investigators suspect pilot error caused the crash. They say the pilots were warned that they were flying too low just before the plane clipped tree-tops in heavy fog, as it was coming in to land.
Here are some of the victims:
National leaders - President Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria; Ryszard Kaczorowski Former President-in-exile
Top civil servant - Slawomir Skrzypek National Bank of Poland chairman
Other politicians - Wladyslaw Stasiak chief of the president's chancellery; Aleksander Szczyglo chief of the National Security Office; Jerzy Szmajdzinski deputy speaker of the lower house Andrzej Kremer Foreign Ministry's undersecretary of state Stanislaw Komorowski deputy minister of national defence Przemyslaw Gosiewski Law and Justice party deputy chair
Military figures - Franciszek Gagor chief of the general staff; Andrzej Blasik head of the air force; Andrzej Karweta head of the navy; Tadeusz Buk land forces commander; Aleksander Szczyglo head of the National Security Office
Cultural figures - Andrzej Przewoznik head of Poland's Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites; Tomasz Merta chief historical conservator
No doubt after the many upcoming funerals questions will be asked about the policy of placing so many top people on a single airplane for a day trip to a ceremonial event. It is, of course, hard to refuse a personal invitation from the President himself, especially when the event commemorates a national tragedy, only unwittingly to become another national tragedy.
We are now in a 7-day period of national mourning. All shops were closed on Sunday and national TV has stopped all entertainment programmes to give 24 hour coverage of the event and its consequences. Canal +, the private subscription channel on which I see live UK Premiership soccer games, ran the weekend matches without the commentary in Polish. The return of the president’s body, one of only 24 yet to be identified, was covered and repeated endlessly on TV. Some of the images are available on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8614296.stm including a poignant picture of Jaroslaw Zaczynski, the President’s twin brother, kneeling by the coffin after it landed on Polish territory. The cortege reminded me of that of Princess Diana’s, as did the throwing of flowers by the masses of people along the route as it passed.
One possible silver lining to this unprecedented cloud on Poland’s peacetime history is pointed to in this BBC News website item:
‘The Russian authorities have announced that they will meet all of the expenses of the Polish relatives coming to Moscow, and provide counselling alongside Polish colleagues. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew to Smolensk just hours after the crash and sought to console his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk. Russia's handling of the tragedy has won some admiration in Poland. Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland's National Security Bureau and one of the few Kaczynski aides not to have been on Saturday's ill-fated flight, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We did not expect this gentle, kind approach, this personal involvement from Putin. "Naturally it will have a positive impact on the relationship between our countries." Poland's ambassador to Russia, Jerzy Bahr, told Polish TV: "We can sense Russian solidarity at every step of the way."
Russians have also been deeply moved by this extraordinary tragedy. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday an official day of mourning with flags flying at half mast and television channels cancelling all entertainment programmes. Large numbers of flowers have been laid outside the Polish embassy In Moscow. It is just one of many indications of how the disaster on Saturday may ultimately help Russia and Poland bring to an end the hostility which has characterised their relations for so long’.
Sadly Jaroslaw Kaczynski did not contribute to this momentum when he refused the offer of PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin to accompany him in laying down a wreath to the dead when he visited Moscow to identify his brother’s body. And predictably, the conspiracy theorists are coming out of the woodwork to construct fantasies about the crash being a Russian plot. Der Spiegel the German newspaper has already speculated the Jaroslaw could become the next president on a wave of emotional voting when Parliamentary Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski calls for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. The people with whom we normally engage, sincerely hope that this does not happen. But this is a classic example of the non-linearity and unpredictability of how our human systems work. Poland will adapt and, as with Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11 we will always remember where we were on first hearing of that awful day of national loss.
It is a terribly dark irony that this peacetime disaster happened as a consequence of that much greater wartime tragedy so long ago. "This is so very much like Katyn, where our head was cut off," said former President Lech Walesa. “It could only happen to Poland” said another commentator, reflecting the pessimism arising from the tragic history of this vulnerable nation. Also adding to the irony is the fact that the abrasive and largely unpopular president who was avoiding normal international courtesies to organise his own Polish-only commemoration at Katyn has now been elevated to the status of a national martyr. The tragic accident, possibly an act of Polish aviational bravura, took the lives of the top military commanders, over 30 members of the parliament, the head of the national bank and so many other key people belonging to the ruling class. Russian investigators suspect pilot error caused the crash. They say the pilots were warned that they were flying too low just before the plane clipped tree-tops in heavy fog, as it was coming in to land.
Here are some of the victims:
National leaders - President Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria; Ryszard Kaczorowski Former President-in-exile
Top civil servant - Slawomir Skrzypek National Bank of Poland chairman
Other politicians - Wladyslaw Stasiak chief of the president's chancellery; Aleksander Szczyglo chief of the National Security Office; Jerzy Szmajdzinski deputy speaker of the lower house Andrzej Kremer Foreign Ministry's undersecretary of state Stanislaw Komorowski deputy minister of national defence Przemyslaw Gosiewski Law and Justice party deputy chair
Military figures - Franciszek Gagor chief of the general staff; Andrzej Blasik head of the air force; Andrzej Karweta head of the navy; Tadeusz Buk land forces commander; Aleksander Szczyglo head of the National Security Office
Cultural figures - Andrzej Przewoznik head of Poland's Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites; Tomasz Merta chief historical conservator
No doubt after the many upcoming funerals questions will be asked about the policy of placing so many top people on a single airplane for a day trip to a ceremonial event. It is, of course, hard to refuse a personal invitation from the President himself, especially when the event commemorates a national tragedy, only unwittingly to become another national tragedy.
We are now in a 7-day period of national mourning. All shops were closed on Sunday and national TV has stopped all entertainment programmes to give 24 hour coverage of the event and its consequences. Canal +, the private subscription channel on which I see live UK Premiership soccer games, ran the weekend matches without the commentary in Polish. The return of the president’s body, one of only 24 yet to be identified, was covered and repeated endlessly on TV. Some of the images are available on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8614296.stm including a poignant picture of Jaroslaw Zaczynski, the President’s twin brother, kneeling by the coffin after it landed on Polish territory. The cortege reminded me of that of Princess Diana’s, as did the throwing of flowers by the masses of people along the route as it passed.
One possible silver lining to this unprecedented cloud on Poland’s peacetime history is pointed to in this BBC News website item:
‘The Russian authorities have announced that they will meet all of the expenses of the Polish relatives coming to Moscow, and provide counselling alongside Polish colleagues. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew to Smolensk just hours after the crash and sought to console his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk. Russia's handling of the tragedy has won some admiration in Poland. Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland's National Security Bureau and one of the few Kaczynski aides not to have been on Saturday's ill-fated flight, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We did not expect this gentle, kind approach, this personal involvement from Putin. "Naturally it will have a positive impact on the relationship between our countries." Poland's ambassador to Russia, Jerzy Bahr, told Polish TV: "We can sense Russian solidarity at every step of the way."
Russians have also been deeply moved by this extraordinary tragedy. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday an official day of mourning with flags flying at half mast and television channels cancelling all entertainment programmes. Large numbers of flowers have been laid outside the Polish embassy In Moscow. It is just one of many indications of how the disaster on Saturday may ultimately help Russia and Poland bring to an end the hostility which has characterised their relations for so long’.
Sadly Jaroslaw Kaczynski did not contribute to this momentum when he refused the offer of PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin to accompany him in laying down a wreath to the dead when he visited Moscow to identify his brother’s body. And predictably, the conspiracy theorists are coming out of the woodwork to construct fantasies about the crash being a Russian plot. Der Spiegel the German newspaper has already speculated the Jaroslaw could become the next president on a wave of emotional voting when Parliamentary Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski calls for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. The people with whom we normally engage, sincerely hope that this does not happen. But this is a classic example of the non-linearity and unpredictability of how our human systems work. Poland will adapt and, as with Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11 we will always remember where we were on first hearing of that awful day of national loss.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
History of ENIRDELM
As the 20th anniversary of our network in 2011 approaches, we are starting to compile a more detailed record of what we have achieved. ENIRDELM friends are invited to use this blog to send in any recollections they may have of conferences and networking activities during the last 19 years. Currently David Oldroyd is updating the list of conferences, themes and keynote speakers in order to place on the ENIRDELM web-site a fuller record than the one we have at present. The archive of newsletters on the web-site extends back only to April 2001, so any colleagues who have supplementary evidence of ENIRDELM (formerly ENIRDEM) and related activities might be able to fill out the achievements of our friendly network that we plan to celebrate next year. If you have any recollections, please send them to David or write them directly on this blog.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
February musings
The temperature has risen above zero Celsius for only a few short hours during the last month and today the line from the old carol “snow has fallen , snow on snow, sno-ow on snow” sums up our “deep mid-winter”. While the snow falls, the Polish economy rises:
While most of Europe fell into recession last year, Poland’s economy grew faster than expected, fuelled by domestic consumption, infrastructure spending and a slump in the zloty that helped buoy Polish exports. The Central Statistical Office reported on Tuesday that GDP rose by 1.7 percent in 2009, compared to 5 percent in 2008, higher than economists’ mean expectations.
This buoyancy spilled over into the World Economic Forum in Switzerland:
In a speech on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, National Bank of Poland head Slawomir Skrzypek explained that Poland could be prepared to begin the procedure for adopting the Euro by 2013 and that inflation would drop to a level allowed by the ERM-2 procedure as early as later this year. He noted that the country’s budget deficit and growing public debt remained the primary obstacle to Poland’s adoption of the EU common currency. Skrzypek also predicted that Poland’s GDP
would continue growing from the 1.7 percent rise for 2009 announced earlier in the day.
Joining the eurozone would not put an end to the ever-present indecisiveness about when to exchange my pension pounds for zloty. During my time here, the exchange rate has fluctuated from 7.08 to 3.98 PLN to the GBP (4.57 and falling today: I got 4.64 last week at my favourite money changing kiosk). Perhaps the amplitude of fluctuation would lessen for the GBP against the euro but the unpredictability would remain. The way we have resolved this is simply to change currencies when the need arises and subject ourselves to chance rather than trying to ‘play the currency market’. With the amounts we deploy, the aggregate amounts of gain and loss are not huge.
As the economy heals (though at what cost to the environment?) public health is also looking up and new health legislation will benefit the national exchequer at the same time:
Tough new anti-smoking legislation could inflict a painful financial blow on anybody lighting up in smoke-free places. Under new legislation being debated in parliament smokers will have to pay as much as PLN 500 if caught smoking in a no-smoking area. Five times the amount originally proposed.
“This will force smokers to conscientiously comply with the smoking bans,” argued Law and Justice’s (PiS) Boleslaw Piecha, head of the parliamentary health committee. The legislation reflects growing concern in Poland over the effects of passive smoking and could call time on Poland’s traditionally smoke-filled bars. But there was good news for bar and restaurant owners: the law excludes them from criminal responsibility if smokers flout the law on their premises. The only time they could feel the heat of financial retribution is when a minor lights up. Legislators are also pushing for a complete ban on smoking in bars, cafes and restaurants, similar to those enforced in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Smoking also faces being banned at railway stations and bus stops, and smoking compartments on trains will be axed. But debate still rages over whether to ban electronic, or e-cigarettes. Battery powered, emitting vaporized nicotine without the carcinogenic elements found in tobacco, e-cigarettes are touted as an effective means of quitting smoking.
Smoking in restaurants and cafes is still practised, though less evident than in bygone years, and it will be so much pleasanter and less of an aggravation to any grumpy old man tendencies if the legislation comes into force. A local bee-keeper probably had a better case for being grumpy but took it all very positively, as this report from my source for all the above extracts, the New Poland Express, describes:
A 76-year old man declared dead woke up, inside his own coffin. Jozef Guzy, a bee-keeper from Katowice, suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead upon the doctor’s arrival. But three hours later when his wife asked to see his body, it was found that he still had a pulse. “The undertaker saved my life. I am grateful and thank him very much. The first thing I’m going to do is give him a big pot of honey,” said Mr Guzy.
While most of Europe fell into recession last year, Poland’s economy grew faster than expected, fuelled by domestic consumption, infrastructure spending and a slump in the zloty that helped buoy Polish exports. The Central Statistical Office reported on Tuesday that GDP rose by 1.7 percent in 2009, compared to 5 percent in 2008, higher than economists’ mean expectations.
This buoyancy spilled over into the World Economic Forum in Switzerland:
In a speech on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, National Bank of Poland head Slawomir Skrzypek explained that Poland could be prepared to begin the procedure for adopting the Euro by 2013 and that inflation would drop to a level allowed by the ERM-2 procedure as early as later this year. He noted that the country’s budget deficit and growing public debt remained the primary obstacle to Poland’s adoption of the EU common currency. Skrzypek also predicted that Poland’s GDP
would continue growing from the 1.7 percent rise for 2009 announced earlier in the day.
Joining the eurozone would not put an end to the ever-present indecisiveness about when to exchange my pension pounds for zloty. During my time here, the exchange rate has fluctuated from 7.08 to 3.98 PLN to the GBP (4.57 and falling today: I got 4.64 last week at my favourite money changing kiosk). Perhaps the amplitude of fluctuation would lessen for the GBP against the euro but the unpredictability would remain. The way we have resolved this is simply to change currencies when the need arises and subject ourselves to chance rather than trying to ‘play the currency market’. With the amounts we deploy, the aggregate amounts of gain and loss are not huge.
As the economy heals (though at what cost to the environment?) public health is also looking up and new health legislation will benefit the national exchequer at the same time:
Tough new anti-smoking legislation could inflict a painful financial blow on anybody lighting up in smoke-free places. Under new legislation being debated in parliament smokers will have to pay as much as PLN 500 if caught smoking in a no-smoking area. Five times the amount originally proposed.
“This will force smokers to conscientiously comply with the smoking bans,” argued Law and Justice’s (PiS) Boleslaw Piecha, head of the parliamentary health committee. The legislation reflects growing concern in Poland over the effects of passive smoking and could call time on Poland’s traditionally smoke-filled bars. But there was good news for bar and restaurant owners: the law excludes them from criminal responsibility if smokers flout the law on their premises. The only time they could feel the heat of financial retribution is when a minor lights up. Legislators are also pushing for a complete ban on smoking in bars, cafes and restaurants, similar to those enforced in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Smoking also faces being banned at railway stations and bus stops, and smoking compartments on trains will be axed. But debate still rages over whether to ban electronic, or e-cigarettes. Battery powered, emitting vaporized nicotine without the carcinogenic elements found in tobacco, e-cigarettes are touted as an effective means of quitting smoking.
Smoking in restaurants and cafes is still practised, though less evident than in bygone years, and it will be so much pleasanter and less of an aggravation to any grumpy old man tendencies if the legislation comes into force. A local bee-keeper probably had a better case for being grumpy but took it all very positively, as this report from my source for all the above extracts, the New Poland Express, describes:
A 76-year old man declared dead woke up, inside his own coffin. Jozef Guzy, a bee-keeper from Katowice, suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead upon the doctor’s arrival. But three hours later when his wife asked to see his body, it was found that he still had a pulse. “The undertaker saved my life. I am grateful and thank him very much. The first thing I’m going to do is give him a big pot of honey,” said Mr Guzy.
Friday, 8 January 2010
A strange theft, pension cuts for former communists and competition on the railways
It was footprints left in the deep snow that assisted police in tracking down the perpetrators of the theft described below (BBC WEBSITE 06.01.10) from the museum about half an hour’s drive from Tychy:
“Polish police want to question two Swedes over the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" metal sign from the Nazis' notorious Auschwitz death camp. Polish prosecutors say one is believed to be the mastermind behind the theft, while the other helped with logistics in the 18 December operation. The sign was later found by police cut into three pieces, and five Polish men were arrested in the country's north. Polish authorities have said the theft was ordered by a foreigner. "We have asked Sweden to confirm the personal data of two people we suspect of participating in this crime and we want to question a third person from Sweden as well, but this person has no direct link with the case," Prosecutor Artur Wrona told a Krakow press conference on Wednesday. There has been speculation in Swedish and British media that the theft was ordered by neo-Nazi sympathisers, but there was no confirmation of this from Mr Wrona. He said the next steps would depend on the Swedes, from whom Polish authorities earlier requested assistance in the case.”
What on earth the commissioners of such a crime were planning to do with the trophy is a mystery that one day may become apparent.
The legacy o the communist era still manifests from time to time in Poland as the following article from the New Poland Express (08.01.10) illustrates:
“As of the beginning of this year, approximately 40,000 ex-communist secret service agents have been forced to take a significant cut in their pensions. The new law, originally set up in March last year, will drastically hit out at the privileges that former communist functionaries had come to expect. Until January 1, members of the Military Council of National Salvation (the military dictatorship set up in December 1981 to administer Poland during martial law) could expect to take home as much as PLN 8,500 a month in pensions. That figure has now been slashed to a much more modest sum of around PLN 4,000. Amongst the many ex-service men to be affected by the new law is General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, along with members of the National Salvation Council, helped to suppress and crush the Polish worker’s Solidarity movement almost 30 years ago. The controversial decision to alter the pension law comes after widespread anger that people like Jaruzelski and others who helped to prevent the democratic movement have been enjoying comfortable lives in their senior years. However, despite the large cuts, some are still not completely satisfied citing the fact that the new figure is still too excessive - given the fact that a retired doctor can expect as little as PLN 2,000 a month. In total, roughly 40,000 people were employed within the communist secret services until its eventual collapse in 1989. The severity of their pension cuts will depend on their rank when they eventually left their post and the length of time they served.”
As all of you will be aware, the attempted act of suicidal multiple-homicidal terrorism perpetrated on Christmas Day that revealed flaws in the intelligence gathering systems, as well as the inadequacy of screening at airports. The predictable knee-jerk response to the crotch-concealed but failed explosive device will involve further massive expense and disruption for travellers world-wide, possibly to little avail. I tend to agree with Stephen Murgatroyd’s blog on the topic:
“The attempt to detonate a bomb concealed in the underwear of a passenger on a flight to the US as it was passing through Canadian airspace has caused a new wave of security measures for flights into the US from world-wide destinations. Airport security staff now routinely pats down passengers and there is talk of the deployment of full body scanners. These measures are theatre – they would not have detected the explosives carried by the would-be bomber. The full body scanners will detect small metal objects, but will not detect plastics or liquids – the core components of the Christmas bomb. Patting a person down, particularly when it becomes a routine, is also unlikely to detect liquids in small quantities. The substance of the bomb was just three ounces of a dry powder distributed in the front of a pair of underpants. The “trigger” was a liquid held in a plastic syringe. The measures now in place show that the response to a threat is to increase the extent of theatre in the hope that the show of deterrence will be sufficient to deter terrorists. The evidence is that the terrorists just get smarter. Most security measures in place at airports are about appearances, not about the reality of preventing terrorism: the bomber passed through security at a major airport and was on a no-fly list”.
EU membership continues to bring potential benefits to Poles:
"Deutsche Bahn plans to open new rail lines to Poland’s largest business cities, including Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Krakow and Poznan. Opening of the routes by the German railway company was made possible by new EU rules aimed at increasing competition in rail travel. Deutsche Bahn still needs to obtain licenses to operate in Poland, which it should have by March. This would allow it to begin offering service later in 2010. Industry analysts say that the entry of Deutsch Bahn onto the Polish market should lead to increased competition and a drop in ticket prices, as the two companies vie for customers." New Poland Express (08.01.10)
“Polish police want to question two Swedes over the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" metal sign from the Nazis' notorious Auschwitz death camp. Polish prosecutors say one is believed to be the mastermind behind the theft, while the other helped with logistics in the 18 December operation. The sign was later found by police cut into three pieces, and five Polish men were arrested in the country's north. Polish authorities have said the theft was ordered by a foreigner. "We have asked Sweden to confirm the personal data of two people we suspect of participating in this crime and we want to question a third person from Sweden as well, but this person has no direct link with the case," Prosecutor Artur Wrona told a Krakow press conference on Wednesday. There has been speculation in Swedish and British media that the theft was ordered by neo-Nazi sympathisers, but there was no confirmation of this from Mr Wrona. He said the next steps would depend on the Swedes, from whom Polish authorities earlier requested assistance in the case.”
What on earth the commissioners of such a crime were planning to do with the trophy is a mystery that one day may become apparent.
The legacy o the communist era still manifests from time to time in Poland as the following article from the New Poland Express (08.01.10) illustrates:
“As of the beginning of this year, approximately 40,000 ex-communist secret service agents have been forced to take a significant cut in their pensions. The new law, originally set up in March last year, will drastically hit out at the privileges that former communist functionaries had come to expect. Until January 1, members of the Military Council of National Salvation (the military dictatorship set up in December 1981 to administer Poland during martial law) could expect to take home as much as PLN 8,500 a month in pensions. That figure has now been slashed to a much more modest sum of around PLN 4,000. Amongst the many ex-service men to be affected by the new law is General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, along with members of the National Salvation Council, helped to suppress and crush the Polish worker’s Solidarity movement almost 30 years ago. The controversial decision to alter the pension law comes after widespread anger that people like Jaruzelski and others who helped to prevent the democratic movement have been enjoying comfortable lives in their senior years. However, despite the large cuts, some are still not completely satisfied citing the fact that the new figure is still too excessive - given the fact that a retired doctor can expect as little as PLN 2,000 a month. In total, roughly 40,000 people were employed within the communist secret services until its eventual collapse in 1989. The severity of their pension cuts will depend on their rank when they eventually left their post and the length of time they served.”
As all of you will be aware, the attempted act of suicidal multiple-homicidal terrorism perpetrated on Christmas Day that revealed flaws in the intelligence gathering systems, as well as the inadequacy of screening at airports. The predictable knee-jerk response to the crotch-concealed but failed explosive device will involve further massive expense and disruption for travellers world-wide, possibly to little avail. I tend to agree with Stephen Murgatroyd’s blog on the topic:
“The attempt to detonate a bomb concealed in the underwear of a passenger on a flight to the US as it was passing through Canadian airspace has caused a new wave of security measures for flights into the US from world-wide destinations. Airport security staff now routinely pats down passengers and there is talk of the deployment of full body scanners. These measures are theatre – they would not have detected the explosives carried by the would-be bomber. The full body scanners will detect small metal objects, but will not detect plastics or liquids – the core components of the Christmas bomb. Patting a person down, particularly when it becomes a routine, is also unlikely to detect liquids in small quantities. The substance of the bomb was just three ounces of a dry powder distributed in the front of a pair of underpants. The “trigger” was a liquid held in a plastic syringe. The measures now in place show that the response to a threat is to increase the extent of theatre in the hope that the show of deterrence will be sufficient to deter terrorists. The evidence is that the terrorists just get smarter. Most security measures in place at airports are about appearances, not about the reality of preventing terrorism: the bomber passed through security at a major airport and was on a no-fly list”.
EU membership continues to bring potential benefits to Poles:
"Deutsche Bahn plans to open new rail lines to Poland’s largest business cities, including Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Krakow and Poznan. Opening of the routes by the German railway company was made possible by new EU rules aimed at increasing competition in rail travel. Deutsche Bahn still needs to obtain licenses to operate in Poland, which it should have by March. This would allow it to begin offering service later in 2010. Industry analysts say that the entry of Deutsch Bahn onto the Polish market should lead to increased competition and a drop in ticket prices, as the two companies vie for customers." New Poland Express (08.01.10)
Monday, 21 December 2009
Christmas letter from Poland
The Copenhagen Climate Summit has come and gone, not surprisingly with the failure of 192 nations to reach consensus. The New York Times today points out that this framework for trying to reach an agreement is no longer viable after 15 such assemblies and that the big nations who are the greatest contributors of CO2 will probably have to form their own binding agreement.
“The process has become unworkable, many said, because it has proved virtually impossible to forge consensus among the disparate blocs of countries fighting over environmental guilt, future costs and who should referee the results.“The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere,” said Michael Levi, who has been tracking the diplomatic effort for the Council on Foreign Relations. That elsewhere will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. It was these nations that Mr. Obama rallied in a series of dramatic encounters on Friday to finally ink a deal that starts a flow of financing for poor countries to adapt to climate change and sets up a system for major economies to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.
This smaller group of nations will meet periodically to tackle a narrower agenda of issues, like technology sharing or the merging of carbon trading markets, without the chaos and posturing of the United Nations process. A version of this already exists in the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has been a model of decorum and progress compared with what the world saw unfold at the climate talks.
The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains — measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide — between nations’ combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say”.
I have been following the excellent blog of a fellow Yorkshireman Stephen Murgatroyd now based in Alberta, Canada whom I met in Turin recently. http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com Stephen encouraged me to read Christopher Booker’s sceptical treatment of the issues that I mentioned in my last letter and his daily blog has offered a more balanced perspective than most mainstream journalist. He offers a perspective similar to that referred to in the NYT extract quoted above:
“So what now? As far as the UN is concerned, it is busy organizing the next summit for Mexico in December 2010. They will try again to secure an agreement on CO2 emission reductions, funds for developing nations, technology transfer and intellectual property and the verification and governance mechanisms required to enforce what they hope will be a legally binding agreement. Talks have failed, so let us have more talks is the mantra.Others, like Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptial environmentalist, are suggesting that its is time to change the fundamental focus for negotiations. Rather than focus on a global, legally binding agreement on CO2 emissions, he suggests that the focus should be on technology and mitigation efforts. Rather than live out the fantasy of “stopping climate change”, we should instead focus at the international level on dealing with the effects of climate change, while at the same time reducing emissions through national and bilateral agreements. He is not saying “don’t cut emissions”, but rather he is promoting the idea that climate change is something that has to be managed through investments in innovative technology and adaptation.This is an unpopular view, since many have bought the fantasy that action now can stop climate change. The religious belief in CO2 reduction as mankind’s only choice is now invested in so heavily, in more ways than one, that shifting the basis for the conversation is politically and economically difficult. Nonetheless, it is what it needs to happen if the world is to make progress”.
Perhaps this theme is not what one might expect in a Christmas letter but it reflects my own high priority for action in my retirement and follows in the wake of the disappointment, likely inevitable given the impossibly large assembly of nations, in Copenhagen. Global consensus, let alone governance, seems doomed to remain a pipedream of idealistic liberals. The topic is, however not unrelated to the family news with which I started this letter, nor is that family news unrelated to the festive season that is, after all, at time for celebrating a birth seen by huge numbers of humans as heralding (angels notwithstanding) hope for the future. The two awaited grandsons (whose safe deliveries would both be unlikely were we living among the ‘bottom billion’ of our fellow humans) will be 40 years old in 2050 the date of the CO2 emission targets and their parents approaching my age. So my Christmas message, in addition to “Wesolych Swiat” (Joy to the World), “Wszystkego Najlepszego” (The best of everything) and “Szczesliwego Nowego Roku” (Happy New Year), is “Let’s try to keep these possibilities for the coming generations” and also spread them to those vast numbers in 2009 whose conditions are anything but hopeful.
With thanks to all of you who took the trouble to write your own greetings or send us cards, and with apologies if I appear too sombre for this festive season – From a snowy Zwakow-Suble at minus 15 as my wife and I prepare to walk the dog at 2300 hours through our quiet deserted streets.
“The process has become unworkable, many said, because it has proved virtually impossible to forge consensus among the disparate blocs of countries fighting over environmental guilt, future costs and who should referee the results.“The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere,” said Michael Levi, who has been tracking the diplomatic effort for the Council on Foreign Relations. That elsewhere will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. It was these nations that Mr. Obama rallied in a series of dramatic encounters on Friday to finally ink a deal that starts a flow of financing for poor countries to adapt to climate change and sets up a system for major economies to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.
This smaller group of nations will meet periodically to tackle a narrower agenda of issues, like technology sharing or the merging of carbon trading markets, without the chaos and posturing of the United Nations process. A version of this already exists in the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has been a model of decorum and progress compared with what the world saw unfold at the climate talks.
The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains — measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide — between nations’ combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say”.
I have been following the excellent blog of a fellow Yorkshireman Stephen Murgatroyd now based in Alberta, Canada whom I met in Turin recently. http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com Stephen encouraged me to read Christopher Booker’s sceptical treatment of the issues that I mentioned in my last letter and his daily blog has offered a more balanced perspective than most mainstream journalist. He offers a perspective similar to that referred to in the NYT extract quoted above:
“So what now? As far as the UN is concerned, it is busy organizing the next summit for Mexico in December 2010. They will try again to secure an agreement on CO2 emission reductions, funds for developing nations, technology transfer and intellectual property and the verification and governance mechanisms required to enforce what they hope will be a legally binding agreement. Talks have failed, so let us have more talks is the mantra.Others, like Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptial environmentalist, are suggesting that its is time to change the fundamental focus for negotiations. Rather than focus on a global, legally binding agreement on CO2 emissions, he suggests that the focus should be on technology and mitigation efforts. Rather than live out the fantasy of “stopping climate change”, we should instead focus at the international level on dealing with the effects of climate change, while at the same time reducing emissions through national and bilateral agreements. He is not saying “don’t cut emissions”, but rather he is promoting the idea that climate change is something that has to be managed through investments in innovative technology and adaptation.This is an unpopular view, since many have bought the fantasy that action now can stop climate change. The religious belief in CO2 reduction as mankind’s only choice is now invested in so heavily, in more ways than one, that shifting the basis for the conversation is politically and economically difficult. Nonetheless, it is what it needs to happen if the world is to make progress”.
Perhaps this theme is not what one might expect in a Christmas letter but it reflects my own high priority for action in my retirement and follows in the wake of the disappointment, likely inevitable given the impossibly large assembly of nations, in Copenhagen. Global consensus, let alone governance, seems doomed to remain a pipedream of idealistic liberals. The topic is, however not unrelated to the family news with which I started this letter, nor is that family news unrelated to the festive season that is, after all, at time for celebrating a birth seen by huge numbers of humans as heralding (angels notwithstanding) hope for the future. The two awaited grandsons (whose safe deliveries would both be unlikely were we living among the ‘bottom billion’ of our fellow humans) will be 40 years old in 2050 the date of the CO2 emission targets and their parents approaching my age. So my Christmas message, in addition to “Wesolych Swiat” (Joy to the World), “Wszystkego Najlepszego” (The best of everything) and “Szczesliwego Nowego Roku” (Happy New Year), is “Let’s try to keep these possibilities for the coming generations” and also spread them to those vast numbers in 2009 whose conditions are anything but hopeful.
With thanks to all of you who took the trouble to write your own greetings or send us cards, and with apologies if I appear too sombre for this festive season – From a snowy Zwakow-Suble at minus 15 as my wife and I prepare to walk the dog at 2300 hours through our quiet deserted streets.
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