From the article
“The results of this analysis are encouraging. We find that a transition to efficiency and renewable energy in the power sector is likely to be less expensive than BAU. Table 1 shows the net costs of the Transition Scenario relative to BAU at four points in time. These are annual costs, not cumulative. The net present value of the 40-year stream of savings and costs is a savings of $83 billion, discounted at 4.8%.”
While I was on vacation I had the opportunity to read a book titled ” Plutonium ” by Jeremy Bernstein. It’s a book many of the folks on your e-mail list would enjoy.
Frank Lock
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April 3, 2009
To the Editor:
Re “Promises of a ‘Fresh Start’ for U.S.-Russia Relations” (news article, April 2): Twenty-three years ago, President Ronald Reagan and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union nearly signed an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons, but American commitment to missile defense killed the deal. It was a fateful missed opportunity to end the threat of nuclear Armageddon and to prevent the subsequent birth of new nuclear weapon states in India, Pakistan, North Korea and now possibly Iran.
The beleaguered 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is up for review in 2010. All eyes will be on the United States and Russia for evidence that they intend to finally fulfill their treaty promise to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
While the first meeting between President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia in London on Wednesday was a step in the right direction, the task ahead is not to limit the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but to chart a course to zero.
In a letter to the two leaders, deans, health ministers, Nobel laureates and professors in medicine called on them to use their power to end “this gravest threat to human survival.” Indeed, this watershed moment may be the world’s last, best chance to abolish nuclear weapons, the sine qua non for stopping the spread of nuclear arms and for ensuring humanity’s future.
Michael Christ
Exec. Dir., International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Somerville, Mass., April 2, 2009
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
MONDAY FEBRUARY 18, 2008
North Korea Now: Will the Clock Be Turned Back?
Georgy Toloraya, Visiting Fellow, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
The Brookings Institution
FEBRUARY 11, 2008 —
The overall mood regarding possibilities for Korean denuclearization and, more broadly, prospects for a peace process in Korea, has changed dramatically for the worse since the beginning of 2008. Earlier optimism, especially on the North Korean side, was guarded at best: during a trip to Pyongyang in December the author sensed a continuing lack of trust in U.S. intentions, and was told by well-placed sources: “You cannot turn a wolf into a sheep.”
The overall mood regarding possibilities for Korean denuclearization and, more broadly, prospects for a peace process in Korea, has changed dramatically for the worse since the beginning of 2008. Earlier optimism, especially on the North Korean side, was guarded at best: during a trip to Pyongyang in December the author sensed a continuing lack of trust in U.S. intentions, and was told by well-placed sources: “You cannot turn a wolf into a sheep.”
