Avuncular American

Sanitize the Lagos Airport Experience

Five years ago I spent several months in Nigeria, organizing seminars and workshops.  Mostly in the capital Abuja, but requiring a couple of stays in Lagos, the commercial capital and one of Africa's most sprawling and chaotic cities.

The 2009 Christmas Day close call above Detroit, involving a Nigerian passenger whose journey started at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, reminded me of my own experiences there.  Usually I wasn't worried about the people on board my plane - it was the situation on the ground that was the problem.

Years before, I had worked with an internationally experienced engineer who was sent by my employer to a project in Chad, across the Nigerian border.  Except that he never made it further than Lagos airport.  So harassed by customs, immigration, or security officials for "dash" or bribes, he simply gave up and took the next flight back to Europe.

So I was ready for the worst when it was finally my turn to experience Lagos.  In fact, I had little to worry about; we came under the auspices of the American Consulate, with the additional security that afforded.  But we wanted more, as many of our seminar participants were to transit Lagos en route to Abuja.  We hired a private firm, headed by a talented Nigerian businessman who split his time between London and Lagos.  His firm's goal was to "sanitize the Lagos airport experience" for international travelers.

Why?  Well, as Lekan Oguntoyinbo explains in today's Washington Post

Two decades ago Murtala Muhammed International began earning a reputation as a home to criminals who sometimes attacked planes as they taxied down runways. Robbers roamed the terminals and parking lot looking for prey. To be sure, Nigeria has made improvements. In the airports, non-passengers' entry to terminals is restricted and runways are more closely monitored. But lax security still raises concerns. Airport personnel still sometimes extort passengers. And many elites and their guests are escorted to planes without being required to pass through metal detectors.

"Sanitizing" meant protecting foreign travelers from the importuning officials, but also involved hiring uniformed, armed police escorts for those transiting the international terminal to the domestic terminal, via the exposed public roads outside the airport perimeter.  It's still a free-for-all out there.

In the intervening five years, it would appear that the situation inside the airport had improved, though we will undoubtedly learn more about when and where our would-be suicide bomber slipped on his incendiary underpants.  In Lagos?  Or was it in Amsterdam?  Maybe in the Delta airplane's toilet? [UPDATE 1/1/2010: It appears that he began his flight in Accra.  Ghana's capital city has one of Africa's calmest, best-organized airports, as it happens.]

Barely a month ago, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) announced that the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had confirmed Lagos airport's compliance with ICAO security standards.

But if arriving passengers can have their Lagos experience "sanitized" for the price of an airport fixer, the danger, as Lekan Oguntoyinbo writes, is that departing members of the Nigerian elite are spared the indignities of the metal detector - for a price.

Image: Independence postage stamp from the Nigerian Philatelic Service.

Out With the Old Decade, Whatever It's Called

Apparently there is confusion over the nomenclature of the past ten years.  "The Aughts" or "the noughties"... I'm not sure what they called it a century ago, but the benighted decade between 1900 and 1909 was the prelude to the slaughter of World War I, so maybe it's not such a great reference.

Professor David Michael Green called our soon to be concluded period the "Devil's Decade," but you don't have to go that far to register your disappointment.  We can all relate to Nobel laureate Paul Krugman's economics lesson when he simply calls it "The Big Zero."

Pessimists warn that we should be careful of what we ask for, but if 2000 -2009 roughly equates to The Bush Era (with Clinton and Obama bookends), then I say bring on the Obama Era, as long as it doesn't have an apocalyptic Palin bookend.  When I say "Obama Era," I mean a transition to something better, not necessarily Nirvana in and of itself.

But then, that's what New Year's celebrations are about - transitions.  All the more so in this transition between decades.  Here's anthropologist Peter Stromberg on New Year's Eve as a "ritualized transition"

[P]eople have developed traditions to deal with those moments of time that are outside the normal order of things. They gather together both to pay homage to and to ward off the powers that dwell out there in the dark. Raucous gatherings at these points can serve many purposes: distraction from uncertainty, celebration of successfully negotiating danger...

I'm not sure if we've successfully negotiated all the dangers out there - far from it - but I'm happy that we're in the hands of a pragmatic President instead of an apocalyptic one.  As long as the "distraction from uncertainty" is kept to this weekend, and we start off 2010 ready to face all those things left unfinished in 2009 and during the rest of the "Big Zero:" concerted action to counter global warming, a Middle East peace settlement, remaking the US economy on something other than borrowed money... the list is very long, and the challenges are world-class.

But in the meantime, be sure to bring in the new decade in style (photo from Maisons-Champagne.com).  Happy 2010!

For It Before They Were Against It: GOP & Health

The President of the United States said:

Our... goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans. The American system of medicine is a model of skill and innovation, with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much — and many have no coverage at all. ...We must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need.

The President was George W. Bush, and he said the above in his State of the Union speech of January 28, 2003.

Of course he also said, in the same speech: "These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care."  So even though the 2009 Christmas bill falls far short of "nationalization" and is a far cry from dictating or rationing anything, I guess the Republicans can say that they would be for "affordable care for all Americans," as long as we're only talking theoretically.

Not to be confused with a chance to help pass actual health care legislation, which 100% of Republican Senators have refused to do.

President Obama has said "words mean something."  Which means you don't include, like Bush did in January 2003, words in your SOTU that promise "affordable health care for all Americans" and then proceed to do nothing towards that goal in your remaining 6 years in office.  Or as a party, oppose even the proposed moderate reform of a broken system by calling it a "Trojan Horse" for "nationalization."

I suggest you take a little tour of the Republican National Committee (RNC) website, especially its "What We Believe" page.  Health care - affordable or otherwise - appears nowhere on their list of beliefs.  It's also instructive to look at the "GOP Heroes" link, replete with sepia-toned 19th century portraits of black Americans who battled against slavery and for equal rights.

The problem is that the current GOP in the Senate and the House is a far cry from those days, and is likely to be on the wrong side of issues that concern contemporary black people.  An ostensibly bipartisan organization, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC website) currently has no Republican members, and some white GOP legislators are suspected of "racial Tourette's Syndrome," where appeals to racism have entered the health care debate.

I hope the Senate and House bills pass in the new year with enhanced protections against subsequent attacks by dead-ender die hards who currently enjoy  one of the best health insurance plans - the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB).

If the GOP is ideologically opposed to "nationalized" health insurance, how many Republican elected officials have given up their taxpayer-subsidized coverage?  You can count them on the head of a pin. 

Christmas 1944: Glorious Bastards of Bastogne

People who skip over their 65th birthdays can be forgiven: there's Social Security and all that.  With historical commemorations, 65 doesn't have quite the same ring as 50 or 75.  The 60th anniversary in 2004 was a pretty big event, but may have lost some of the usual warm glow due to European unhappiness over Bush's invasion of Iraq.

For those who may not have realized that we are smack in the middle of the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge and its Christmas of 1944, here is my take on "the Battered Bastards of Bastogne" (the 101st Airborne Division) and other tales from the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg.

The view from our balcony in Brussels the other day (below right) was a taste of what they saw in those days of December 1944.  Or didn't see: a large part of the German success in making a mid-winter breakthrough was the freezing fog, which kept Allied aviation (especially reconnaissance) grounded.  When the panzers made their dash starting December 16, tank-destroying fighters were still unable to fly.

General George S. Patton was so perturbed by the weather that he had his chaplain compose a prayer for divine intervention (see Carlo D'Este's biography, "A Genius For War").  Less well known perhaps is Patton's Christmas carol, to the tune of "O, Little Town of Bethlehem," after seeing the destruction of the Belgian town of Houffalize:

Oh little town of Houffalize,
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy steep and battered streets
The aeroplanes sail by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
Not any goddamned light;
The hopes and fears of all thy years
Were blown to hell last night.

The town had been completely destroyed, mostly by Allied bombing, but that did not appear to dampen the townspeople's gratitude toward their liberators.  It was, after all, their second liberation in a matter of a couple of months.  And the Ardennes had been a German invasion route in 1940, 1914, 1870...

Houffalize, Bastogne, and other towns in Belgium, plus several in Luxembourg, are marking the events of six and a half decades ago this snowy (but infinitely milder than that of 1944-45) winter.  Americans may have fallen out of the habit of saying "Nuts!" as a way of dismissal, but most Belgians still remember General Anthony McAuliffe's famous one-liner, his refusal to surrender encircled Bastogne at the Bulge's most dangerous moment.

See the entire schedule of events, plus campaign maps, on the Ardennes' Tourist Board website (poster, left).  Belgian TV channels have been putting on documentaries featuring people whose memories are still fresh, though they were at most teenagers during these traumatic events.

For those who can't make it to this corner of Europe in mid-winter, read a good book (the 101st Airborne's site has an extensive list) or check out Patton, the 1970 classic, or the "Band Of Brothers" episode on Bastogne.  Just don't watch the embarrassing "Battle of the Bulge," the 1965 war movie shot - not on location in the Ardennes - but in the Hollywood favorite of arid Spain.

Climate: Earth's Recirc Button Still On

Whatever just happened in Copenhagen - and I reserve judgment 'til I've read a comprehensive debrief - the underlying problem of carbon overproduction hasn't gone away.

One thing is for sure: this post and millions like it, and the millions of emails and spam mails sent daily, will add their share of greenhouse gases to our planet's already full atmosphere.  I read somewhere that the spam sent to Hotmail accounts alone consumed the equivalent of the production of 5 nuclear power plants.  Only they're more likely to be coal-fired plants...

It's like we're in one big airplane, folks, Earth Airlines, breathing in that stale air constantly recirculated around us.  The flight never ends, and fresh air is a relative concept.  So am I going to cease blogging?  Hardly.  I'm already using public transport for most movement throughout Brussels, and I try to climb the staircase vice using the elevator in my building a good half of the time.  But I still am dependent on electricity coming - in the case for Belgium and France - from a mix of nuclear and coal-fired power plants.  I"m in the grid.

For Brussels and its surrounding countryside, the solid waste equivalent of the closed circuit effect was illustrated this past week with odoriferous obviousness.  The private sector contractor in charge of the city's main waste treatment facility decided, apparently without consulting the city (capital region) authorities, to shut down the facility and dump Brussels' untreated effluent into the rivers flowing through and out of the capital.

Into someone's back yard, that is. The backyard being the Flanders region, already prickly about the presence of the million Francophones, expatriates, and immigrants who make up Brussels, in their midst (Brussels is entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders).  Every time I flushed the toilet, I felt like saying "excuseer mevrouw en meneer" or some such thing.

The Francophone Brussels environment minister even had to scurry home from Copenhagen to handle the PR mess, since all she could do about the other mess was to frustratedly order the contractor to re-open the plant, which will be done - eventually.

The affair shows, with visual and nasal effect, how no man is an island, or how "down the drain" doesn't end when you flush the toilet.  Homeowners with septic tanks know that the honey-dipper must come or the system backs up; for those with municipal sewerage systems, it gets more complicated.  But someone else always lives downstream.

Maybe politicians weren't the right people to send to Copenhagen.  How about some HVAC technicians to explain that polluted recirculated air remains polluted unless filtered?  Better yet, stop polluting the air in the first place.  Or plumbers, who know that garbage in will result in garbage out, unless purified to an acceptable level.

When it comes down to it, perhaps even in the hearts of the most die hard climate change deniers, it should be common sense and a sense of self-preservation that forces us to do the right thing.  But as last week's ballyhoo in Brussels over solid waste flowing downstream should show us, governments cannot count on their contractors to do the right thing or even the most basic of civic-minded actions.  Not without controls, oversight, rules and regulations.  The job of governments, and the people who elect them.

Fear of Filibusters: Model For Democratic Governance?

[W]e need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. They’re a Senate tradition, and that same tradition said that the threat of filibusters should be used sparingly. Well, Republicans have already trashed the second part of the tradition: look at a list of cloture motions over time, and you’ll see that since the G.O.P. lost control of Congress it has pursued obstructionism on a literally unprecedented scale. So it’s time to revise the rules.

Paul Krugman, "Pass The Bill" - New York Times, December 17, 2009

The bill Krugman wants to see passed, however imperfect, is the health care reform bill that Howard Dean calls "hocus pocus."  I'll return to that question in future posts, I'm sure, but today I want to vent on why 60 is such a magic number, and why Senators from states with populations smaller than most large American cities get to wield veto power over the will of the great majority of Americans.

It's called The Filibuster.

Wikipedia nicely traces the piratical origins of the word, from the French and Dutch words flibustier and vrijbuiter... freebooter.  "Pirating or hijacking debate" is the usage we are looking at, and though the current culprits are the Republicans and their Democratic (or "Independent") enablers, it wasn't always the GOP that had a corner on this market.

Barbara Tuchman, in her portrait of the world before the First World War, "The Proud Tower" (1962), dedicates the better part of a chapter on the United States to a long-forgotten parliamentary firestorm over the "silent - or disappearing - quorum."  She explains:

It was a practice whereby the minority party could prevent any legislation obnoxious to it by refusing a quorum, that is, by demanding a roll call and then remaining silent when their names were called.  Since the rules prescribed that a member's presence was established only by a viva voce reply to the roll...

In other words - and Tuchman provides jolly examples - Congressman Cretin (generic moniker) could be sitting in full view of the Speaker, but if he chose to deny his presence, he and his minority cronies would simply remain silent and could not be considered present.  Hence, no quorum.

Until the day the rules changed.  The day when the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Thomas B. Reed, Republican of Maine, stood his ground against a fuming and foaming pack of Democratic filibusterers.  These were the days when "the party of Lincoln" was on the side of the angels, and the Democrats included numerous unreconstructed racists bent on enforcing poll taxes and opposing the seating of elected black politicians. 

I recommend reading Tuchman's account for the full drama of the confrontation, where if Reed saw Congressman Cretin, he checked him as present, whether or not Cretin wanted to be recognized.  But the point is this: a ludicrous rule whereby physical presence meant nothing unless you said "here" or "present" out loud was shown for what it was: ridiculous, and unworthy of a democratic forum of a great power.

Fast forward to 2009 and the debate over health care in the United States.  The institution that haughtily calls itself "the world's greatest deliberative body" lives in fear of the one Senator who threatens to read ad infinitum from the Washington D.C. telephone book ("Abigail Abbey, Abner Abbey, Archibald B. Abby...") as he prevents debate on the provision of health care to American citizens?  Please.  Fear of filibuster has replaced the Hollywood image of righteous filibustering.  You just have to utter the F(ilibuster) word and the party with healthy majorities in House and Senate suddenly goes weak at the knees and caters to the lowest denominator, meaning 1/60 (or actually 1/100 of the full Senate complement).  Strange math.

As Paul Krugman reminds us, the US Constitution doesn't mention filibuster, and there's no right to hijacking debate in the Bill of Rights.  The US Declaration of Independence was a stirring call against the tyranny of a king.  What about the very real tyranny wielded by a minority of one, Senator Sixty, whoever he is today?  Yesterday it was Joe Lieberman, today it's Ben Nelson; who will be the courted sixtieth filibuster-avoiding freebooter tomorrow?

Next time you hear about the United States lecturing Foreign Country X about "good governance," read how Byzantium lives in the Senate Rules Committee and consider how much the US has to learn about transparent democratic governance.

(UPDATE December 20: Today Krugman suggest ways to reform or eradicate filibuster)

Renewable Resource: 2,000 Years of History

"2000 Ans d'Histoire," the name of the most podcasted radio program in France, celebrated its tenth anniversary today (apologies to Roman numeralists if I got the X's and the C's misplaced).

I've been listening to Patrice Gélinet off and on for the last decade, but that's normal for a quinquagenarian who used to beg his father for stories from the war in the Pacific.  What's more instructive is the podcasting fame - people in their twenties and thirties for whom history is no less fascinating.  If you want to subscribe, here's the link.

Today's special anniversary broadcast gathered some of France's finest TV and radio historians, an interesting subset of a discipline which has been much in the news of late.  Why?  Because the Sarkozy/Fillon government has floated two related but contradictory themes: (1) the removal of history and geography from part of the secondary school (baccalaureate) curriculum; and (2) launching an emotion-charged debate on "the national identity."  The question has been posed before: how can people who lack historical perspective appreciate the genesis of their nation's identity?

Gélinet's guests included Patrick Rotman (documentary film maker), Alain Decaux (the father of French radio and TV historical programs), and Marc Ferro, whose "Histoire Parallèle" series took us back 50 years, day by day, during the 90s commemorations of World War II and early Cold War history.  These gentlemen could be expected to come to the defense of teaching history in schools, but they pointed out that in poll after poll, a huge majority of French people not only remain attached to the lifelong study of history, but also wanted their children to be exposed to it, especially as future voting citizens.

2000 Ans d'Histoire has hit upon a formula that works.  Broadcast at 1:30 PM, it catches a number of people during their lunch hour on weekdays.  Then there's the podcast for those who can't listen to the live or taped broadcast.  Black marketing during the Occupation; Harkis during the Algerian war for independence; any subject in the last couple of millennia (give or take a few years) is good for a half hour's attention.

Gélinet (photo at right from the site), a former history professor, says he always knew "when I was boring my students."  His series never does: replete with sound archives, excerpts from old films, or period music, his interviews of historians and authors are researched and scripted with utmost care.

Between France Inter and France Culture, two non-commercial public stations, radio audiences in France have a similar choice as American listeners to National Public Radio and British audiences of BBC's Radio Four.  With the Franco-German TV channel Arte, audiences in both countries get quality documentaries and other cultural programming during prime time.  In a range of channels that for most households does not exceed 5 or 6 choices, such a concentration of culture is bound to have more effect than a lone PBS channel lost among hundreds (thousands?) of American cable/satellite channels that are available to some Americans.

If the populace wants bread and circuses, well, what politician is going to deprive them?  But what if they want something better?  If Sarkozy, for reasons known only to him, wants to deprive 17-18 year olds from delving into the lessons of history, maybe the 80% of French citizens who approve of the teaching of history (many of whom listen to programs like 2000 Ans d'Histoire or who watch Arte's "Les Mercredis de l'Histoire") should provide him a history lesson.

(Final) Departures

Okuribito - "Departures" in international release - won the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  You don't really need my belated commentary (the film only came to Brussels in December 2009) - IMDB has close to 100 links to worldwide blog and newspaper and magazine reviews.  But the film is so good, and its effect so profound, that I can't refrain from enthusing.

"The Gift of Last Memories" is the line that appears on the posters for the US release, and that about sums it up.  This is not a film about (a) morticians or (b) cellists.  Well, not only about "coffiners," a uniquely Japanese institution whose job is to prepare the dead before placement in coffins and eventual cremation.

What Departures is really about is Love.  What it means to stick with someone when their lifelong dream of fame as a concert cellist go the way of the industrial closures rampant throughout Japan.  The love for people who have been part of your life, and who then are suddenly gone.  The love that some people come to have for their chosen occupation, and who approach it as an art.

One of the advantages of the vagaries of international distribution is that this film was released here in time for Christmas.  While Departures isn't a "Christmas movie," it does feature Christmas in Japan, and it is White.  But the feel - despite the subject matter - is definitely one for the Christmas season.  There is humor, but mostly at the outset, as we are brought into the singular world of the coffiners.

There are several vignettes, where the focus is on the families of the deceased, as we come to appreciate the young apprentice's growing mastery of his trade.  The country that has given us kabuki theater and Benihana ("Now Playing") was bound to approach death with a certain amount of stylization.  But you ain't been to a funeral 'til you've been to a Japanese "coffining."

In the West, we tend to be increasingly separated from such rites of passage.  Like the old, the dead are often invisible.  Families divide into open casket versus closed coffin camps, and the "undertaker" is viewed with the same distance or even disdain as shown by the uninformed Japanese in Departures.  Until Death comes close to home.  Which is does to all of us.  As we watched Departures in our comfortable cinema seats, one elderly member of our family passed away...

But rather than shut it out of our minds, embrace Death with a flourish, like our coffiners.  Watching Departures, I even considered a Japanese-style departure in my will.  As one of the admiring relatives says in the film, "she never looked so beautiful."  What a way to go.

Obama in Oslo: Community Organizing Goes Global

President Obama is a political leader who understands that even the mightiest are vulnerable when they stand alone. He is a man who believes in the strength of a community, be it the local community where he started his career many years ago or the global community which he leads today.

Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

..........

While the President produced a fine speech yesterday, I daresay it won't be remembered as his finest, if only because he had to balance so many constituencies in the TV audience:

- the domestic US audience, composed of skeptical Democratic peaceniks and even more skeptical Republican hawks

- the Nobel Committee on the dais, whose Chairman Jagland enumerated every objection to the Obama nomination, and shot them all down with devastating accuracy

- the NATO allies, especially Europeans with underutilized military establishments, whose help is needed in resolving the Afghanistan conflict

- the Israelis and Palestinians, who will surely be the object of the Nobel laureate's renewed attentions, once the domestic agenda, especially US health care reform, permits.

The President's speech is full of signals and nuances, which is why I like the more straightforward Norwegian approach.  Jagland quoted another Nobel Laureate, Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who said of Obama: "he has already lowered the temperature in the world," more a reference to lowered tensions and eased fears of American bullying than anything climate-related.

But it's the "community organizer" analogy that I like best.  Though Ms. Palin sought to use the President's Chicago experience as a source of ridicule (compared to what - her world class experience in Wasilla?), Obama's years as a community leader showed him the value of collective action, of perseverance when faced with problems that went beyond the community's own borders.  Surely useful experience - recognized by the Nobel Committee - when it comes to reclaiming America's leadership through example, as opposed to hectoring à la Bush.  It's recognition that "Brand America" is back.

Now that he has received his prize, President Obama cannot but add that reality to his reflection on a wide range of issues, and ponder what posterity will make of his decisions: "what would a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate do?"  The Committee - dedicated to peace, awarding a prize named after an arms manufacturer - knows that the road to peace is sometimes through war-torn territory.  They know this better than most.  Which is why they gave the Prize to the person, said Jagland, quoting from Alfred Nobel's will, who "shall have done the most or the best work "for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

It's a prize for potential.  To the "community organizer" who made good.

Strasbourg, Freiburg, My Burg: Saving Earth City By City

We recently spent an extended weekend in beautiful bourgs within easy driving distance of Brussels: Freiburg, Germany; Strasbourg, France; and Luxembourg (capital and country of same name).  For climate change negotiators in Copenhagen, a visit to these three cities near the Rhine and the Moselle rivers could help point the way to a post-carbon future.

None are car or carbon-free, and all are just as over-the-top Christmas-decorated as any typical Germanic town this season (photo: Strasbourg's Place Kleber and its 100 foot-high century-old pine tree).  But their approach to public transportation specifically and urban planning in general would be worth cloning worldwide.

Strasbourg, a city on the Rhine and the object of French and German invasions, occupations, and liberations before a united Europe put an end to all such turf-battling, is built on and between canals, rivers, and water courses of all sorts.  Which didn't keep city authorities from building a beautiful ultra-modern tram system that links downtown with its outlying suburbs.  If only Strasbourg could lick its problem of New Year's Eve car burnings (the young hoods who set fire to their neighbors' cars are not motivated by any extreme green politics; they're just hoods out to attract attention thanks to eager TV cameras)...

Across the Rhine, Freiburg im Breisgau (official website; not to be confused with nearby Fribourg in Switzerland) is a Green Mecca.  Predictably, its mayor is a Green Party member.  Not so predictably, he rules with a conservative CDU deputy.  Environmentalists from the world over flock to Freiburg to see its Vauban neighborhood, which is known for its sensible use of alternative energy sources and low-carbon footprint.  The city nestles in the foothills of the Black Forest, and with vineyards close by, has an almost perfect setting for a mixed economy that points the way to a sustainable future.

Back to reality in Brussels, where we watched an evening devoted to Copenhagen on French TV (France 2).  One of the documentaries showed Adelaide and its surrounding region, with drought-induced water shortages changing the lifestyles of urban and rural Australians alike.  And yet, in today's Washington Post, you can read about ""A Lingering Pool of Disbelief," Blaine Harden's report on climate change denial in one of the countries hardest hit: "despite a decade of record drought, Australian farmers refuse to buy into climate change."

Maybe they are taken in by the Saudi skeptics, the "ClimateGate" conspiracy theorists, and the Bush dead enders who think it's all in our fervid imaginations.  Tell that to the Alpine or Himalayan mountain guides who hike through dried scree where there used to be glaciers thirty years ago, or to the Bangladeshi families who have had to move yearly to escape the rising rivers downstream.  Maybe the deniers have their own aquifers, their own micro-climates, maybe their own survivalist militias with limitless cans of pork and beans for when climate refugees start to head north.  Maybe it's all in their imaginations - the pipe dream that somehow they can escape from the wages of their profligacy.

For those of us who have a firmer footing in reality, heed the burgs - Freiburg and Strasbourg - that are set to thrive in a post-carbon future.