The shocking documentary film about the global financial crisis.
I’m sure many have already see the film Inside Job but we only watched it a few nights ago. Here’s the trailer.
The film is also available to watch on Top Documentary Films and is summarised on that website thus:
As he did with the occupation of Iraq in No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson shines a light on the global financial crisis in Inside Job.
Accompanied by narration from Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try – and paid the price.
Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States. Unlike Alex Gibney’s fiscal films,Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Casino Jack, Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages Gordon Gekko-like behavior, but the number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger.
Though the director isn’t as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush’s economic adviser.
Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it’s hard to know who to trust when conflicts of interest run rampant.
If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform. And in the category of unlikely heroes: former governor Eliot Spitzer, who fought against fraud as New York’s attorney general (he’s the subject of Gibney’s documentary Client 9).
Sony have available on their website a useful study guide. It appears to be written with students in mind but there is much valuable background information there for all. The guide, in pdf, may be seen here.
It would all have been worthwhile, if that’s the correct term, if we had seen effective regulatory responses from strong governments but, as the film points out, the millions of people on the receiving end of harsh, downward adjustment of personal wealth are still waiting.
Meanwhile, Europe continues to bleed, American housing is still trending downwards and the real effect of the Japanese earthquake is far from clear.
When we’re in love with God, the cosmos, our living garden planet and the steadily growing conscious interconnection between those who understand and serve, we live in awe and wonder and realize a peaceful natural serenity in the midst of our daily concerns and responsibilities.
As our world, our environment and our culture appear to be unraveling, it becomes increasingly necessary for human beings to slow down to re-energize. It’s clear that our species has recently lost spectacularly to natural forces in the Gulf of Mexico and Japan. It’s no coincidence that it’s our technology which continues to reveal the fundamental weakness of human ego. It’s more than a metaphor that our individual and species arrogance is our Achilles heel.
There are many people who fail to perceive, understand and appreciate parallel realities from a rational, sensory and unified perspective by learning to see through a mystical third eye. Mysticism may be misunderstood as simply thinking outside of the box. Forget about the box. Let go of self-centered fears. Become aware of being unaware. Nurture capabilities to perceive non-locally and act locally. What’s happening worldwide comes with the territory. We are each responsible for our collective destiny
Meditation reflects that imagination and creativity are necessary to invent and utilize tools. Creativity did not begin with humans and is not exclusive to humans. God’s nature precedes emerging technology. Morality derives from our common need for species unity.
The message is that God doesn’t care about money and the sky is no longer a human limit. The fact remains that except for occasional astronauts we all continue to live on the same planet. Those who understand need no explanation.
There is a need for productive use of intelligence and technology at our natural frontiers. We need to refuel world economies with clean energy visions that provide solutions for our present local planetary emergency.
We may choose to implement the changes necessary to avoid impending local ecosphere, cultural and technological meltdowns while preparing for a migration to the stars.
Unification is a common goal. Leaving the nest of our garden planet is a partial unifying solution for the problems of our exponentially expanding species. An alternative is that our obsession with the symbol of money will have the same dire consequences for those who are obsessed as for those whom are oppressed.
Please love God, maintain an even strain, follow your bliss, continue to learn, share and serve our common purpose under God, proceed as the way opens, cross the next bridge as we come to it, enjoy the journey and stay in touch.
Ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland has accelerated over the last 20 years, research shows, and will soon become the biggest driver of sea level rise.
From satellite data and climate models, scientists calculate that the two polar ice sheets are losing enough ice to raise sea levels by 1.3mm each year.
Overall, sea levels are rising by about 3mm (0.12 inches) per year.
2. Running on Oil
A recent email in my in-box from John Maudlin was all about Japan and oil. But there were some stark messages about our use of oil across the planet. Try this:
There are multiple sources for many of the metals Japan imports, so that if supplies stop flowing from one place it can get them from other places. The geography of oil is more limited. In order to access the amount of oil Japan needs, the only place to get it is the Persian Gulf. There are other places to get some of what Japan needs, but it cannot do without the Persian Gulf for its oil.
This past week, we saw that this was a potentially vulnerable source. The unrest that swept the western littoral of the Arabian Peninsula and the ongoing tension between the Saudis and Iranians, as well as the tension between Iran and the United States, raised the possibility of disruptions. The geography of the Persian Gulf is extraordinary. It is a narrow body of water opening into a narrow channel through the Strait of Hormuz. Any diminution of the flow from any source in the region, let alone the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, would have profound implications for the global economy. [My italics.]
3. Energy rethink
From Rob Dietz of CASSE, Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
As if we really required more prompting, the unfolding nuclear accidents in Japan are confirming what we must do. When a disaster strikes, the most urgent response is to help those who are suffering, prevent further calamities, and clean up the messes—it’s a time to get busy. But the next critical step is to figure out what we might do differently—it’s a time to take a step back and contemplate how we got where we are and where we might go from here. With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to rethink where and how we get our energy supplies.
And later in this article:
A New York Timesarticle provides an astonishing description of what happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant where the backup generators failed to cool the overheating reactor:
The central problem arises from a series of failures that began after the tsunami. It easily overcame the sea walls surrounding the Fukushima plant. It swamped the diesel generators, which were placed in a low-lying area, apparently because of misplaced confidence that the sea walls would protect them.
The key phrase in that description is “misplaced confidence.” Misplaced confidence sums up how we got to this point in history when it comes to selecting sources of energy to power our ever-expanding economy. Regardless of what smooth-talking P.R. professionals say, a nuclear power facility has been the site of a serious accident about every 10 years: witness Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, Tokaimura in Japan in 1999, and now Fukushima in 2011. “Safe nuclear power” is an offensive oxymoron.
Misplaced confidence also describes our failure to take big strides on phasing out fossil fuels. We have misplaced confidence that we’ll find a technological solution to climate destabilization, that the market will take care of the problem, and that Mother Nature will continue to warehouse the emissions from our economy with no consequences.
Maybe millions of us should be adopting the same query as Alice; “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” Because continuing as we are without understanding the urgent need to make ‘sense’, to take heed, of the living, conscious planet that is our only home is utter nonsense!
Back to Mr Rabbit, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!”
Yet another reflection of the precious planet upon which all life depends.
Watch this!
It comes towards the end of the fascinating documentary about the life of John Trudell. If you would like to watch the complete documentary, then that is available on-line also. It is described by the site Top Documentary Films thus:
At its most basic level, Trudell is an eye-opening documentary that challenges belief systems. At its loftiest, Trudell will inspire you to reawaken your spirit.
In the telling of Trudell, Rae invested more than 12 years chronicling John Trudell’s travels, spoken word, and politics. (The making of the movie, a journey in itself, is as much a story as the finished product).
The film combines archival, convert, and interview footage in a lyrical and naturally stylized manner, with abstract imagery mirroring the coyote nature of Trudell.
Pockmarked with adversity, counterbalanced by preservance, Trudell begins in the late sixties when John Trudell and a community group, Indians of All Tribes, occupy Alcatraz Island for 21 months. This creates international recognition of the American Indian cause and gives birth to the contemporary Indian people’s movement.
Rae revisits Alcatraz, returning to what John refers to as his birth. From Alcatraz, we follow John’s political journey as the national spokesman of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
During this tumultuous period, his work makes him one of the most highly politicalsubversives of the 1970′s, earning him one of the longest FBI files in history (more than 17,000 pages).
I am indebted to James Kwak, the author of this article on Baseline Scenario, for giving me permission to reproduce in full what was published on the 12th March, 2011.
By James Kwak
A friend passed on this article in The Motley Fool by Morgan Housel. It begins this way:
“Enough.
“That’s the title of Vanguard founder John Bogle’s fantastic book about measuring what counts in life.
“The title, as Bogle explains, comes from a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and novelist Joseph Heller, who are enjoying a party hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager. Vonnegut points out that their wealthy host had made more money in one day than Heller ever made from his novelCatch-22. Heller responds: ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have: enough.’”
The rest of the article discusses the cases of Rajat Gupta and Bernie Madoff, the former accused (but not criminally) and the latter convicted of illegal activity done after they had already been enormously successful, professionally and financially.
Housel asks, why do people push on — legally or illegally — when they have more of everything than anyone could possibly need? He summarizes the happiness research as follows:
“Money isn’t the key to happiness. What really gives people meaning and happiness is a combination of four things: Control over what they’re doing, progress in what they’re pursuing, being connected with others, and being part of something they enjoy that’s bigger than themselves.”
Of course, even if that’s true (and I think it is, except for the first sentence, on which more below), that doesn’t mean that people realize it. And if people don’t understand the relationship between their actions and their personal outcomes, we have no reason to believe that they will behave in a utility-maximizing way.
That said, renowned economist Justin Wolfers was recently on Planet Money saying that money does, indeed, buy happiness. He was discussing a paper he did with Betsey Stevenson looking at datasets covering many countries over many years. They find a positive relationship between income and subjective well-being, whether in the form of life satisfaction or happiness (although the relationship appears somewhat weaker for happiness).* In particular, they find that there is no satiation point, at least when making cross-country comparison (that is, the positive relationship persists even when you look only at countries that are at least moderately wealth).
At one point in the Planet Money interview, I believe Wolfers did say that when it comes to happiness, someone (Kahneman, I think) had estimated that there is a satiation point at around $75,000 per year. But, he went on, the issue is that we may want subjective states other than simple happiness. So, for example, we may want the subjective feeling of power, whether or not it actually makes us happy in the moment. And those other subjective states may not have satiation points, or they may have little to do with income.
But ultimately I agree with Heller. It is a great thing to have “enough,” and to know you have enough. And that is a feeling that for some people, apparently, no amount of money can buy.
* The difference, put simply, is between whether you feel happy at this moment and whether you feel satisfied with your life as a whole. For more, see this fantastic TED Talk by Daniel Kahneman (which I have recommended before).
Income inequality, when it becomes excessive, is very corrosive to a society.
This is clearly a complex subject because one man’s excess is another man’s just reward for building a successful business that employs his fellow citizens.
Nonetheless, I do want to touch on this sensitive area because, to my mind, they are connected with the tragic story that is the point of this article.
This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
Some of the information may come as a surprise to many people. In fact, I know it will be a surprise and then some, because of a recent study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) showing that most Americans (high income or low income, female or male, young or old, Republican or Democrat) have no idea just how concentrated the wealth distribution actually is.
Later on, Prof. Domhoff writes:
The Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2010).
That table and the whole article is powerful and a well-worth reading. Read it here.
Stay with me a little longer. Here’s an extract from an article from Nicholos Kristof of the New York Times written in November last year.
Nicholas Kristof
In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie.
But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
By the way, Kristof has his own blog site and added material from him about this topic and readers’ comments are here.
Now to the core of this article on Learning from Dogs which, I passionately believe, is closely tied in to the background theme already expressed here. It’s from the blogsite Corrente and, once again, I am indebted to Naked Capitalism for having it in a recent set of links.
It concerns Jack, his family and their house.
The House that Jack’s Bank Took
Jack was a friendly man, who always had a pleasant word and a smile and handshake for everyone. The men hung with him at barbeques and discussed sports. He was strong, had a belly, and always wore a baseball cap. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Mary. He was good to his 4 kids and took care of his oldest child when he had a breakdown in his early twenties. He went to all school and family events and encouraged his children in their dreams. He took care of the family needs and finances. He was a small business owner and had invented his product, which a short while ago became outmoded. He always decorated the house with lots of Christmas decorations and candles. They are still up. He lost his house to foreclosure and the family was given 3 days to move out.
He drove into the deep woods and drank poison to make sure he was dead. I knew him. My family knew him; he lived within walking distance of one of us. At his funeral his childhood sweetheart and their children told a lot of Jack stories. The family did their best to resurrect him to our eyes. One of his kids sang and the eldest read a poem he’d written. Mary said she didn’t know what she was going to do and that she would now have to rely on those from town sitting in the packed chapel pews. There are other houses nearby that haven’t been foreclosed on but Jack’s house was nice and had a good view. The bank has now given Mary 3 weeks to move out.
It was written on the 15th February, 2011; you can read it here. Click on the link and read some of the comments expressed – very powerful.
Wish I could think of something apt to say but I can’t. All I can feel is great sadness and a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that this ‘Jack’ story is being echoed in many other places.
More on the way we are most likely treating Planet Earth.
At the start of the week the first of a shortish series of articles was published, reflecting my support of the book, World on the Edge. Here’s what I wrote then:
I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge. Details of the book are here.
At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon. It’s opening my eyes hugely!
I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.
So today, I move on to the next chapter.
Chapter two, Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests.
The term ‘fossil aquifer’ demonstrated that not all aquifers are the same. Let me quote, “There are two sources of irrigation water: underground water and surface water. Most underground water comes from aquifers that are regularly replenished with rainfall; these can be pumped indefinitely as long as water extraction does not exceed recharge. But a distinct minority of aquifers are fossil aquifers – containing water put down eons ago. Since these do not recharge, irrigation ends whenever they are pumped dry.“
Saudi Arabia started drilling for water from their underground fossil aquifer when after the Arab oil-export in the 1970s, the Saudis realised that they were dependent on imported grain and set out to create self-sufficiency in grain by way of irrigation.
In January 2008 the Saudis announced that this huge aquifer was largely depleted!
From 2007 to 2010 the Saudi wheat harvest dropped from nearly 3 million tons to around 1 million tons.
The likelihood is that the last Saudi harvest will be around 2012.
One can’t imagine how the management of a fine and proud country such as Saudi Arabia could be so foolish! But slightly closer to home …..
In most of the leading U.S. irrigation states, the amount of irrigated area has peaked and begun to decline.
California, historically the irrigation leader, has seen irrigated areas fall from nearly 9 million acres in 1997 to an estimated 7.5 million acres in 2010, that’s a 16% drop! Why?
Aquifer depletion and diversion of water to fast-growing cities!
Then there’s Texas. Their irrigated area peaked in 1978 at 7 million acres, now down to 5 million acres, a loss of 29%, as the Ogallala fossil aquifer under the Texas panhandle becomes depleted.
Colorado has seen its irrigated are shrink by 15%
Arizona’s irrigated area is shrinking.
Florida’s irrigated area is shrinking.
Then there’s India. Then there’s Mexico. And on and on. I could quote so much more from this single chapter but – you get the message!
Here’s how the chapter ends.
Today more than half the world’s peoples live in countries with food bubbles. The question for each of these countries is not whether the bubble will burst, but when – and how the government will cope with it. [Read that last sentence again, folks. Ed]
Will governments be able to import grain to offset production losses? For some countries, the bursting of the bubble may well be catastrophic. For the world as a whole, the near-simultaneous bursting of several national food bubbles, as aquifers are depleted could create unmanageable food shortages.
This situation poses an imminent threat to food security and political stability. We have a choice to make. We can continue with over-pumping as usual and suffer the consequences. Or we can launch a worldwide effort to stabilise aquifers by raising water productivity – patterning the campaign on the highly successful effort to raise grainland productivity that was launched a half-century ago.
H’mmm. Tough reading.
Amazon Drought in 2005.
The above photograph was taken from this website; here’s an extract from the accompanying article.
Food inflation is here and it’s here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.
This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation’s supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We’ve seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.
But as I wrote in the previous article, “Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out.” Lester Brown’s book sets out some strong advice on the way forward.
This opened my eyes; thought I would share it with you.
I know that many of the several hundred readers of Learning from Dogs are not in the USA. But many are. Hence me deciding, after mulling it over, to publish in full the contents of an email that came in a short while ago from the organisation Change.
Here’s that email.
Dear Paul,
Valentine’s Day, which accounts for 40% of fresh flower sales annually, is fast approaching.
Not always a sweet smell.
If you’re planning to order a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers — the world’s largest florist — you should know where most of those flowers really come from.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Many retailers — such as Whole Foods and Stop & Shop — have taken the important first step of offering Fair Trade flowers to consumers who want no part of these abuses. Fair Trade certified farms must adhere to strict standards for workers’ rights, which prevents the abuses described above.
1-800-Flowers is the largest florist in the world. Yet they offer no Fair Trade flowers at all.
1-800-Flowers uses a certifying agency called Florverde, which ensures that its flower farms measure up to certain environmental standards — this is a good thing. But Florverde has almost no labor standards: A farm can be certified even if it uses forced labor.Indeed, Florverde is owned by the Association of Colombian Flower Exporters, so it has a financial incentive to keep wages low and suppress workers’ rights.
This is the week before Valentine’s Day — more people will purchase flowers during the next seven days than any other week this year. This is our best opportunity to demand a promise from 1-800-Flowers to join its competitors in offering Fair Trade flowers. So after you sign the petition, please share this email widely and post on Facebook — do everything you can topressure 1-800-Flowers to show a little respect for the women who toil in unbearable circumstances. The women without whom they’d have no flowers to sell.
Click the link below to tell 1-800-Flowers to make a promise this Valentine’s Day to sell Fair Trade flowers:
Since this campaign began, the company has emailed to tell us that it will post more information on its website about the farms that supply their flowers. But this is a far cry from selling fair trade products — and we have much more to do to make sure workers are protected. This is the week to do it.
Thanks for taking action,
Patrick and the Change.org team
If you feel so minded to sign the petition, which can be done by people outside the USA, then that may be done here.
An interesting companion to the World on the Edge book
Regular readers of the Blog will know that yesterday an article was published, the first of a series, looking more closely at the book by Lester Brown of EPI called World on the Edge. That article followed on from this Post, Group Human Insanity, and yesterday’s Post, Total, Utter Madness, Pt 1.
Today, if you will forgive the emotional battering that the book and this film create, I want to draw your attention to a film that was produced in 2007, called What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire.
It was lent to us by John Hulburt, who lives in Payson, and holds many views that are close to the views of the founders of Learning from Dogs. John has offered to write the odd guest article for the Blog, which is fantastic.
Anyway, back to the film. Here are a couple of trailers.
A 2-minute trailer giving an overview of the film ..
and another one dipping into more detail.
And if you still want more, then here’s an interview of the two behind the film, Producer Sally Erickson and Writer/Director Tim Bennett. Twenty-seven minutes long but so what. Watch it!
We really do have so much to learn from dogs! (Before it’s too late!)
The way we are most likely treating Planet Earth is almost beyond comprehension.
I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge. Details of the book are here.
At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon. It’s opening my eyes hugely!
I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.
Chapter One, On the Edge, sets the background:
Summer of 2010 sees record-high temperates in Moscow, Russia’s grain harvest shrank by 40 million tons (40%) to 60 million tons.
Record high temperatures in south-central Pakistan were recorded. Snow and glaciers in the Himalayas melted fast, 20 million Pakistanis were affected by the resultant flooding, 2,000 died, 6 million acres of crops damaged.
A 2002 study by Mathis Wackernagel concluded that, “humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. By 1999, global demand’s on the earth’s natural systems exceeded sustainable yields by 20 percent. Ongoing calculations show it at 50 percent in 2007. Stated otherwise, it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption.” [my emphasis]
“No previous civilisation has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours.”
Let’s turn to NOAA. A few salient points from there State of the Climate – Global Review for 2010.
For 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest such period on record, at 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). 1998 is the third warmest year-to-date on record, at 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average.
The 2010 Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest year on record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average. The 2010 Southern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the sixth warmest year on record, at 0.51°C (0.92°F) above the 20th century average.
The global land surface temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the second warmest on record, at 0.96°C (1.73°F) above the 20th century average. The warmest such period on record occurred in 2007, at 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average.
2010 is becoming the year of the heatwave, with record temperatures set in 17 countries.
Record highs have occurred in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – the three nations at the centre of the eastern European heatwave which has lasted for more than three weeks – but also African, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries.
Temperatures in Moscow, which have been consistently 20C above normal, today fell to 31C (86F), and President Dmitry Medvedev cancelled a state of emergency in three out of seven Russian regions affected by forest fires.
Thousand of hectares of forest burned in the fires, killing 54 people and leaving thousands homeless. For days, Moscow was shrouded in smog, and environmentalists raised fears that the blaze could release radioactive particles from areas contaminated in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Wildfires have also swept through northern Portugal, killing two firefighters and destroying 18,000 hectares (44,500 acres) of forests and bushland since late July. Some 600 firefighters were today struggling to contain 29 separate fires.
But the extreme heat experienced in Europe would barely have registered in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Pakistan and Sudan, all of which have recorded temperatures of more than 47C (115F) since June. The number of record highs is itself a record – the previous record was for 14 new high temperatures in 2007.
The freak weather conditions, which have devastated crops and wildlife, are believed to have killed thousands of elderly people, especially in Russia and northern India. The 2003 European heatwave killed about 15,000 people.
Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out. More about this soon.
Learning from Dogs 