Word: riches
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...signed similar deals. But the Midwest runs red politically and is carbon-heavy on energy. With 22% of the U.S. population, the Midwest produces 27% of its greenhouse gas emissions, thanks largely to the fact that many of the states rely heavily for power on coal, the most carbon-rich fuel (71% of the region's electricity comes from coal, compared to 49% nationwide). The deal isn't perfect. Too much emphasis is placed on biofuels, especially the corn-based ethanol that has made some farmers in the region rich, but which is of questionable environmental value at best...
...change of course would require a change of government, but Angola's President José Eduardo dos Santos has not held an election since 1992. The observer describes the state as a ship heading for the reef of authoritarianism, corruption and popular discontent--a pattern seen in other oil-rich nations like Nigeria. Africa's oil wealth is all the more important now that China is investing huge sums of money. In Mauritius, the Chinese government is building a $500 million business park. Angola, China's leading supplier of oil, has received at least $5 billion in loans and credit...
...national election. As for campaign contributions, and all the corruption and perversion of democracy that the pursuit of them creates in the U.S., they don't exist in Australia; a whole national election costs less to stage than a California primary. You don't need to be rich or a plutocrat's pet to run for office here...
...result was a triumph of electoral timidity, worsened by fake populism. By a queer flip-flop of logic, a majority of Australian voters (55% to 45%) decided that to have an Australian President appointed by a democratically elected government was elitist and unsafe, whereas to have an immensely rich hereditary monarch as their head of state was somehow democratic and good. To understand how this weird inversion could occur, one must be aware that Australians are even more skeptical about the character of their "pollies" than Americans are, though they have little reason to be: the level of serious political...
...Australian citizens are black, roughly the same percentage of Aborigines as there are Jews in the U.S. This amounts to roughly 390,000 people out of 20 million, a tiny minority. Unlike American Jews, however, Australian blacks have very little power, economic, political or cultural. There are no rich Aborigines, no Aboriginal-owned newspapers, no Aboriginal CEOs of Australian companies. Out of the 224 elected members of the Senate and House of Representatives, which form the Australian Parliament in Canberra, only one is Aboriginal, the brilliant and resolute young politician Aden Ridgeway. Aboriginal influence is exerted mainly through bureaucracy, committees...