Bertrand
Bertrand Deprez | age: 34 years old | city: Brussels (BEL)
I speak: fre and also eng
Who am I?
My contributions and my activities
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-25 05:29:27
The E.U.'s New Leaders - Who call?
Although the coverage of the US (mass) media on the EU's new leaders has been very limited, the article of the Washington Post probably reflects the mood among D.C. foreign-policymakers according to an article from the World Politics Review. On the blog farawaysoclose.
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-18 06:36:00
The new El Dorado?
The name of El Dorado came to be used metaphorically of any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired - although another metaphor used to represent El Dorado as an ultimate prize or "Holy Grail" that one might spend one's life seeking… When it comes to climate change, both metaphors can be applied to California. Back to the 70’s, the 1973 energy crisis could be seen as the starting point of the ‘Green Revolution.” The United States faced shortages of electricity, gasoline, and heating oil. Blackouts plagued a few cities and industries, most spectacularly in New York City during July of 1977. The oil crisis was the driving motivation for California to adopt a first package of measures aiming to improve the energy efficiency of the economy. Climate change was not a public issue at this stage and this is only since the end of the 90’s that the link between climate energy efficiency has been made. A key player is named Jerry Brown, the Democrat Governor who succeeded Reagan as governor (and who could be, ironically, the Democrat candidate running for Governor in 2010). Brown’s policies were encouraged by people like Ed Rosenfeld (the "Father of Energy Efficiency") who helped him to realize the potential of energy efficiency. Brown and his successors have imposed energy efficiency standards for products and buildings which have become a reference for the rest of the world since then. Another big step was to decouple energy utilities’ revenues from the amount of energy they sell. This arrangement creates a fundamental conflict between a utility’s interest in selling more energy and the public interest in conserving it. Energy efficiency and decoupling have helped California to consume electricity far more thriftily than the rest of America. On the blog farawaysoclose.
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-16 03:59:48
Tocqueville, the Third Way and Obama
"I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress." Tocqueville The city of Saint-Louis has been known as the "Gateway to the West" because of the important role it played in the westward expansion of the United States. The city is quite characteristic of a medium-level city in the US, in term of urban planning, population, level of life etc. During my stay in Saint-Louis, I met a few people working for non profit associations in various fields such as agricultural preservation, immigration, education and community gardening. Although an association is very different from one to another, they all seem to share the common objective of serving the “public interest” when it is not being handled by the public sector, in particular in the field of health, immigration and poverty reduction. Approximately 26.4 percent of Americans over the age of 16 volunteered through or for an organization in 2008 (not mentioning the percentage of Americans being actually employed by the non profit sector). During his travels which took him from the East Coast to the Mississippi River, Tocqueville already highlighted the role played by institutions of associations and their connection to democracy. Tocqueville writes that "the strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it." Tocqueville’s famous views on American equality do not seem to be pertinent in modern America anymore. But his observation on the powerfulness of the grassroots’ movement is still very accurate. Which parallel with today US politics? The absence of an identified ideological framework around Obama’s policies gives many opportunities to Republicans to attack his set of reform as being a kind of “disguised socialism.” This is wrong obviously but Obama has not yet a clear ideological reference which could explain what he is aiming to do. If Obama has a deep respect for the market and wants to minimize the state's footprint on it, he does not want to link his policies on climate change, healthcare reform and economy recovery with the Third Way ideology of the generation of New Democrats (a parallel can be drawn with the today’s attitude of European social democrats towards the Third Way). In the US, the concept refers to significantly right-wing and laissez-faire policies. The ideology has been severely undermined by the New Democrats, who were irrationally exuberant about the economic trends of the 1990s. On the blog farawaysoclose.
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-12 14:23:54
If Detroit has a future…
In 1950, the city of Detroit was the fourth largest in the US. Today, Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 912,062 residents. Why? The Motor City and the former capital of the Motown label has been in a brutal downward spiral for the past forty years because of the combination of the decline of the car’s industry and the racial riots of the 60’s (which have continued until the early 80’s). The riots were a blow from which Detroit never recovered said an interesting article published in The Week a few days ago (http://www.theweek.com/article/index/101313/Detroit_A_city_on_the_brink) Nearly 30 percent of the city, an area almost the size of San Francisco, has been abandoned to “urban prairie”. Detroit is seen as a strange place in the US – so much that The New York Times has rent a house downtown to send a few embedded journalists for a year. A kind of living lab experience… After World War II, Detroit was home to 1.6 million whites. The population today is 83 percent black with a unemployment close to 30% (about the average in the US during the great depression symbolically). Detroit is seen by many in the US as a kind of postapocalyptic nightmare. But this is a false perception. While the city has been hardly hit by the economic crisis, it has become the centre of political attention in the past few years. Sarah Palin would have like the state of Michigan to become the focus of the elections campaign last year whilst the Obama administration is paying a special attention to the development of green businesses in Michigan. On the blog farawaysoclose.
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-11 05:04:14
A country in a funk?
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows that Americans were more pessimistic about the direction of the country than in October. They disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy a bit more than before. But Obama's approval rating stands at 54 percent which is not too bad in current circumstances - Afghanistan, economic crisis, healthcare reform etc. And many have still confidence that Obama can make it. On the blog farawaysoclose.
BLOG / farawaysoclose
2009-11-08 00:25:57
Towards a “Green deal”?
I take the opportunity of a trip across the United State to share some of my (EU made) subjective views about some of the most emblematic cities in the United States: Washington and New York, the “European cities”, Detroit, the former motherhood of the car industry, Saint-Louis, mainstream America, Sacramento - California and Houston, the capital of the independent State of Texas. After a few days in Washington and New-York, I am still trying to make up my mind about the US stance on climate change. Whilst several hardcore republicans still deny the reality of climate change, the political clash is not a traditional democrats vs. republicans fight. It is mainly driven by very vocal corporate interests made of coil, steel (etc) producers whose many of them are located in the middle of the US. On top of that, many republicans have a real problem with the cap and trade regulation which is seen as something quite similar to what remains the worst political injure here, “European socialism”. The picture is not black or white though, the US chamber of commerce which has tried to undermine climate legislation efforts, recently said it supports most of the principles outlined in a bipartisan climate change proposal offered by Sens. John Kerry, (D., Mass.) and Lindsey Graham, (R., N.C.) last week. But the general feeling is that no agreement should be reached before Copenhagen, which would put Obama in a difficult position on the international scene. The victory of Republicans in Virginia, New Jersey and New-York last week is likely to push Obama to refocus the priorities of its administration on jobs and growth – it’s the economy stupid, even more than in the 90’s, especially with a level of unemployment which does not seem sustainable for a country like the US - a "scarymonster" for many Americans whatever their political colors are. On the blog farawaysoclose.
