The Great Debate UK

from Environment Forum:

Pure water from solar power; will it catch on?

 Remote villages in developing countries might benefit from these twin 40-ft long containers (left) -- a water purification system driven by solar power -- as a substitute for noisy diesel-powered generators, trucks bringing in water or people spending hours every day walking to fetch water.

That's the hope of the makers, environmental technology group SwissINSO Holding Inc. The small company has recently won its first contracts to supply the systems to Algeria and Malaysia and is aiming to sell 42 units of what it calls the world's "first high-volume, 100 percent-solar turnkey water purification system" in 2011.

The system, an interesting-sounding technology in a world where more than a billion people lack access to fresh water, could also have extra uses from disaster relief to construction sites or to helping armies stay healthy in remote regions.

Chief Executive Yves Ducommun (below right) says that the machines, housed in the two containers, can pump 100,000 litres of drinking water per day for 20 years at a price of less than $0.03 per litre, including running costs. The system costs between $800,000 and $1.2 million up front, depending on factors such as how many solar panels are needed to drive the purification, which filters out dirt and toxins, or salt from seawater, through a membrane.

That is a lot of money for a village in sub-Saharan Africa -- but water is often a huge cost over 20 years and governments or aid agencies might be interested: the makers reckon it supplies enough water for about 5,000 people. Freeing people from walking miles to collect water allows them to do other things, like work or study.

"It's a cost, but if you think of the cost of carrying water by tanker or truck to remote places, or a unit powered by diesel you are in a better position with our system," Ducommun told me. And climate change may make water supplies less predictable in coming decades with effects such as floods, heatwaves, drought and desertification.

It's a bit like long-life lightbulbs: the up-front costs are higher but they last far longer: but it's hard to convince people with the counter-intuitive idea of saving money by spending more now. Investors have not flocked to the idea -- the rarely traded shares fell after a major investor pulled out last year, Ducommun said. They last traded at $0.42 against a high of $1.75 in early 2010, giving the company a market capitalisation of about $30 million.

from FaithWorld:

Fears rise over growing anti-Muslim feeling in U.S.

Amid threats of Koran burning and a heated dispute over a planned Muslim cultural center in New York, Muslim leaders and rights activists warn of growing anti-Muslim feeling in America partly provoked for political reasons.  "Many people now treat Muslims as 'the other' -- as something to vilify and to discriminate against," said Daniel Mach of the American Civil Liberties Union. And, he said, some people have exploited that fear in the media, "for political gain or cheap notoriety."

The imam leading the project to build the cultural center, including a prayer room, near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks said there was a rise of what he called "Islamophobia" and the debate had been radicalized by extremists. "The radicals in the United States and the radicals in the Muslim world feed off each other. And to a certain extent, the attention that they've been able to get by the media has even aggravated the problem," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in an interview with ABC news aired on Sunday.

Mistrust of Muslims has grown in recent years. A Pew poll released in August found the number of Americans with a favorable view of Islam was 30 percent, down from 41 percent in 2005. American feelings about Islam are partisan -- 54 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Islam compared to 27 percent of Democrats. In November 2001 there was not the same partisan divide of opinions on Islam.

Some believe Obama could convert minds were he to mount the type of public relations campaign which saw Bush attend mosques and talk with Muslim leaders back in 2001. Alan Cooperman of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said, "Americans' opinions of Muslims became more positive after 9/11 than they were before 9/11."

Pew polls from 2001 found 59 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Muslim Americans two months after the attacks compared to 45 percent in March of that year, and that the biggest improvement was among conservative Republicans. Cooperman credited the increase to Bush's outreach to show the Muslim community as a religion of peace.

Read the full story here. Click for a slideshow of photos of the 9/11 commemorations here.

Politicians need to get a grip on what matters

-Alison Steed is editor and co-founder of the personal finance website for women MyMoneyDiva.com. The opinions expressed are her own.-

The battle lines are already being drawn in this election year. Although none of us knows for sure when the election will be, there are signs that “May” is going to be a significant month.

Winning the hearts and minds of the nation is key winning an election, and as it stands, there is plenty of work to be done there for all parts of the community. A televised debate for the first time in the UK will change the way the election is fought, although it seems slightly pathetic that our politicians want the debates “themed” so they can swot up on the answers beforehand.

No doubt we will hear the same platitudes trotted out about the need to return to “family values” and that “educashun” is paramount, that “schoolsanhospitals” need more cash than they are already getting. With the country’s national debt rising by around 4,835 pounds a second cuts are needed, and are being talked about, but are unlikely to win votes.

Families have been a focus of the incumbent government to try and win the hearts and minds of the nation throughout its 12-year tenure. Yet as with so many things in politics, what is said to be a stated aim is so often contradicted by the action that succeeds it.

Tax credits are a prime example. With a system so complicated that the only person I know who understands it properly is an accountant who decided to learn Mandarin “for fun”, is it any wonder that so many problems have occurred?

Constant overpayments, the pressure of families to repay tax credits that have been wrongly calculated – and yes, they are supposed to work out for themselves how much they are due – not to mention the fact that what is due is worked out on the basis of earnings a year behind the current year, because of the way the system is set up.

Farming battles and the future of food

Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against anti-poverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.

The Food Chain Campaign is not about becoming vegetarian, say the Friends of the Earth, it is about putting pressure on the government to mitigate the damaging impact of meat and dairy production on the environment.

“The meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet,” argues the group. “A hidden chain links animals in British factory farms to rainforest destruction in South America.”

London-based Kirtana Chandrasekaran shared the goals of the campaign with Reuters.

Related Story: The fight over the future of food

What European election campaign?

- Richard Whitaker is a lecturer in European politics at the University of Leicester, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Europe rarely features highly in European election campaigns in Britain. In the 2004 campaign the word Euro more often than not referred to a football tournament rather than the single currency. And for at least two reasons, we shouldn’t expect European integration to be much discussed.

First, parties have little incentive to campaign on Europe because it features a long way down the list of issues British voters consider important, well behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s leadership, expenses, the economy, immigration and crime. Second, to the extent that parties are internally divided on the question of how far Europe should go, they are less likely to push the issue up the agenda.

In the current campaign we might have expected what little talk there was about Europe to cover the Lisbon Treaty on which the Conservatives, in contrast to the two other main parties, have called for a referendum, and the question of whether Britain should remain a member of the EU amid calls from Eurosceptic parties on the right and left, for us to withdraw from the organisation.

While Lisbon and EU membership have been mentioned, the reality is that discussion of Europe seems to have featured even less than the low level we might have predicted. Such is the domination of the campaign by the issue of MPs’ allowances that most of the main parties’ European Election Broadcasts – a place where they have the opportunity to talk specifically about European issues – made little or no mention of Europe.

Perhaps the paucity of talk about European integration would matter little if there was nothing at stake. But, like it or not, the European Parliament’s (EP) legislative powers have greatly increased over recent years such that it is now heavily involved in the regulation of the EU’s single market.

The balance of power in the EP matters between those favouring greater control of markets and those preferring deregulation. The outcome of the EP elections will also have an effect on the choice of European Commission President, who will have to be approved by the Parliament before taking office.