How to use this Page

According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has about 12,000 thoughts per day, or 4.4 million thoughts per year.

I wager that writers are well above the average because we read more and writing causes us to think more than the average.

Who’s In Charge?

I had known for a long time that our thoughts affect our emotions, and that toxic “stinking thinking” could derail our writing dreams and health faster than almost anything. You are the only one who can decide whether to reject or accept a thought, which thoughts to dwell on, and which thoughts will become actions.

But sometimes–a lot of the time–I felt powerless to actually do anything about it on a consistent basis. Sometimes I simply felt unfocused and overwhelmed.

Need a Brain Detox?

I’ve been reading a “scientific brain studies” book for non-science types like me called Who Switched Off My Brain? by Dr. Caroline Leaf Ph.D. which has fascinated me. With scientific studies to back it up, it shows that thoughts are measurable and actually occupy mental “real estate.” Thoughts are active; they grow and change, influencing every decision we make and physical reaction we have.

“Every time you have a thought, it is actively changing your brain and your body–for better or for worse.” The author talks about the “Dirty Dozen”–which can be as harmful as poison in our minds and our bodies.

Killing Our Creativity

Among this dozen deadly areas of toxic thinking are toxic emotions, toxic words, toxic seriousness, toxic health, and toxic schedules.

If you want to delve into the 350+ scientific references and pages of end notes in the back of the book, you can look up the studies. But basically it targets the twelve toxic areas of our lives that produce 80% of the physical, emotional and mental health issues today. And trust me. Those issues have a great deal to do with you achieving your goals and dreams.

There Is Hope!

According to Dr. Leaf, scientists no longer believe that the brain is hardwired from birth with a fixed destiny to wear out with age, a fate predetermined by our genes. Instead there is scientific proof now for what the Bible has always taught: you can renew your minds and heal. Your brain really can change!

Old brain patterns can be altered, and new patterns can be implemented. In the coming days, I’ll share some more about the author’s ”Brain Sweep” five-step strategy for detoxing your thoughts associated with the “dirty dozen.”

But right now I’m going to read about the symptoms of a toxic schedule. I have a suspicion…

Even the most dedicated writers need a break sometimes. The brain gives out (often on Fridays), or the back and neck scream for relief. Sure, you can always read more email or surf the web or watch a re-run.

On the other hand, says Arthur Plotnik in a February, 2010 article in The Writer, “Take a productive break from writing.”

His definition of such a productive break includes “activities that can bolster my writing even as they give respite from its grind…A boost [to my writing] in quality or quantity is my criterion for ‘positive’ avoidances.”

Good for Your Writing

Time-wasting breaks produce guilt for not writing, leaving us feeling disgruntled at the end of the day. On the other hand, a break taken to bolster our writing skills is both refreshing and growth-producing. And guilt free!

Read Plotnik’s entire article for many more unusual ideas. (He’s the author of Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style and is on The Writer’s editorial board.) Here are just a few of his suggestions to whet your appetite for the next time you just have to get away from your desk:

• Talk a walk in your neighborhood as if seeing it for the first time. In your pocket notebook, jot down images and sensory perceptions and things you overhear and character descriptions.
• Visit a botanical garden, aquarium, museum, zoo, etc. where things are displayed and labeled. Collect metaphors based on the things you see, such as “a roommate like a stinkhorn fungus.” (Plotnick)
• Wander through your local library’s exhibits, and look through community bulletin boards and local history collections for ideas.
• Watch a “dopey adolescent sitcom” to update one’s YA-dialogue skills.
• Play an instrument or do a drawing.
• Build your inventory of character names from a directory.
• Spend time with someone in an interesting occupation, absorbing the details of a job one of your characters might perform.

Or do like me-and catch up on reading inspiring magazines like The Writer!

By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK

In today’s Countdown to Copenhagen post, Donald N. Zillman looks back at predictions he and his fellow authors of Beyond the Carbon Economy: Energy Law in Transition made two years ago, and discusses what today’s position is in light of next week’s COP15 conference. Professor Zillman is President of the University of Maine at Presque Isle and Edward Godfrey Professor of Law, University of Maine at Fort Kent.

Click here for the other Countdown to Copenhagen posts.

Slightly more than two years ago, a consortium of 33 authors from 20 nations put the finishing touches on a book called Beyond the Carbon Economy. The authors were law professors, practicing lawyers, and participants in public policy in the fields of energy, natural resources, and sustainability. We noted that 80 percent of the world’s energy for all purposes came from the three familiar hydrocarbon fuels—coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Even the most radical alternative scenarios indicated that the three hydrocarbon fuels would still be major sources of world energy two decades from today. But, compelling reasons demanded that businesses, government leaders, and citizens around the world look beyond carbon, and begin NOW.

We identified five factors compelling that redirection. The first was climate change and other environmental harms from the use of the fossil fuels. When we wrote, the April 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just been released. It made the clearest case yet that climate change was real, was happening now, and that it clearly implicated the fossil fuels.

The second factor was the myriad of concerns over energy security. We noted: “Were the carbon fuels equally distributed around the world, and were rules of the market economy fully accepted by both producer and consumer nations, the problem would be largely one for economics to solve.” They aren’t and wars, civil unrest, political boycotts, and the like have kept much of the world uneasy since the early 1970s.

The third factor encouraging the move beyond carbon is the enormous increase in demand for energy. China and India are just the most visible examples of nations moving rapidly to a time when a substantial proportion of their population expect personal motorized transport, fossil fuel heated residences and workplaces, and steady access to electricity.

The fourth, and most controversial of the factors, is the potential decline in supply of the fossil fuels, primarily petroleum. The authors recognized the range in views from a strong belief in “peak oil” theories to a confidence in market economics that supports the view that “nothing would increase supplies like $200 per barrel oil.” Even advocates of the latter view, however, have to deal with the heavy investment costs of bringing more fossil fuels to the market.

The fifth factor–“the most sobering of them all”– is the energy needs of the one third of the world’s population who live today without modern energy services. The carbon economy has done them few favors and the future looks even more bleak for them than the present. Even if compassion or a rough sense of equity don’t prompt action, the prospect of dozens of failed states turned to terrorist havens should.<

1. Cold things don’t give off the cold, they take in the heat.
2. Every time you move your muscles, 100’s of millions of tiny molecules call adenozine triphospahte are broken down into adenozine diphosphate and energy to make your muscle move.
3. Eating celery burns more calories than is actually in the celery itself.
4. Drinking cold water helps to burn calories. Your body has to heat up the water to absorb it. Heating the water up is what burns the fat.
5. People who aren’t or don’t speak German sound funny when trying to speak it.
6. Women get a heroine like rush from hearing themselves talk.
7. Jumping on a grenade that’s just landed in your trench to use yourself as a human sacrifice will work and save all the other men in your trench.
8. Emos are funny.
9. We are closely related to primates
10. I’m not sure why you’re reading this.

1. Cold things don’t give off the cold, they take in the heat.
2. Every time you move your muscles, 100’s of millions of tiny molecules call adenozine triphospahte are broken down into adenozine diphosphate and energy to make your muscle move.
3. Eating celery burns more calories than is actually in the celery itself.
4. Drinking cold water helps to burn calories. Your body has to heat up the water to absorb it. Heating the water up is what burns the fat.
5. People who aren’t or don’t speak German sound funny when trying to speak it.
6. Women get a heroine like rush from hearing themselves talk.
7. Jumping on a grenade that’s just landed in your trench to use yourself as a human sacrifice will work and save all the other men in your trench.
8. Emos are funny.
9. We are closely related to primates
10. I’m not sure why you’re reading this.

Frank Close, OBE is Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College. He was formerly vice president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now the British Science Association), Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. His most recent book examines one of the oddest discoveries in physics - antimatter.

In the post below, Frank Close reveals the fallacies concerning antimatter in the Dan Brown novel (and now major cinema release) Angels and Demons. He has previously written for OUPblog on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Many people have never heard of CERN. Of those that have, most know it as the birthplace of the World Wide Web; fewer knew its main purpose, which is as the European Centre for experiments in particle physics. However, with the appearance of Angels and Demons CERN is about to become famous as a laboratory in Geneva that makes antimatter. These two statements about CERN are correct; much else in Dan Brown’s novel, which inspired the movie and has led to much of the popular received wisdom about antimatter, is not.

The movie is of course fiction, but the book on which it is based teases readers with a preface headlined “FACT”. This includes “Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation… is highly unstable and ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything… a single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb”. CERN is credited as having created “the first particles of antimatter” and the curtain metaphorically rises to the question whether this “highly volatile substance will save the world, or… be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made”.

These “facts” are at best misleading and even wrong, but many, including some in the US military, believe them to be true.

Antiparticles have been made for 80 years; a few atoms of antihydrogen have been made at CERN during the last decade; antimatter, in the sense of anti-atoms organised into amounts large enough to see, let alone contain, is still in the realms of fantasy and likely to remain so.

In Angels and Demons the experimental production of antimatter being equated with The Creation is so central to the plot that a scientist tells the Pope the “good news”, even though it is decades old. Whatever led to our universe, it was not akin to the creation of matter at CERN, in either the fictional or the real world. It is not “something from nothing… practically proof that Genesis is a scientific possibility”. This is at best cod theology and non-science.

The Big Bang is the creation of all energy, all matter, and all of the known universe, together with its space and time. We cannot recreate that singular event, but we can examine what happened afterwards, within what became our present universe.

Energy, lots of it, is what turned into matter and antimatter. Energy is not nothing; it is measurable and when you use some the power company will charge you for it. When you create antimatter together with its matter counterpart, you have to put in the same amount of energy as would be released were they to annihilate one another; you do not get matter from nothing. Now reverse the process, such that antimatter meets matter and is turned back into radiant energy. That certainly is not nothing, as Angels and Demons recognises since the resulting blast is what is going to destroy the Vatican.

It is at this point that some in the US military seem to have adopted this fictional work as its practical guide to antimatter, and to have ignored its many contradictions. The preface of Angels and Demons described antimatter as the ideal source of energy which “creates no pollution or radiation and a droplet could power New York for a day”. Antimatter may not emit radiation so long as it stays away from matter, but in that case it offers nothing to bomb makers or power companies. In order to exploit this “volatile” substance, you need to annihilate it with matter, at which it releases its trapped energy as radiation such as gamma rays.

The statement that there are “No byproducts, no radiation, no pollution” is ironic given that it occurs within a few paragraphs of a warning to beware of the gamma rays. The US Air Force were enthused so much that in promoting their interest in antimatter for weapons they announced “No Nuclear Residue”. The media trumpeted that “a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military’s dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called `clean’ superbomb” San Francisco Chronicle 4 October 2004, uncanny examples of fiction, written in 2000, presented as if fact in 2004.

As a major milestone in antimatter science CERN is indeed marvellous, but trifling compared with what would be needed to make antimatter in industrial quantities. Even were it possible, the belief that antimatter technology could “save the planet” is specious. As we first have to make the antimatter ourselves, we would waste more energy in making it than we could ever get back, so antimatter is not a panacea for “saving the planet”. Thankfully, neither will it become “the most deadly weapon”.

Hi! How ya doin'?

Welcome back! So whats new? Well, two posts back work was very slow and I am very grateful to have had some projects come in these past two weeks. So while working on them, I just got my new postcard out last week, and I am working on some new pdfs for the website. I FINALLY just got all my taxes sorted out and found that my amount due wasn't too bad at all. Nice! What else is going on?

Plenty! I actually wanted to talk a bit in this post about the slow times in freelance. It only took a little slow down to make me panic. I was sure the business was done, and I needed to find another production job. Maybe that will be the case if the economy continues the way it has this past year. But for now, I see the past two months as a great test to my fortitude and desire to really be doing this type of work. No doubt about it, my faith was definitely tested every time I looked at my bank account. Also, when not working, one's self-esteem takes a pretty big hit, too. "Why isn't anyone hiring me? Do I suck?" These questions creep up on you in the quiet times.

I have found the best way to deal with these times is to focus. Focus on one's work. Promote more. Fix anything you don't like about your portfolio; make it stronger. Clean up your website. Go draw. JUST DO SOMETHING so you aren't constantly doubting yourself.

I find this is a great time for personal projects. For me, its hard to make time for them when commissions are on the drafting table. So to utilize the time, and to assuage my doubts, I took on the Joker portrait from the last post, and another personal project. Sometihng I have worked on here and there is a comic concept my brother is tinkering with. I liked it so much I want to draw some stuff for it. We are currently reworking a short script, and here are the non-final character concept sketches:
The main character and his father (we are discussing a re-design of the father as I feel his character is wimpy)

The villain in armor and in robes

Supporting characters

A character study to capture a "crazy look"

I also started a little poster campaign for myself concerning our current economic situation and energy needs. It will eventually be a three poster series but for now it just one :)

Sketch:
This was just a sketch in my book. I had been tinkering with the concept for a bit prior instigating the poster project.

Final 11x17:
I decided to crop the art to more easily draw attention to the bulb; I felt the sketch had too much info in it. I mocked it up as a Waste Management poster to work my typography muscles, and I sent it to 'em. My contact there forwarded it to the proper channels, but I don't expect to hear anything as WM works with a design studio for all of their materials. But still, I wanted to at least try my hand as pitching an idea to a cold client to exercise those muscles as well. Anyway, the other two posters are looking to be themed around recycling and public transportation while using the term "green thinking." Someday, you'll see them. They are actually on a far back burner for projects I am much more excited about right now, both commissioned and personal.

And that's that. I have sketches for more posters underway, and some work due early next week so I better get back to it.

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Deborah Gordon is a senior transportation policy analyst who has worked with the National Commission on Energy Policy, the Chinese government and many other organizations. Daniel Sperling is Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. Gordon and Sperling are the authors of Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability which provides a concise history of America’s Love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. A few weeks ago we posted an original article by these authors.  Today we have pulled an excerpt from the book which looks specifically at Governor Schwarzenegger.

The unlikely hero who jolted California into climate change leadership is the former bodybuilder and action movie hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Before his election in fall 2003, California was experiencing something of a malaise.  Governor Schwarzenegger resurrected a bipartisan action-oriented government and, molded by circumstance, became and environmental leader.

In signing an agreement between California and the United Kingdom on July 31, 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming…International partnerships are needed in the fight against global warming and California has a responsibility and a profound role to play to protect not only our environment, but to be a world leader on this issue as well.”

He had come a long way in a short time.  Governor Schwarzenegger’s second inaugural address in January 2007 made it strikingly clear that he had evolved into an accomplished politician.  He was now focused, serious, and increasingly savvy.  In the cauldron of politics, he was forging himself into a centrist politician, strongly committed to getting things done, especially on the environment.  He emphasized above all else the need for action on global warming.  He was using global warming as his platform to unite voters from both parties behind him-in stark contrast to what President Bush was doing in Washington, D.C.

How did this Austrian bodybuilder evolve into an environmental leader?  He got his chance to govern through an extraordinary set of circumstances.  In 2003, voters became disenchanted with the remoteness and single-minded fund-raising of Democratic governor, Gray Davis, and voted him out of office in a rare recall election.  This election bypassed the normal process of primaries in which each political party selects a candidate.  That shortcut was essential to Schwarzenegger’s election.  Schwarzenegger was a moderate Republican in a state where the Republican Party has become very conservative.  According to most political experts, Schwarzenegger couldn’t have won a regular Republican primary.  But in a free-for-all election, he didn’t need his party’s endorsement.

In the end, the Democrats couldn’t put forth a compelling candidate, and Schwarzenegger slid into power with 48.6 percent of the vote.  he had never held a government office of any type, elected or appointed, and had little policy knowledge.  But he had huge name recognition as a result of his extraordinary success first as a bodybuilder, winning seven Mr. Olympia world championships, and then as a movie star, known for his Terminator action movies.  He also had management savvy in building very successful businesses capitalizing on his fame, though this was much overlooked at the time.  Governor Schwarzenegger resurrected a bipartisan action-orientated government and, molded by circumstance, became an environmental leader.

He entered office speaking of “blowing up boxes” of government, eliminating hundreds of boards and agencies, and bringing a new order.  His style was to browbeat the legislature.  The honeymoon began to fade during his first year when he provoked his legislature opponents by calling them “girlie men,” offended protesting nurses by telling them “special interests don’t like me in Sacramento because I kick their butt,” and antagonized teachers by asking voters to curtail teachers’ rights to job security.  Every one of the propositions he put forth to voters in a special election in fall 2005 went down in defeat.  His popularity plummeted.

He soon righted himself.  He apologized to voters for not respecting them.  He abandoned his more bombastic language.  He engaged himself in the business of governing and forged working relationships with the Democratic-controlled legislature.  His popularity was resurrected with apologies and an ability to learn from his mistakes, coupled with willful rejection of ideology and partisanship.  By late 2006, his ratings were once again soaring.  With a cooperative legislature, he concluded a series of legislative milestones, capped by the precedent-setting Global Warming Solutions Act.  In his 2007 inaugural address, Schwarzenegger justified this landmark law on moral grounds and “because California genuinely has the power to influence the res of the nation, even the world.”

Schwarzenegger was a product of circumstances.  He wobbled toward a model of leadership and innovation.  He’s not an intellectual leader.  He’s a problem solver with charisma and strong management and communication skills, who surrounds himself with strong, competent people, not least of which is his wife, Maria Shriver.  He’s been molded by the experience of being a Republican in a Democratic state and living with a politically astute Kennedy wife.  His bipartisanship was illustrated by his appointment of Terry Tamminene, an ardent environmentalist, as secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency and later as secretary of the cabinet, and Susan Kennedy, a Democrat and former abortion right advocate, as his chief of staff.

The governor’s desire to simultaneously achieve a healthy environment and economy in the state has resonated well.  With strong support from the venture capital community and leaders of many high-tech Silicon Valley companies, he has spurred the state’s businesses to think green thoughts.  His unwavering commitment to California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, low-carbon fuel standard, and greenhouse gas standards for vehicles has had the cumulative effect of convincing even the most recalcitrant company that there’s no turning back.  Indeed, Schwarzenegger sees climate change policy and green tech as his legacy.  The question is whether the various rules and laws and what skeptics refer to as the governor’s globe-trotting happy talk will translate into ral action and change.

NOTE TO SELF: NO GRAVE SITUATION HERE

The next time you visit Spain, you might want to take a side-trip to the Santa Coloma de Gramnenet cemetary located outside Barcelona, especially the mausoleum section. Although one can visit the dearly departed if one feels so moved, the real attraction is up on the mausoleum roofs where 462 solar panels have been installed to catch the sun's rays.

The energy produced with the solar panels, equivalent to the yearly consumption of 60 homes, flows into the local energy grid. The entire project is the community's contribution toward fighting global warming. The graveyard was the only viable spot to proceed with its solar energy program.

Read the rest of the story and photos of the solar panels here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6316047

Actually, this is not such a wild idea. Think about the possibilities of creating projects similar to this in mausoleums throughout the world. The concept might not appeal to all families of the deceased but it something to consider. Perhaps - just a thought - some type of wind power device could be utilized in a similar manner. Anyway, the citizens and the city council of the spanish town are congratulated for doing their part in becoming part of the solution to finding alternative energy sources.

Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

David Ehrenfeld is a professor of biology at Rutgers University and holds degrees in history, medicine, and zoology. He is the founding editor of the journal Conservation Biology, lectures internationally, and is the author of The Arrogance of Humanism and Beginning Again. His most recent book, Becoming Good Ancestors, focuses on the interactions, both negative and positive, among nature, community, and our exploding technology, and explains the critical role of honesty in moving towards a sustainable society. In the post below, Ehrenfeld talks about the role of energy in the presidential debates and suggests that the candidates have not talked about the really big energy problems that we face.

The presidential debates made one thing clear: regardless of who won, energy technologies are about to get a great deal of attention and money from the U.S. government in 2009. John McCain said that in a McCain presidency he would be trying to build dozens of nuclear plants, step up offshore drilling for oil, and fund “clean coal” technology. Barack Obama said he would focus on wind, solar, and geothermal power, on biodiesel, and on increasing energy efficiency. There was considerable overlap between their energy agendas, but neither candidate mentioned the two elephants in the room.

The first elephant, a medium sized one, is that the technologies the candidates said they would promote, and those they didn’t mention, are not sure bets for solving the energy crisis quickly, if at all. Some, like “clean coal,” hydrogen, and oil shale, come with inherent technological problems that will limit their usefulness for the foreseeable future. Others, like offshore drilling and nuclear power, will take years or decades before they pay a net energy dividend, and there are serious safety issues, which cannot be brushed aside. Biodiesel competes with agriculture for land, and can cause ecological problems – oil shale and “clean coal” need lots of fresh water. Geothermal, wind, solar, and tidal technologies, promising as they are, will be limited in the quantity of energy they can supply. Nuclear and many of the other energy technologies yield only electricity – unlike fossil fuels, they don’t provide chemical feedstock for making the plastics, synthetic fabrics, and many other chemicals that modern society demands. Regardless of our hopes and fantasies, there doesn’t seem to be a really cheap and super-abundant energy source like 20th Century oil and gas on the horizon.

It’s true that we have no choice but to continue to develop alternative energy technologies. In some cases, present problems will be overcome, and there is always the possibility that we will discover entirely new ways of producing energy. But it would be reckless to count on it. Chances are slim of finding a replacement for cheap oil and gas in time to keep our current economy running without tremendous disruptions.

And then there is the other elephant in the room. This second elephant is much bigger than the first – maybe it’s a mammoth. Yet if either candidate noticed it, he didn’t want to talk about it, although it’s simple enough to describe. Learning how to cope with the consequences of our excessive energy use, and acquiring some restraint will be even more important than finding new energy sources. In other words, what if we do find ways to keep on supplying ourselves with vast quantities of affordable energy, but do nothing to moderate our energy consumption? What happens then to what remains of the ecosystems on which we all depend?

The winning candidate is going to have to deal with all the secondary issues arising from our overuse of energy. How will we hold back global climate change if we keep on pumping energy into a stressed environment? With many of the ocean fisheries already gone or going, what will happen to the ones that are left if there is limitless energy to fuel all the world’s fishing fleets indefinitely? How long will the remaining tropical forests last if there is unlimited energy for indiscriminate logging and for shipping timber and timber products to markets thousands of miles away? If there is enough cheap energy to maintain high input agriculture – with its energy-consuming nitrogen fertilizers, huge machines, heavy pesticide applications, factory-farmed livestock, and corporate conglomerates – what will happen to our dwindling supply of precious farmlands, soils, animal and crop varieties, and farmers? These are the sorts of problems that will haunt the new president and the rest of the world even more than the problem of energy supply.

The only energy strategy that can make these elephants vanish is learning to get along with less energy. Conservation based on new lifestyles will be as much of a challenge as creating alternative energy technologies, but it’s faster, cheaper, and far more certain of success. Can we do it? Can conservatives and liberals ever agree on an agenda to move to a low-energy society? There is no choice if we want our society to survive.

ShareThis

I checked out Cuil, tempted by the Chronicle's coverage of the new, "bigger than Google" search engine. Not thrilling, IMO. But maybe it will grow on me. It does have a nice black screen, which might save lots of energy--but it might not. Did I mention we want to see Wall-E last weekend?

Marhsall Goldman is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at Wellesley College and Senior Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. In his book, Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia , Goldman chronicles Russia’s dramatic reemergence on the world stage, illuminating the key reason for its rebirth: the use of its ever-expanding energy wealth to reassert its traditional great power ambitions. In the article below Goldman reflects Russia’s role in increasing energy prices.

As energy prices rise to record heights, most consumers are unaware that it’s not only OPEC members who are the beneficiaries, but Russia which today actually produces more petroleum that Saudi Arabia. Russia has been the world’s largest producer of petroleum several times in the past including at the beginning of the twentieth century and again in the 1950s. But its role today when energy prices are at record levels has made Russia an especially important economic and political power, more so than ever before in the country’s history.

In more recent times, the bounty brought in by Russian petroleum exports has transformed Russia from near bankruptcy in August 1998 to levels of prosperity unmatched not only in Soviet but Czarist history. The Russian government today has built up nearly $500 billion in foreign currencies—not bad considering that less than a decade ago, in 1998, Russia’s treasury was effectively empty. Moreover the Russian company, Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of natural gas has just recently become the world’s second largest corporation as measured by the combined value of its corporate stock, a distinction that until just recently was held by General Electric. Today only Exxon-Mobil is larger than Gazprom, but Prime Minister Putin has promised that he will do all he can to help Gazprom reach first place. More than that Putin has begun to question why it is that the dollar is the world’s currency standard. As the US dollar loses value, the ruble has strengthened, gaining 20 per cent in recent weeks.

Not surprisingly both Putin and his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev his successor as President, have begun to demand that the ruble be included as a world currency (not bad considering that only a few years ago the ruble was not even convertible into other currencies) and that Russia have a say in selecting the leaders of international financial groups such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Given the likelihood that energy prices will remain at high levels for some time to come, it is likely that Russia will seek to use its new wealth to reassert itself as both an energy and a political superpower.

ShareThis

Avast ye, me maties! Thar be a bit o' confusion with the new Inkheart film. Arrrr.

Producer Andy Licht is suing New Line and author Cornelia Funke, claiming that he first submitted a manuscript of the book "Inkheart" for consideration as a feature film but was elbowed aside when the movie was greenlighted. New Line recently wrapped production on the Iain Softley-directed film, a children's fantasy starring Brendan Fraser, and set it for distribution in spring 2008..." (full details)