En is sajnalom, hogy nem lehettem ott Diana eloadasan, hiaba 1000 km 
azert ma meg tavolsag. Egyebkent bar nem az en feladatom Diana irasat 
ertelmezni szerintem O nem Paks leallitasarol irt, hanem egy esetleges 
ujabb atomeromu epitese ellen ervelt. Abban egyetertek vele, hogy Mo. ill 
altalaban a vilag energiafelhasznalasa nem novekszik jelentos mertekben 
(bar a fejlodo orszagok talan kivetelek e tekintetben) a kozeljovoben es 
hogy az energia hatekonyabb felhasznalasaval sok felesleges beruhazast 
meg lehet elozni. 
	A problemat en mashol latom. A fosszilis eromuvek 
egyeduralkodasanak hatart szab a a forrasok veges volta (tenyleg nem 
tudja valaki, hogy a jelenlegi fogyasztasi szintek mellett mennyi idore 
elegendok a koolaj, gaz ill szen keszletek?). A vizieromu egy jo megoldas, 
de Mo. eseteben sajna nem johet szoba es vilagmeretekben sem hiszem hogy 
kielegito megoldas lenne. A szel, nap es egyeb energiaforrasokkal a 
kovetkezo a bajom: 
1. a technikak meg viszonylag dragak
2. Nem biztositanak allando - egyenletes energiaellatast: az energia 
gazdasagos tarolasa pedig jelenleg nem megoldott.
(Kivancsi vagyok hogy Interneteznenek a Greenpeace-sek, ha eppen nem 
sutne a nap es szel se fujna.
3. Ez az elozovel osszefugg: kis farmergazdasagok eseteben bevalhat a 
technika, de nem hiszem hogy konnyu lenne egy kohot szeleromuvekre alapozni.
4. Ezek ugyan kornyezetbarat megoldasok, de biztos vagyok hogy a 
kornyezetvedoknek nem tetszene egy mezo 100 db. poznaval es szelkerekkel, 
vagy egy 1 km2-es terulet napelemekkel beboritva.
5. Sok orszag eseteben (ilyen pl. Mo. is) sem a szel sem pedig a 
napenergia nem lenne igazan kielegito megoldas a foldrajzi adottsagok 
miatt, az import pedig egyreszt nagy merteku kiszolgaltatottsagot 
eredmenyez, masreszt az energiaszallitas sem igazan jo hatasfoku 
(legalabbis nagy tavolsagokra).

Osszefoglalva: az alternativ energiaforrasok kis farmokon, esetleg kertes 
hazaknal megoldhatok es torekedni is kell az ilyen megoldasok 
elterjesztesere, de szerintem jelenleg (es meg egy jo darabig a jovoben sem) 
nem kepesek az ipar 
(akarmilyen ipar), vagy a nagyvarosok igenyeit kielegiteni. Ezert van 
szukseg eromuvekre es szamomra ezek kozul tovabbra is az atomeromu a 
legrokonszenvesebb. Persze ha valaki kilegitoen valaszt tud adni a fennti 
kerdeseimre-problemaimra, igerem hiveul szegodom.

Ami az atomeromu beruhazasok allami tamogatasat illeti: amennyire en 
tudom Europaban nemcsak az atom, hanem alt. mindenfele nagyobb volumenu 
eromu allami tamogatassal ill hitelgaranciaval epul. Ennek ket oka van: 
egyreszt ezek valoban oriasi (orszagos jelentosegu) beruhazasok (sok 
munkahely stb.) masreszt az energiaellatas mindenutt strategiai 
szempontbol is jelentos.  


Udv		Xux

CORPORATIONS ALREADY RULE THE WORLD

The title of David Korten's new book -- When Corporations Rule the World --
does not refer to some theoretical future state.  Korten's point is that
corporations already rule much of the world, and that the consequences aren't
good, not even for corporations.

His book is a detailed documentation -- names, cases, numbers -- of
dysfunctional corporate behavior.  Firing people and call it "downsizing." 
Squeezing wages, pensions, and local taxes.  Engulfing the environment, paying
executives obscene salaries, pigging out on public subsidies, making dangerous
or worthless products, undercutting competition by means fair and foul, and not
only violating the law with impunity, but writing the law.  In the long term
this behavior impoverishes the very customers whose spending keeps business
alive, the natural resources that fuel the economy, the reputations that
corporations spend so much to polish, the investments they indebt themselves to
make, and the viability of the market system.

Korten's book ends with a list of measures to keep corporate activity in its
place.  I have heard people warn him never to put out the whole list at once,
because any single item is shocking, and all together are simply unthinkable.

Well, let's try it and see.

First, says Korten, we have to reclaim our politics, so democracy is not
dominated by corporate might.  For example:

- Challenge the Supreme Court decision that gives corporations fictitious human
rights.  Corporate employees should have all rights, of course, but the
corporation has no conscience, no citizenship.  Corporations, says Korten,
"simply do not belong in people's political spaces." 

- Take back the corporate charter.  Corporations exist by public permission. 
If one breaks the law or acts against the public good, its charter should be
revoked.

- Prohibit corporations from influencing the political process or "educating"
the public on policy issues.  Forbid false-front "citizen" lobbying
organizations and even corporate "charitable" giving, through which firms often
push their own agendas.  If corporations want to serve society, says Korten,
"let them provide good, secure jobs and safe products, maintain a clean
environment, obey the law, and pay their taxes."

- Prohibit paid political advertising.  The ads are misleading, and their huge
cost makes candidates beholden to large donors.  Broadcasters, in return for
the right to use the public airways, should be required to provide free, equal
exposure to all candidates. 

- Pay for campaigns through a combination of strictly limited, small individual
contributions and public funding.  Corporations should be prohibited from using
corporate resources in any way to favor any candidate.

Then comes the job of restructuring the economy in the public, rather than
corporate, interest:

- A transactions tax on the sale of stocks, bonds, and other financial
instruments, to encourage long-term investment but discourage short-term
speculation.

- Government guarantees only for deposits in community banks that invest in the
community. 

- Rigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, above all on firms that own the
media.  "The operation of a media outlet should be the primary business of the
corporation that owns it.  This would ensure that the outlet is not used as a
means to advance other corporate interests." 

- Worker and community buy-outs, at least as an option, whenever a plant is to
be closed, sold, or merged.  The terms should reflect the workers' years of
labor in the plant and the community's services that have made the plant's
operations possible. 

- Taxes shifted from "goods" (employment, income, property ownership) to "bads"
(pollution, resource extraction, packaging, imports, advertising). 

- Elimination of corporate income tax (and therefore many insidious
tax-avoidance behaviors).  Corporations should be required to pay out all
profits to workers and shareholders.  Interest payments on debt would come out
of profits, rather than counted as a cost of doing business (eliminating
debt-financed leveraged buyouts).  Corporate growth would come from new stock
offerings or borrowings, not retained earnings.

- Elimination of all public subsidies to corporations. 

- A tax on advertising (rather than counting it as a tax-deductible business
expense). Schools should be declared ad-free zones.

Finally Korten advocates two measures that would end poverty, welfare, social
security, Medicare, and the terror of losing a job or falling into poverty: 

- A guaranteed income for each person (including children and retired people)
sufficient to meet basic needs, paid to all, regardless of other sources of
income.

- Reduction of the work week to allocate employment equitably, rather than
condemning part of the population to underemployment and the rest to hectic
overwork.

Are these ideas dangerous?  Do they make you angry?  Make you laugh?  Make you
think?  Are they so insidious that should never be discussed in public?

Then why are people so afraid of discussing them in public?   Why the taboo on
this particular kind of free speech?  Is it because corporations rule the
media, and therefore, quite effectively, rule the world?

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)

The Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) is a comprehensive directory of
Earth science and environmental data.  Through data set descriptions and
contact information, the GCMD provides the scientific community and the
general public with easy access to scientific data.  Currently, there are
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     Direct hypertext links to data centers simplify the data
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     of research campaigns, scientific instruments, data-collection
     platforms including spacecraft, and data centers.

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     telnet gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov
     login: gcdir

As always, the GCMD is a free service funded by NASA in an effort to
provide a comprehensive, interdisciplinary directory of Earth science
and environmental data.

Evek ota foglalkozom a temaval, es meg soha sem ertettem meg, hogy miert 
tamadjak az atomenergia ellenzot altalaban indulatosabban, mint ahogy azok 
tamadjak az atomenergiat. Azoktol, akik szemelyesen kozvetlenul 
erdekeltek az atomipar fennmaradasaban meg meg lehet erteni, de a fogadatlan 
prokatorok miert olyan indulatosak? 

A sok indulat kozott most harom tenyszeru dolopgra szeretnek reagalni:

Az egyik, hogy Greifswaldban valoban mukodott 4 VVER 230-as, regi tipusu es 
oreg reaktor, de volt am ott egy vadonatuj 213-as blokk (ugyanolyan, mint a 
paskiak, vagy a mohiak) is. Azt szerettek volna tovabb mokodtetni, a Siemens 
szerette volna feljavitani a biztonsagi rendszeret (pont ugy, mint Mohiban).
A nemet hatosagok elkeszitettek egy meternyi tanulmanyt, hogy miket kell 
teljesiteni ahhoz, hogy mukodesi engedelyt kaphasson a reaktor. Amikor ezt 
az eromu vezetoi es a Siemens szakertoi elolvastak, elalltak a tervtol, es 
vegleg leallitottak azt a reaktort is. 
Ezalapjan nem annyira meglepo, hogy ezt sokan ugy ertelmezik, hogy a 
VVER 231-as reaktortipus nem felel meg a nemet szabvanyoknak.

A masik Paks biztonsagossaga es az MTA/NAU vita.
A NAU jelenteseiben az egyik muatato a kihasznaltsagi oraszam, amivel az 
eromuvek uzemelesi biztonsagossagat jellemzik. Ez valoban nagyon jo Pakson. 
Keves az uzemzavar, gyorsan meg tudjak oldani az atrakast, meg ki tudja meg 
milyen okok miatt.
Csakhogy ez semmit jelent a reaktor tipusabol adodo veszelyekre. Paksnak pl.
nincs containmentje, es ha tetszik, ha nem, nyugaton mar nem allnak szoba 
containment nelkuli reaktorral (marmint ujjal). Ez persze nem jelenti azt, 
hogy nyugaton ne uzemelnenek igen vacak atomeromuvek (a kifejezest, meg 
mielott belekotnetek, egy paksi szakertotol vettem).

A harmadik:

> 	Vegezetul meg egy dolog az atomhulladekkal kapcsolatban: az
> atomhulladek elobb-utobb elbomlik, tehat teljesen artalmatlanna valik, az
> ember altal eloallitott muanyagok bomlasi ideje nagysagendekkel nagyobb
> mint az atomeromuben elofordulo izotopoke, tehat inkabb a vegyi
> szennyezes megszuntetesere kellene az erofesziteseket osszpontositani.

Tudod te, hogy a Plutonium felezesi ideje 25 ezer ev? Tehat negyedmillio 
mulva meg meg lesz az 0.1%-a. Es tudod, hogy nehany mikrogramm Pu a tudobe 
jutva rakot okoz, nehany milligram pedig halalt? Es belegondoltal abba, hogy 
ez az idotavlat az emberi tortenelmet tobbszorosen meghaladja? El tudod 
hinni, ha valaki azt allitja, hogy o ugy el tudja ezeket az anyagokat 
temetni, hogy az ilyen idotavlatban biztosan nem fog kiszabadulni?

Az, hogy talaltak ketezer eves kinai sirokban ep uvegdarabokat, nem eleg. 
Azt kellene bizonyitani, hogy minden uvegdarab garantaltan ep maradt. Es nem 
ketezer, hanem ketszazezer evig.

En szemely szerint pl. nem tudom elkepzelni, hogy egyetlen geologus is 
felelosseggel azt mondja egy formaciora, hogy az szazezer evig garantaltan 
stabil marad, plane, ha szitava lyuggattjak es feltoltik forro hulladekkal.

Ago

A Public Lecture to be given by Professor Peter M. 
Allen, Cranfield University, in the Auditorium of the 
Central European University on Nador utca 9, 
Budapest V., on Thursday, February 22, at 17:00:


Towards Sustainable 
Development: 
Complex System Models 
for Decision Support



Dynamic models will be described which generate the spatial 
self-organisation that occurs in regional development as a result of
the interaction of economic, demographic and environmental factors. It
is a model of the multiple scale interactions of both decision making
and of physical processes that go on in the system. These concern
short term flows of physical resources (water, air, soil, raw
materials etc.) and also those of people, goods and services, involved
in commuting and in the supply chain of the economic system. These
processes then generate the patterns of perceived opportunities that
drive the longer term processes of economic investment, migration and
environmental degradation and change. Our models represent nested
scales of description for the system, possibly going from the
microscopic processes of the soil or of phytoplankton in streams, up
through that concerning individuals attempting to pursue their own
goals, and those of their job, to other more macroscopic scales which
concern whole catchments and river basins, as well as the urban and
regional structures that emerge, reflecting collective socio-economic
effects, of scale and of density, which fashion the costs and benefits
that enter into the individual decision making processes. In this way
the model attempts to understand the reasons underlying the history of
the present structure and infrastructure, and enables an exploration
of the possible evolution of these into the future, taking into
account the complex cross interaction and cascading effects that
policies, and investment decisions will bring about. Rather than
predicting exact paths of the system the method is more useful in
exploring the different kind of alternatives that are possible, and to
perform  strategic analysis of different possible qualitative
structures which the system might evolve.

Several examples of these models will be briefly presented: the 
Senegal Regional Model, the integrated model of the 
Escaut/Scheldt river basing, and the Model of Argolid Valley in 
Greece, and these should serve to demonstrate the potential 
usefulness of such systems.
Sander Bremer, Program Assistant
Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy
Central European University
Pf. 1082
H-1245 Budapest, Hungary
Phone: + 36 1 327 3021
Fax: +36 1 327 3031
e-mail: 
www: http://www.ceu.hu/envsci/selfadmin/index.html