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• The Earth has a Fever: An Important Message About Our Future...
  by Curtis Bard

  This message is so timely, so important, that I wanted to share it with all my RB friends and acquaintances. Yes, today our world is sick…

  This message is so timely, so important, that I wanted to share it with all my RB friends and acquaintances. Yes, today our world is sick; sick in many ways, and now our world has a fever. If I tried for the rest of my life I don’t think I could express my concerns about our global situation any better than Al Gore has done here. We need to personally, collectively, and actively begin to do our very best to discern what the Truth is concerning our relationship to each other, to our earth, and to our God. Gore’s speech is rather long, but in my humble opinion almost each and every sentence has important meaning and the ring of truth, and should be a wake-up call for all of us. All good people want to help and do whatever they can to make our world a better place, but the inevitable question arises: “What can I do?” You can start by buying products that are clearly better for the environment and facilitate energy independence. You can start communicating your concerns to others and to your news agencies, and to your government representatives. You can confront and address your own inner conception of how our government and our citizens should react to coming threats and how we can work together to help each other. And you can apply subtle pressure on business and government to begin to accept a less selfish, less wasteful, and more w/holistically enlightened approach to social and economic problems and their potential solutions. And as difficult as it is, you can also start by addressing your own shortcomings as an individual, and by trying to be a little less selfish, a little less consumptive, a little less ego driven, and a little more concerned about the welfare of others and the proper stewardship of the earth. Cast all fear aside and find just purpose and healthy development in this new opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. If you have any helpful ideas or ways that the rest of us can start to live more appropriately and harmoniously with each other and with our environment, please pass them along and share them with the rest of us… / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-- Dear Curtis, I wanted to share with you my speech from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. Check AlGore.com for video of the event later today. Thank you, Al Gore SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE / OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE / DECEMBER 10, 2007 / OSLO, NORWAY / Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen. I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it. Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace. Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name. Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose. Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.” The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly. However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.” So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun. As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right. Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now. In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed. We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane. Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day. But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless—which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable. We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions. Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: “Mutually assured destruction.” More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a “nuclear winter.” Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race. Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.” As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.” But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge. These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves. No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong. Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion? Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.” In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free. Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility. There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly. We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.” That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously. This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world. When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.” In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation. My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive. Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored. We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community. Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions. This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself. Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed. We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide. And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon—with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis. The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority. But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act. Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment. These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths: The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow. That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.” We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now. The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.” The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?” Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?” We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

• War is Over - All About Creativity, Truth, The Paradigm Shift, and 2012 - Merry Christmas?
  by Curtis Bard

  Some people believe that multi-universes and multiple-dimensions that contain life are infinitely large and also infinitely small, and th…

  Some people believe that multi-universes and multiple-dimensions that contain life are infinitely large and also infinitely small, and that our nuclear devices have the potential to disrupt or actually destroy entire infinitely small or dimensionally close domains that are teaming with life. Perhaps this potential threat that we pose to ourselves and to others is one of the reasons we are soon to be warned to alter our course; to transcend our destructive tendencies, become more enlightened, and develop in a more harmonious and compatible way. People are beginning to awaken spiritually and realize that everything is connected, that God and the creative force is within us and we are within it. That we need a new, more truthful, paradigm that allows us to be more loving, forgiving, peaceful, and whole. That we are co-creators of our future and of our perception of truth and reality. That we are all One, and that globally we are all One Family, and we should act accordingly, with an attitude of respect, dignity, and equality of value toward each other, the Earth, and toward all of life. Free will is a universal quality or characteristic that all high-level life shares, so these important choices are up to us. If good people work together we can overcome our cultural differences, embrace the vast diversity of life, solve our global problems, and change our evolutionary direction toward a more healthy and productive outcome. Click below on YouTube for the new John Lennon peace video produced recently by Yoko Ono. (The lyrics are there too.) / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvNRHrKyaX4 Their message and best advice was, and still is, the same. This is their Dream with a capital D, this is their Vision of the Future, this is what they truly Believe In, this is their fondest Wish, this is their most heart-felt Prayer. And now for the first time in human history, this must also become the Shared Vision that all good people willingly adopt. The ONE thing we must do together if we are to survive as a species: WAR IS OVER / If you want it What do you want for Christmas now and in 2012?

• Help urgently needed!!!!
  by Sue Wickham

  Hi Everyone, I’m hoping that someone will be available to do my second stint at the Rialto this Thursday 14th from 10am until 2pm. My…

  Hi Everyone, I’m hoping that someone will be available to do my second stint at the Rialto this Thursday 14th from 10am until 2pm. My Husband has surprised me with a trip to Macao and unfortunately we leave on Thursday for a week. It’s really really easy – all you have to do is sit there, look pretty (or handsome!), smile a lot and sound intelligent when you are asked anything!!! / Oh…. and sell heaps – that would also help! If you can help, I’d be eternally grateful (and might even buy you a pressie from Macau!!) Thanks in advance SOMEONE!!! Sue

• NEW GROUP - It's a Small World
  by Adriana Glackin

  Yeh! This new group is up and running. Come and join here and have fun in our mini worlds…

  Yeh! This new group is up and running. Come and join here and have fun in our mini worlds! =D

• Royal Photographic Society
  by Jurgen Dabeedin

  I am pleased and proud to have recently joined the Royal Photographic Society, as Associate member. I’ll be working for my Fellowship nex…

  I am pleased and proud to have recently joined the Royal Photographic Society, as Associate member. I’ll be working for my Fellowship next, so wish me luck!

• Snap shot of Oil-Global warming
  by Dave Sandersfeld

  Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth / Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits By Steven Mufson / Washington Post Staff Wri…

  Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth / Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits By Steven Mufson / Washington Post Staff Writer / Saturday, November 10, 2007; A01 High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone. The consequences are evident in minds and mortar: anger at Chinese motor-fuel pumps and inflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil. In Burma, recent demonstrations were triggered by a government decision to raise fuel prices. In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth. High prices have given a boost to oil-rich Alaska, which in September raised the annual oil dividend paid to every man, woman and child living there for a year to $1,654, an increase of $547 from last year. In other states, high prices create greater incentives for pursuing non-oil energy projects that once might have looked too expensive and hurt earnings at energy-intensive companies like airlines and chemical makers. Even Kellogg’s cited higher energy costs as a drag on its third-quarter earnings. With crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel, there is no end in sight to the redistribution of more than 1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Earlier oil shocks generated giant shifts in wealth and pools of petrodollars, but they eventually faded and economies adjusted. This new high point in petroleum prices has arrived over four years, and many believe it will represent a new plateau even if prices drop back somewhat in coming months. “There’s never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way we’ve seen the last couple of years,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices “are not spiking; they’re just rising,” he added. The benefits, to the tune of $700 billion a year, are flowing to the world’s oil-exporting countries. Two of those nations - Iran and Venezuela - may be better able to defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection. The world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is using its rejuvenated oil riches to build four cities. Projects like these are designed to burnish the country’s image, develop a non-oil economy and generate enough employment to maintain social stability. One is King Abdullah Economic City, a mega-project on the kingdom’s west coast. According to Emaar, a real estate development firm in Dubai, the city will cost $27 billion and be spread across an area three times the size of Manhattan. A contractor who works there said a wide, palm tree-lined boulevard cuts a dozen miles across an ocean of sand and ends at the Red Sea. Construction workers in hard hats are navigating excavators, dredging land and digging foundations for a power plant, a desalinization plant and a port. The project will eventually include an industrial district, a financial island, a university and a residential area, and is expected to house 2 million people. Despite mega-projects like this, Saudi Arabia is running a budget surplus. It has paid down much of the foreign debt it accumulated in the late 1990s and is adding to its foreign-exchange reserves. Russia, the world’s No. 2 oil exporter, shows oil’s transformational impact in the political as well as the economic realm. When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, less than two years after the collapse of the ruble and Russia’s default on its international debt, the country’s policymakers worried that 2003 could bring another financial crisis. The country’s foreign-debt repayments were scheduled to peak at $17 billion that year. Inside the Kremlin, with Putin nearing the end of his second and final term as president, that sum now looks like peanuts. Russia’s gold and foreign-currency reserves have risen by more than that amount just since July. The soaring price of oil has helped Russia increase the federal budget tenfold since 1999 while paying off its foreign debt and building the third-largest gold and hard-currency reserves in the world, about $425 billion. “The government is much stronger, much more self-assured and self-confident,” said Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute of Energy Policy in Moscow and a former deputy minister of energy. “It believes it can cope with any economic crisis at home.” With good reason. Using energy revenue, the government has built up a $150 billion rainy-day account called the Stabilization Fund. “This financial independence has contributed to more assertive actions by Russia in the international arena,” Milov said. “There is a strong drive within part of the elite to show that we are off our knees.” The result: Russia is trying to reclaim former Soviet republics as part of its sphere of influence. Freed of the need to curry favor with foreign oil companies and Western bankers, Russia can resist what it views as American expansionism, particularly regarding NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense in Eastern Europe, and forge an independent approach to contentious issues like Iran’s nuclear program. The abundance of petrodollars has also led to a consumer boom evident in the sprawling malls, 24-hour hyper-markets, new apartment and office buildings, and foreign cars that have become commonplace not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg but in provincial cities. Average income has doubled under Putin, and the number of people living below the poverty line has been cut in half. But many economists have called petroleum reserves a bane, saying they enable oil-rich countries to avoid taking steps that would diversify their economies and spread wealth more equally. Russia, for example, has rising inflation, soaring imports and a lack of new investment in the very industry that is fueling the boom. ‘Our Oil Wealth Is a Curse’ The problems are worse in Nigeria, which is battling an insurgency that has curtailed output in the oil-rich Niger River Delta. The central government has been disbursing its remaining oil revenue, though corruption has undermined the program’s effectiveness. The government has also cut domestic gas subsidies, raising prices several times over in the name of improving health, education and infrastructure. “Our oil wealth is a curse rather than a blessing for our country,” said Halima Dahiru, a 36-year-old housewife, as she waited for a bus near a Texaco station in Kano, the commercial capital of northern Nigeria. Billows of dust enveloped the gas station as vehicles frenetically cruised along the laterite-covered road, adding to the harmattan haze that blankets the city. “You go to bed and wake up the next morning to hear the government has increased the price of petrol, and you have to live with it,” she said. “The only sensible thing to do is to adjust to the new reality because nothing will make the government listen to public outcry.” Newly oil-exporting countries such as Sudan and Chad and the companies operating there - including Malaysia’s Petronas and France’s Total - are winners. Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, is booming, with new skyscrapers and five-star luxury hotels, despite U.S. and European sanctions aimed at pressuring the country to halt attacks against people in the western Darfur region. Chad’s government has used some of its oil revenue to buy weapons rather than develop the country’s economy. In eastern Chad, there are hardly any gas stations; people buy their gas - often for motorcycles, not cars - from roadside stands that sell it out of glass bottles. Oil-importing countries face their own challenges. The hardest hit are the poorest. Last year, Senegal’s budget deficit doubled, inflation quickened and growth slowed. The cash-strapped state-owned petrochemical business had to shut down for long periods. In China, the government increased domestic pump prices on Oct. 31 by nearly 10 percent with shortages, rationing and long lines throughout the country. Violence broke out at some gas stations, including an incident last week in Henan province in which one man killed another who had chastised him for jumping to the front of a line for gas. A scarcity of diesel fuel even hit China’s richest cities - Beijing, Shanghai and trading ports on the east coast - which in the past have been kept well supplied. In Ningbo, a city south of Shanghai, the wait at some gas stations this week was more than three hours, and lines stretched more than 200 yards. Rumors circulated that gas stations or the government was hoarding fuel in anticipation of further price increases, prompting the official New China News Agency to warn that anyone caught spreading rumors about fuel-price increases will be “severely punished.” Li Leijun, 37, a taxi driver, said he was so angry that he was unable to buy fuel that he argued with gas station attendants and called the police. “I still didn’t get any diesel,” he said. Since shedding orthodox Maoist economic policies, China’s leaders have unleashed decades of pent-up demand. China consumes 9 percent of world oil output, up from 6.4 percent five years ago, according to the International Energy Agency. Yet it still subsidizes fuel. As a result, consumption this decade has skyrocketed at an 8.7 percent annual rate despite soaring prices and concerns about the environmental impact of profligate fuel use. Consumption in South Africa is also defying high prices as long-impoverished blacks join the middle and upper classes. Cars are a status symbol, and gasoline consumption jumped 39 percent in the decade after the end of apartheid in 1994. New-vehicle sales last year rose 15.7 percent over 2005. Highly developed consumer nations have been better able to adapt. In Japan, which relies on imports for nearly 100 percent of its fuel, nearly everyone is a loser—with the big exception of Toyota. Yet Japan has been weaning itself off oil for years. It now imports 16 percent less oil than it did in 1973, although the economy has more than doubled. Billions of dollars were invested to convert oil-reliant electricity-generation systems into ones powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear energy or alternative fuels. Japan accounts for 48 percent of the globe’s solar-power generation—compared with 15 percent in the United States. The adoption rate for fluorescent light bulbs is 80 percent, compared with 6 percent in the United States. Still, rising fuel prices are pushing up the prices of raw and industrial materials, as well as food, which relies on fertilizers and transportation. Because of rising wheat prices, Nissin Food Products, the instant-noodle industry leader, will increase prices 7 to 11 percent in January, the first price hike in 17 years. Greasing Toyota’s Gears A winner is Toyota. Soaring gasoline prices have buffed the image of the hybrid Prius and Toyota’s other fuel-efficient models, such as the Camry and Corolla. Although stagnant in Japan, sales were strong in North America, Europe, Asia and emerging markets. In October, Prius sales stood at 13,158 vehicles, up 51 percent from 8,733 in October last year. Worldwide, the number of hybrid cars sold by Toyota surpassed 1 million in May. Britain’s national average gasoline price topped 1 pound per liter, or about $8 a gallon, for the first time this week because of record oil prices. “But there is very little publicity about it—you don’t see many headlines saying, ‘Oil at all-time record high,’ ” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, a published by the Energy Institute in London. “It’s different from the United States. Here, everyone has just accepted that it is expensive.” While British drivers are feeling the pinch, the government is gaining revenue, Skrebowski said, because about 80 percent of the cost of gas is tax. Because Britain produces almost all the oil it consumes, its economy has been cushioned against increasing oil prices, Skrebowski said. But Britain’s North Sea oil production is dwindling, having peaked in 1999 at 2.6 million barrels per day. Today, production is 1.4 million to 1.6 million barrels per day, Skrebowski said, while domestic oil consumption is about 1.7 million barrels a day. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took office in June, has made energy independence a priority. Meanwhile, analysts said, Europeans buying oil priced in dollars are finding the rising prices somewhat cushioned by the strength of their currency. The value of the dollar has been sliding to record lows against the euro and the British pound. Argentina has tried to keep fuel prices for consumers at artificially low levels. President N¿stor Kirchner in recent years has leaned heavily on energy companies to keep prices down, going so far as to call for a public boycott of Royal Dutch Shell when the company raised pump prices. Individual suppliers - wary of attracting the ire of the government - have adopted a policy of raising prices gradually and by small amounts. As the market pressures have mounted, Kirchner has signed a series of agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch¿vez. This year, the two created a project called Petrosuramerica, a joint venture designed to promote cooperative energy projects and provide energy security to Argentina. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, high oil prices have had a different political effect. Last year, the country became a net oil exporter, thanks to major increases in domestic oil exploration and the country’s broad use of sugar-based ethanol as a transport fuel. But new oil wealth can trickle away even more easily than it comes. Last month, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Kazakhstan’s credit rating after the country’s banks lost billions on purchases of subprime mortgages. Correspondents Peter Finn in Moscow, Blaine Harden in Tokyo, Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai, Kevin Sullivan in London, Craig Timberg in Johannesburg, Stephanie McCrummen in Nairobi, Monte Reel in Buenos Aires and Faiza Saleh Ambah in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and special correspondents Aminu Abubakar in Kano, Nigeria, and Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.

• First impressions...
  by Gustav Nordlund

  Well… Now I’ve been a bubbler for a little over two weeks and I must say that I love it! Many thanks to my sister Malin...

  Well… Now I’ve been a bubbler for a little over two weeks and I must say that I love it! Many thanks to my sister Malin for showing me the way to this wonderful place :) Photography has long been a private hobby of mine, always “the guy with the camera”. All the nice feedback here on RB has made me even more inspired and enthusiastic about my hobby for which I am deeply thankful. Looking around RedBubble at all the other artists’ great work (although I hesitate to call myself and artist) I find that there is a wonderful positive atmosphere here. One person that really stands out when I have been moving around is Craig with his extreme enthusiasm and of course the trademark “VBS” :) If Craig ever gets around to reading this I must say that you made my day the first time you commented on one of my shots, since I really like your stuff, VBSES (Very Big Slightly Embarrased Smile) :P At the moment I’m out of photos, unless I happen to find some forgotten goodies on my computer, so I have to go out and get some new shot. Just need to find the time… One great thing about RB so far has been as an inspiration and as a source of information about techniques that I was earlier unfamiliar with. Alexkess and Christiaan introduced me to HDR which seems like a lot of fun and I’m eager to try it out. If I find some nice locations to take shots I’d love to try playing around with tilt-shift after having seen the wonderful stuff made by Ben Thomas . Now I’m off to get some sleep, or possibly to sit around trying to come up with new things to shoot (with my camera ofc…). Thanks to everyone that has dropped by, commented and/or added me to favorites/watchlists! Finally, if you ever feel down, just pop by my friend Leo’s Kuddrum (Pillowroom) and things will be better :)

• Latest News about the Climate Crisis Treaty...
  by Curtis Bard

  Dear Curtis, In less than forty-eight hours, I will step onstage at the UN Climate Conference in Bali. With me I will bring hundreds o…

  Dear Curtis, In less than forty-eight hours, I will step onstage at the UN Climate Conference in Bali. With me I will bring hundreds of thousands of messages demanding that a visionary global treaty be completed and brought into effect by 2010. If we want to solve the climate crisis, together we need to demonstrate the broad public support for action. That’s why it’s vital that you sign our petition right now by visiting: http://climateprotect.org/standwithal Over the past few months we’ve taken many positive steps towards uniting governments worldwide around the goal of solving the climate crisis. Just over a week ago on December 3rd, Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was sworn in. His first formal act in office was to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. This was a clear demonstration of Australia’s priorities. Yet this progress has not swayed the Bush Administration. With thousands of delegates gathered in Bali for the UN Climate Conference, this is our last chance in 2007 to show the world how serious the American people are about ending the climate crisis. That’s why it is so vital that all of us join together and demonstrate the political will of our country. Only two days remain before I deliver your messages to the delegates meeting in Bali. Over the past few days more than 173,963 people have added their voices. Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to demonstrate your support for a visionary global treaty to end the climate crisis. Sign our petition, then reach out to everyone you know and ask them to sign today by visiting: http://climateprotect.org/standwithal Your activism and enthusiasm for this cause inspire me every day. Thank you, Al Gore

• Tilt & Shift Photography
  by Shannon Beauford

  ...

• Blue Shift Gallery arrives in a Red Bubble
  by Jurgen Dabeedin

  Hello everyone! This is my 1st entry on RedBubble. I was surprised to see kind comments about my work minutes after I’d posted it! There’...

  Hello everyone! This is my 1st entry on RedBubble. I was surprised to see kind comments about my work minutes after I’d posted it! There’s a lot of great work work out there. I’m looking forward to adding more work soon!

• Forthcoming Exhibitions
  by Jurgen Dabeedin

  I know that most of the people on here are not from the UK… but, / For those that are, and for those that like my work, here is a list o…

  I know that most of the people on here are not from the UK… but, / For those that are, and for those that like my work, here is a list of events where you can come and talk to me and see my photography at first hand. / I’ll be showing a wide range of work, so there will be something new to see at each show. Please come along if you can! Wyllyotts Centre / 2nd February – 1st March / A selection of work from my Open Edition collection. / Potters Bar / Hertfordshire EN6 2HN / Tel: 01707 645005 / / Adam Street private members club / 4th February – 2nd March 2008 / 9 Adam Street London WC2N 6AA / Tel: 020 7379 8000 / www.adamstreet.co.uk / / Williams Art and Antiques / ‘5 @ 5.6’ Exhibition of photography / 5th March – 5th April / No5 Dale’s Brewery / Gwydir Street / Cambridge / CB1 2LJ / 01223 311687 / / Lauderdale House / 31st March – 14th April / Light Sculptures exhibition / Highgate Hill, Waterlow Park / London N6 5HG / Tel: 020 8348 8716 / www.lauderdalehouse.co.uk / / Wyllyotts Centre / 3rd – 31st May / A selection of work from the Gallery / Potters Bar / Hertfordshire EN6 2HN / Tel: 01707 645005 / / Artshed – Hertfordshire Art Fair / 3rd-5th May (Private View 2nd May 6.30pm) / Westmill Farm / Ware, Hertfordshire SG12 OES / 01920 466446 / www.artshed-ware.com / / Untitled Artists fair – Chelsea 2008 / 30th May – 1st June 2008 / Chelsea Old Town Hall / Kings Road / London