Monday, January 28, 2008

On Katyn, the movie

A Movie That Matters
Anne Applebaum

New York Review of Books 14 February 2008

Katyn
a film directed by Andrzej Wajda, written by Andrzej Mularczyk and Andrzej Wajda

The ruins of a Russian Orthodox monastery, 1939: paint peels from the walls, light filters in from the cracks in the ceiling, cigarette smoke whirls through the air. Primitive wooden camp beds are stacked up high, one on top of the other, for the monastery has been turned into a prison. The prisoners, soldiers in khaki-brown wool uniforms and black boots, are gathered in a large group. Craning their heads forward, they listen to their commanding officer make a speech. Solemn and tired, he does not ask them to fight. He asks them to survive. "Gentlemen," says the general, "you must endure. Without you, there will be no free Poland."

The scene ends. The audience—at least the audience in the Warsaw theater where I watched the film—sighs, rustles, collectively draws its breath. Those watching know, as they were meant to know, that the soldiers, the flower of Poland's pre-war officer corps, did not survive. And without them, there was indeed no free Poland.

In its way, this episode—both the action on screen and the audience reaction in the theater—represents the quintessence of the art of its director, Andrzej Wajda. For half a century, beginning in the darkest era of communism and continuing through the years of Solidarity, martial law, and the post-Communist present, Wajda has been conducting precisely this kind of cinematic dialogue with Polish audiences. Although they have sometimes been celebrated abroad, his movies have always been made with his countrymen in mind, which gives them a special flavor. Because he knows what his Polish viewers will know—about history, about politics, about the ways people behave under occupation—Wajda has always been able to rely upon them to interpret his work correctly, even when censorship forced him to make his points indirectly. His latest film, Katyn, in which the scene described above appears, is in this sense a classic Wajda movie.

Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.

But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.

Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty.
Wajda's movie, as his Polish audiences will immediately understand, is very much the story of "Katyn" in this broader sense. Its opening scene, which Wajda has said he has had in his head for many years, shows a group of refugees heading east, crossing a bridge, fleeing the Wehrmacht.
[1] On the bridge, they encounter another group of refugees heading west, fleeing the Red Army. "People, where are you going, turn back!" the two groups shout at one another. Soon afterward, Wajda shows Nazi and Soviet officers conversing in a comradely manner along the new German–Soviet borders—as surely they did between 1939, the year they agreed to divide Central Europe between them, and 1941, when Hitler changed his mind about his alliance with Stalin and invaded the USSR. On the bridge, Poland's existential dilemma—trapped between two totalitarian states—is thus given dramatic form.

Within the notion of "Katyn," Wajda also includes the story of the father of one of the officers, a professor at the Jagellonian University in Kraków. Asked to attend a meeting by the city's Nazi leadership, he joins other senior faculty in one of the university's medieval lecture halls. Instead of holding a discussion, Nazi troops enter, slam the doors, and arrest everyone in the room. The men, many elderly, are forced onto trucks, the officer's father among them. Later, his widow will learn that he died, along with many of his colleagues, in Sachsenhausen. Some have cited this scene, which is not directly related to the Katyn massacre, as an example of how Wajda tried to put too many themes into a single film. Wajda himself explains elsewhere that he sees it as part of the same story, since this Sonderaktion in Kraków was the German equivalent of the Katyn massacre: an open attack on the Polish intelligentsia, an attempt to destroy the nation's present and future leadership.[2]

Other stories follow, at a rapid clip. Stories of the wives left behind, many of whom, like Wajda's mother, didn't know the fate of their husbands for decades; stories of the men who survived Soviet deportation, and were consumed by guilt; stories of those who tried to accept and adjust to the lie and move on. The film ends with a stunningly brutal, almost unwatchable depiction of the massacre itself. Wajda increases the horror by focusing on the terrible logistics of the murder, which took several weeks and required dozens of people to carry out: the black trucks carrying men from the prison camps to the forest, the enormous ditches, the rounds of ammunition, the bulldozers that pushed dirt onto the mass graves.

Along the way, Wajda also tells stories that echo episodes in his earlier films and in his own life—as, once again, he knows, his Polish audience will understand. At one point, one of his characters, Tadeusz, the son of a Katyn victim and a former partisan who has spent the war in the forests—files an application to return to his studies. Like Wajda himself at that age, he wants to attend the School of Fine Arts. Told he will have to erase the phrase "father murdered by the Soviets in Katyn" from his biography, Tadeusz refuses, runs out, and tears a pro-Soviet poster down in the street outside. Minutes later, he is discovered and shot in the street by Communist soldiers. Like the hero of Wajda's 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds, he dies a pointless, postwar death, fighting for a failed cause. But unlike that earlier hero—created for a more cautious and more heavily censored time—he feels no ambivalence about that cause. Unlike Wajda himself, Tadeusz prefers death and truth to a life lived in the shadow of historical falsehood.

To anyone unacquainted with Polish history, some of these stories will seem incomplete, even confusing. Characters appear, disappear, and then appear again, sometimes so briefly that they are hardly more than caricatures. Some of them, most notably the sister who plays the part of a modern Antigone, determined to erect a gravestone to her lost brother, are so laden with symbolism that they don't feel very realistic. Dialogues are brief, uninformative. Scenes shift from Kraków to Katyn, from the Russian- to the German-occupied zone of Poland. References are made to people and places that are significant to Poles but that will be obscure to everybody else, a phenomenon that helps explain why the film has not, to date, found an English-language distributor. But then, English-language distribution wasn't one of Wajda's concerns. This film wasn't made for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with Polish history.

Since the late 1980s, it has been possible to talk openly about the Katyn massacres in Poland and Russia. Since 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev first acknowledged Soviet responsibility for Katyn, and 1991, when Boris Yeltsin made public the documents ordering the massacre, it has even been possible to research them in Russian archives. Academic and popular history books on the massacre have now been published in several languages, including Russian.[3] Yale University Press has now translated the most important documents into English, and published them with extensive annotation, background information, and rare photographs, including one taken from a German airplane in 1943.[4] The Polish government has constructed multiple memorial sites, in Warsaw as well as in the Katyn forest itself. When his film came out last fall—on September 17, the sixty-eighth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland—Wajda was asked several times to explain himself. Why Katyn? Why now? One interviewer put it rather brutally: "I didn't feel a deep need to watch a film about Katyn—why would I? It seems that everything on that subject has already been said."[5]

Wajda answered these questions in various ways, depending on how they were asked—it was only recently, he said, that he came up with a script he liked, though he has wanted to make a movie about Katyn for decades—but his most striking explanations involved his audience. Most of those who actually remembered the events of 1939 were now dead, he explained—Wajda himself is eighty-one—so the film could no longer be made for them. Instead, he said, he wanted to tell the story again for young people—but not just any young people. Wajda said he wanted to reach "those moviegoers for whom it matters that we are a society, and not just an accidental crowd."

In an era when Hollywood dialogue is sometimes deliberately simplified in order to be easily subtitled, when the definition of a "successful" movie is one that makes money in many countries, and when many movies are "niche marketed" to appeal to some groups and not others, this explanation struck me as rather remarkable. There is something deeply old-fashioned about the idea that movies can help create strong, positive bonds of patriotism among strangers. Certainly it's a notion alien to contemporary American audiences. If movies ever helped bind us together as a nation, the way Walter Cronkite once bound us together by interpreting the evening news, it's hard to see how they do any longer.

It's true that the notion of a national cinema comes more naturally to smaller, non-English-speaking nations, who are accustomed to talking among themselves without others listening. Still, when most Europeans call for a national cinema, they usually do so in a different manner. In France, movies are yet another tool in the great competition for international influence. Other countries consider their film industries in much the same light as their national airlines: a matter of prestige, albeit one in heavy need of government subsidy.

But both in the interviews he's given and in the film itself, Wajda seems to be saying something rather different about the need for a national cinema. By making Katyn, he wanted to create something that would get Poles to talk to one another, to reflect upon common experiences, to define common values, to admire similar virtues, to forge a civil society out of an anonymous crowd. Katyn is deliberately intended to inspire patriotism, in the most positive sense of the word. This too helps explain why Wajda made a film that asks not just "what happened?" or "what did the Soviet Union do to us?" but rather "how did we, as a society, react afterward?" as well as "and how do we remember it now?"

At least judging by the initial reactions, Wajda seems to have succeeded, at least in getting the conversation started. The premiere of Katyn took place at the National Opera in Warsaw, and was covered live by all the important national newspapers and television stations. In attendance were the Polish president and first lady, the prime minister, the Catholic primate, Lech Wal/e?sa, assorted historians, novelists, composers, and victims' families, as well as the film stars who more normally go to that sort of event. For a few weeks, almost every cinema in the country was showing the film, sometimes a dozen times a day. After only a month, more than two million people had been to see it—a large percentage in a country of 39 million—and the film is already among the top ten best-attended of the past decade. Every newspaper and magazine reviewed it, sometimes in special supplements.

More to the point, everybody talked about it, even if not everybody liked it. "Have you been to see Katyn yet?" was something one was asked with some frequency in Warsaw this past fall. The question sparked a dozen discussions—about Wajda's earlier films, about the factual elements of the movie, about Russia—that would not have taken place otherwise.

But there are also pitfalls inherent in trying to make patriotic movies and Wajda, sometimes through no fault of his own, ran into a few of them. Purely by accident, Katyn was premiered in the middle of an unexpectedly early Polish parliamentary election campaign. Partly as a result, the leaders of the political party then in power— officially named Law and Justice, better known as the party of the identical Kaczynski twins—was accused of attempting to manipulate the nation's sudden interest in Katyn for its own purposes. With no more than a couple of weeks' notice, the government suddenly decided it would hold a major Katyn commemorative ceremony, with several elected officials given starring roles, as if the legacy of Katyn belonged to their political party and not any other. The Katyn families protested, as did Wajda. The date of the ceremony was changed. But the ugly image —of politicians vying to take advantage of the emotions raised by the movie—stuck.

Not surprisingly, given that bitterness over Katyn has undermined Polish– Russian relations for more than six decades, Wajda's film also provoked a few nasty outbursts in Poland about Russians, and vice versa. In an interview with Izvestiya, Wajda himself tried to stave off this battle before it began: "In Poland there has always been great sympathy for the Russian people," he said. "We make distinctions between the people and the system."[6] Some Russians took Wajda at his word. The Russian democrat, human rights activist, and ex-dissident Sergei Kovalev, who attended a showing of the film at the Polish embassy in Moscow, afterward called on Poles to "forgive us" for the murder.

But although there was no official Russian government reaction, on the day after the film's release, a government-owned Russian newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, declared that Soviet responsibility for Katyn was "not obvious." In a snide article, one of the newspaper's pundits threw doubt on a decade's worth of voluminous archival publications, and accused Wajda of "separating us further from the truth."
[7] The article implied that Mikhail Gorbachev's acknowledgment of Soviet responsibility for Katyn had been purely political, a dubious statement made to please the West. Quotes from the article were reprinted throughout Poland—sometimes accompanied by reprints of the documents ordering the massacre—and taken as evidence that not much in Russia has changed since 1939.

Following that piece of nastiness, perhaps it is not surprising that a few days later, Polish commentators took offense at the fact that Katyn was not a contender at the Venice film festival. Some wondered darkly whether this was a reflection of secret Russian influence over the jurors; others took it as yet another sign that foreigners don't understand Polish history, or don't appreciate Polish suffering, or otherwise discriminate against Poland. In fact, Katyn simply appeared too late to make the festival's cut-off date, and will probably be shown in Venice next year. But for a day or two, before this technical explanation became clear, the nation's insecurities were on sudden, prominent display.

That these feelings appeared is not surprising: they are in fact very typical side effects, not just of patriotic cinema but of patriotism itself. The same emotions that bind people together— inspiring them to work toward common goals, build political institutions, try to make their societies free and fair —are in some sense related to the emotions that make the same people paranoid about foreigners, or distrustful of the unpatriotic people who live down the street and vote for a different political party. Too much patriotism can hamper democracy and diminish civil society. On the other hand, without some patriotism, democracy is not possible at all.
The real test of Katyn, of course, is whether it remains a part of the Polish national conversation over time, as a handful of Wajda's earlier films have indeed done. This is not just a question of the film's quality. Its endurance will also depend on the continued existence of an audience that shares

Wajda's knowledge of twentieth-century Polish history, and that understands the symbols and shortcuts he uses to evoke his national and patriotic themes. Fifty years after it was made, a significant number of Poles still know that when the two young men in Ashes and Diamonds start listing names, setting a glass of alcohol alight for each one, they are talking about friends who died in the wartime underground and the Warsaw uprising, even if they never say so. If, fifty years from now, there is still an audience in Poland that understands Wajda's characters and references— an audience that intuitively draws its breath when the general tells his men that without them "there will be no free Poland"—then Katyn, the movie, will still matter.

Notes
[1] Andrzej Wajda, Katyn (Warsaw: Prószynski i S-ka, 2007), p. 6. This annotated edition of the screenplay includes Wajda's commentary and letters, as well as photographs, maps, a historical timeline, and original documentation provided by the families of the Katyn victims.
[2] Wajda, Katyn, p. 24.
[3] Among the post-1990 books on Katyn are Natalia Lebedeva's Katyn: Prestuplenie protiv chelovechstva (Moscow: Kultura, 1994), the first documented account in Russian; and Katyn: Plenniki neob'iavelnnoi voiny, a collection of Soviet archival documents, edited by R.G. Pikhoia et al. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Demokratiia, 1997). An expanded version of the latter was also published in a four-volume Polish edition as Katyn: Dokumenty Zbrodni (Warsaw: Trio, 1995–2006) under the supervision of the Polish National Archives. In English, Allen Paul's Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection (Naval Institute Press, 1996) also uses archival sources.
[4] Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment, edited by Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski (Yale University Press, 2008).
[5] Tadeusz Sobolewski, "Tylko guziki nieuginte," Gazeta Wyborcza, September 17, 2007. See also "Przesznosc nieopowiedziana," Tygodnik Powszechny, September 18, 2007.
[6] Vita Ramm, "Pravda pana Vaidy," Izvestiya, September 18, 2007.
[7] Alexander Sabov, "Zemlya dla Katyn: Komentarii," Rossiiskaya Gazeta, September 18, 2007.

Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post. Her book Gulag: A History won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. She lives in Poland. (February 2008)

Shell CEO on oil and energy future

Two energy futures

By Jeroen van der Veer

By 2100, the world’s energy system will be radically different from today’s. Renewable energy like solar, wind, hydroelectricity, and biofuels will make up a large share of the energy mix, and nuclear energy, too, will have a place. Humans will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies will have reduced the amount of energy needed to power buildings and vehicles.

Indeed, the distant future looks bright, but much depends on how we get there. There are two possible routes. Let’s call the first scenario Scramble. Like an off-road rally through a mountainous desert, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of “more haste” will often be “less speed,” and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario can be called Blueprints, which resembles a cautious ride, with some false starts, on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technological innovation provides the excitement.

Regardless of which route we choose, the world’s current predicament limits our room to maneuver. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to rising population and economic development. After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand.

As a result, we will have no choice but to add other sources of energy – renewables, yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.
In the Scramble scenario, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. The use of local coal and homegrown biofuels increases fast. Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption – until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.

The Blueprints scenario is less painful, even if the start is more disorderly. Numerous coalitions emerge to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security, and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation. Much innovation occurs at the local level, as major cities develop links with industry to reduce local emissions. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes, and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles, and transport fuels.

Moreover, as calls for harmonization increase, policies converge across the globe. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that put a price on industrial CO2 emissions gain international acceptance. Rising CO2 prices in turn accelerate innovation, spawning breakthroughs. A growing number of cars are powered by electricity and hydrogen, while industrial facilities are fitted with technology to capture CO2 and store it underground.

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will know only in a few years whether December’s Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the start of a global effort to counter it. Much will depend on how attitudes evolve in China, the European Union, India, and the United States.

Shell traditionally uses its scenarios to prepare for the future without expressing a preference for one over another. But, faced with the need to manage climate risk for our investors and our descendants, we believe the Blueprints outcomes provide the best balance between economy, energy, and environment. For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

But the Blueprints scenario will be realized only if policymakers agree on a global approach to emissions trading and actively promote energy efficiency and new technology in four sectors: heat and power generation, industry, transport, and buildings.

This will require hard work, and time is short. For example, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries by 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, none capture CO2. Because CO2 capture and storage adds costs and yields no revenues, government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

Blueprints will not be easy. But it offers the world the best chance of reaching a sustainable energy future unscathed, so we should explore this route with the same ingenuity and persistence that put humans on the moon and created the digital age.

The world faces a long voyage before it reaches a low-carbon energy system. Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driver’s seat. And governments will determine whether we should prepare for bitter competition or a true team effort.

Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell plc, is Energy Community leader of the World Economic Forum energy industry partnership in 2007-2008 and chaired this year’s Energy Summit in Davos. He also chairs the Energy and Climate Change working group of the European Round Table of Industrialists.

From:
http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell-en/our_strategy/shell_global_scenarios/two_energy_futures/two_energy_futures_25012008.html

For Peak Oil, Three’s a Crowd

Keith Johnson

Wall Street Journal [blog] 25 January 2008

Has the peak oil crowd added a new member?

An email written by Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer has sparked the latest round of debate over the state of oil supplies. In the email, which Mr. van der Veer told his employees to spread around, he says (HT to the Oil Drum. Here’s the whole spiel.):

Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand. As a result, society has no choice but to add other sources of energy - renewables, yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.

Other big energy companies, from France’s Total to Texas’s ConocoPhillips, have already painted a less-than-rosy outlook for world oil supplies. Even the National Petroleum Council, a proxy for the Big Oil fraternity, recently said that conventional oil and natural-gas supplies aren’t likely to keep pace with demand (study here).

The crux of the debate: How fast are existing fields actually declining, and how fast and economically can oil companies get new finds to replace that output? (Recent WSJ stories on peak oil here and here.)

Shell outlined two main scenarios for the energy future: a free-for-all for energy resources around the world, or growing international cooperation to soothe energy friction. Shell leans toward the latter:

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will only know in a few years whether December’s Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the beginning of a global effort to counter it.

Another interesting twist to the idea that oil and natural gas will become harder and more expensive to find and get out of the ground: It’s making coal pricier, because coal is still the go-to fuel source in the absence of a big nuclear build-out.

So the question is: Does Shell adding its voice to the growing chorus of naysayers mean anything for the viability of other energy sources?


Full text of Shell CEO’s email to employees:

Date: 22 January 2008

Subject: Shell Energy Scenarios

Dear Colleagues

In this letter, I'd like to share reflections about how we see the energy future, and our preferred route to meeting the world's energy needs. Industry, governments and energy users - that is, all of us - will face the twin challenge of more energy and less CO2.
This letter is based on a text I've written for publication in several newspapers in the coming weeks. You can use it in your communications externally. There will be more information about energy scenarios inthe months ahead.

By the year 2100, the world's energy system will be radically different from today's. Renewable energy like solar, wind, hydroelectricity and biofuels will make up a large share of the energy mix, and nuclear energy too will have a place.

Mankind will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies will have reduced the amount of energy needed to power buildings and vehicles.
Indeed, the distant future looks bright, but getting there will be an adventure. At Shell, we think the world will take one of two possible routes. The first, a scenario we call Scramble, resembles a race through a mountainous desert. Like an off-road rally, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of "more haste" will often be "less speed" and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario, called Blueprints, has some false starts and develops like a cautious ride on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technical innovation provides for excitement.

Regardless of which route we choose, the world's current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.As a result, society has no choice but to add other sources of energy - renewables , yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.

In the Scramble scenario, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. The use of local coal and homegrown biofuels increases fast.

Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption - until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.

The other route to the future is less painful, even if the start is more disorderly. This Blueprints scenario sees numerous coalitions emerging to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation.

Much innovation occurs at the local level, as major cities develop links with industry to reduce local emissions. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles and transport fuels.

As calls for harmonization increase, policies converge across the globe. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that put a cost on industrial CO 2 emissions gain international acceptance. Rising CO2 prices accelerate innovation, spawning breakthroughs. A growing number of cars are powered by electricity and hydrogen, while industrial facilities are fitted with technology to capture CO 2 and store it underground.

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will only know in a few years whether December's Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the beginning of a global effort to counter it. Much will depend on how attitudes evolve in Beijing, Brussels, New Delhi and Washington.

Shell traditionally uses its scenarios to prepare for the future without expressing a preference for one over another. But, faced with the need to manage climate risk for our investors and our grandchildren, we believe the Blueprints outcomes provide the best balance between economy, energy and environment.

For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

The sobering reality is that the Blueprints scenario will only come to pass if policymakers agree a global approach to emissions trading and actively promote energy efficiency and new technology in four sectors: heat and power generation, industry, mobility and buildings. It will be hard work and there is little time.

For instance, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries in 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, there are none. Since CO2 capture and storage adds cost and brings no revenues , government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the very least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

Blueprints will not be easy. But it offers the world the best chance of reaching a sustainable energy future unscathed, so we should explore this route with the same ingenuity and persistence that put humans on the moon and created the digital age.

The world faces a long voyage before it reaches a low-carbon energy system. Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driving seat. And governments will determine whether we should prepare for a bitter competition or a true team effort.

That is the article, and how I see our challenges and opportunities. I look forward to hearing how you see the situation (please be concise).
RegardsJeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive



Oil Demand, the Climate and the Energy Ladder

Jad Mouawad

New York Times 19 January 2008

Energy demand is expected to grow in coming decades. Jeroen van der Veer, 60, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, recently offered his views on the energy challenge facing the world and the challenge posed by global warming. He spoke of the need for governments to set limits on carbon emissions. He also lifted the veil on Shell’s latest long-term energy scenarios, titled Scramble and Blueprints, which he will make public next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following are excerpts from the interview:

Q. What are the main findings of Shell’s two scenarios?
A. Scramble is where key actors, like governments, make it their primary focus to do a good job for their own country. So they look after their self-interest and try to optimize within their own boundaries what they try to do. Blueprints is basically all the international initiatives, like Kyoto, like Bali, or like a future Copenhagen. They start very slowly but before not too long they become relatively successful. This is a model of international cooperation.

Q. Your first scenario looks very similar to today’s world, with energy nationalism, competition for resources and little attention to consumption.
A. It depends where you live. I realize there are different opinions about Kyoto in the world. But if you think about Bali, Bali is a good outcome if people can agree how to have useful discussion in the coming two years and the United States, China and India are on board. The Blueprints world is maybe a world that starts slowly and is not that easily feasible, but you see some early indicators that it is a realistic possibility.

Q. The world seems to be at some form of inflection point with a big shift in demand.
A. The basic drivers are pretty easy and they are twofold. You go from six billion people to nine billion people basically in 2050. This combination of many more people climbing the energy ladder, which is basically welfare for a lot of people who live in poverty, creates that enormous demand for energy.

Q. How will the demand be fulfilled?
A. Many politicians think we have to make a choice between fossil fuels and renewables. We have to grow both fossil fuels and renewables. And that will be a huge effort for both.

Q. More energy means more carbon emissions. How do you deal with that?
A. That is absolutely the crux of the matter. The principal way we see is that in the very short term, man-made carbon emissions will increase. But over time people will figure out ways — and we work very hard on that — that while using fossil fuels you try to find carbon dioxide solutions. For instance, carbon sequestration. The problem is that many of the renewables, if you take the subsidies out, are still too expensive. That is the dilemma we face now.

Q. Fossil fuels are still going to represent the lion’s share of the energy mix in the next century?
A. First, there is no lack in itself of oil or gas, or coal for that matter. But the problem is that the easy-to-produce oil or easy-to-produce gas will be depleted or with difficult access. But if you look at difficult oil or difficult gas, which we in the industry call the unconventionals, such as oil sands or shales, they may be exploitable. But per barrel, you need a lot more technology and a lot more investments, and per barrel you need a lot more brain to produce it. It’s much more expensive.

Q. What kind of alternatives can compete?
A. The competition is partly true competition — markets, inventions — and part of it is governments. I think if you can price carbon dioxide, probably you can stimulate carbon capture and sequestration. If you tax a certain form of energy, over time it gets more expensive and you may use less of it.

Q. It still seems there is a gap that is hard to bridge.
A. If carbon is the real bottleneck, as a world it makes sense that we use our money where we get the biggest reduction for the lowest cost. You get more carbon reduction for less money by tackling the power sector and maybe the building sector.

Q. It is still hard to see that people are willing to pay more for greener energy.
A. I am a strong believer and strong advocate of free enterprise. If you would like to solve the carbon problem in the world, free enterprise has to work in close cooperation with governments to form the right framework. How you tackled the sulfur dioxide problem in the United States was the basic inspiration for the European trading system of carbon. So there are examples from the past we can apply to overcome that problem. But we can’t do it on our own as an industry. We need cooperation from governments.

Q. How close are we to an understanding globally that climate policy and energy policy are all interrelated issues?
A. Thanks to
Al Gore, and many others, the awareness is there. There is a kind of sense of urgency. Secondly, there is a preparedness to do things. Thirdly, do we agree who has to take what action? I think that is still a huge problem.

Q. There was a lot of disagreement at the Bali climate conference.
A. That is correct. I realize that Bali is still very difficult. I am not a pessimist. I see it as a very difficult start-up. The crux of the matter is, if the people say, “Hang on, we are really concerned about the climate and we’d better do something on carbon emissions,” that is in the end the powerful force which politicians and companies cannot ignore. And I think we are past that point.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Stollen dispute and 2 recipes

Christmas Cake

By David Crossland in Dresden

Spiegel online December 11 2007

Dresdner Stollen baked in the grand city of Dresden is the queen of German Christmas cakes and has gained a growing popularity abroad. But the small town of Torgau is risking the wrath of Dresden's bakers by claiming it invented the cake 550 years ago, and launching its own Stollen to mark the occasion.

At Christmas time in Germany, no household is without its "Dresdner Stollen," a bread loaf-shaped cake containing raisins and marzipan which the city of Dresden has prided itself on for half a millennium.
Celebration of the powdered-sugar-coated delicacy reaches religious proportions in this eastern city. Thousands turned out last Saturday to cheer the world's biggest Stollen, a three-tonne monster, as it was hauled through the streets on a horse-drawn cart in an annual ritual not unlike a crowd of Aztecs worshipping a sun god.
Marching bands and dozens of bakers followed the 4.35 meter-long cake, made with 74 liters of rum and 2.6 million raisins, all the way to the city's main Christmas market, where it was cut into bite-sized half-kilo portions.
But the festivities have coincided with a claim by the small town of Torgau, 75 kilometers to the northwest of Dresden, that it was a Torgau baker who invented the Stollen.
"We don't want to start a Stollen war and we don't want to talk down the Dresdner Stollen in any way," Anja Jerichen, head of Torgau's tourist information office, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We just want to point out that the Stollen in its current form goes back to a cake made 550 years ago by the Torgau baker Heinrich Drasdow."

Plucky Torgau Baker Defied Pope

In 1457, Drasdow added butter, raisins and sugar to a recipe that had been devised more than a century earlier in the German town of Naumburg a little further west, said Jerichen, citing historical research. Drasdow was brave because adding butter was in direct contravention of a papal ban on butter being consumed in the Advent fasting period leading up to Christmas.

Drasdow had a letter of privilege -- a type of patent -- from the local duke to bake his revolutionary new Stollen, which was far more tasty than the original dreary mix of flour, water and brewer's yeast the Naumburg bakers had presented to their bishop in the early 14th century as a fasting food. The white oblong shape of that cake was intended to symbolize the baby Jesus in swaddling, and has remained unchanged to this day.
The "Drasdow Stollen" was baked 17 years before Stollen was even mentioned in conjunction with the city of Dresden in historical records. It gradually became known as "Dresdner Stollen" because the people of Dresden don't enunciate clearly, claims celebrity chef Reinhard Lämmel in his "Saxony Cookbook," adding insult to injury.
Predictably, Dresden's bakers are having none of it. Wolfgang Hesse, head of the city's Stollen Protection Association, told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "It doesn't matter who baked what 500 years ago. The real Christmas Stollen only comes from Dresden. I'm sure Torgau bakes good Stollen. But Dresden never claimed to be first, we're just the best."

Marketing Success

Dresden's bakers have certainly been the best at marketing their Stollen over the centuries. Dresdner Stollen has trademark protection and has established itself as the Mercedes of Christmas cakes in Germany.
Only the cakes produced in the city's 150 bakeries, many of them family-run, may be called Dresdner Stollen.
The city's Stollen Protection Association maintains strict quality control and dictates the quantities of raisins, almonds and other ingredients that go into it. However, subtle differences remain in the recipes passed down through generations of bakers, and a true Stollen connoisseur can detect them, said Hesse.

Dresden's bakers churn out more than two million Stollen cakes in various sizes each year.
"It doesn't matter who invented it, it was the bakers of Dresden who refined the recipe and turned it into a world-famous cake," Marlon Gnauck, manager of Dresden-based bakery Bäckerei Konditorei Gnauck, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Because we're selling so many of them, it's understandable that others are trying to get a piece of the cake, as it were."
Just as German-style Christmas markets are popping up in cities around the world, Dresdner Stollen is enjoying growing international popularity. Gnauck exports 80 percent of the around 7,000 Stollen cakes his company bakes every year, mainly to European Union countries (especially France) but also to the US.
But plucky Torgau is fighting back. "We've been marketing our own Stollen more aggressively this year to mark its 550th anniversary and have started baking the Torgau Butterstollen according to an old recipe," said Jerichen.

Recipe: Marzipan stollen

Los Angeles Times December 19, 2007

Marzipan stollen
Total time: 1 hour, 45 minutes, plus rising and proofing time

Servings: 16 to 20 (8 to 10 per loaf)
Note: From Donna Deane.
1/2 cup seedless raisins
1/2 cup dried currants
1 cup diced mixed candied citrus peel ( 1/4 -inch dice)
1/2 cup candied cranberries
1/2 cup brandy
4 to 5 cups flour, divided
2 packages active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar, divided
1/2 cup milk1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 package (7 ounces) marzipan
Melted butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1. In a medium bowl, combine the raisins, currants, candied peel and candied cranberries. Pour the brandy over the fruit and let stand 1 hour. Drain, reserving the brandy. Pat the fruit dry with paper towels, return to a clean bowl and toss with 2 tablespoons of the flour.
2. In the bowl of a standing mixer or in a large bowl, sprinkle the yeast over one-fourth cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees) and stir until dissolved. Stir in 1 teaspoon of the sugar. Let stand until the yeast begins to bubble, about 5 minutes.
3. In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the milk, salt and remaining sugar to warm (110 to 115 degrees). Add the milk mixture, vanilla extract and eggs to the yeast mixture and beat in a mixer or by hand with a fork or wooden spoon until combined. Beat in the reserved brandy. Add 2 cups of the flour and beat until smooth. Cut the butter into small pieces and beat in. Beat in enough of the remaining flour until the dough forms a ball.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Flatten the dough out, then knead in the candied fruit, adding flour to the board as needed.
5. Shape the dough into a ball and put the dough into a buttered glass bowl. Turn the dough buttered side up and loosely cover. Let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
6. Punch down the dough and divide into two equal parts. Place one half aside. Roll the other half into a 12-by-8-inch oval. Brush with melted butter.
7. Cut the marzipan into quarters and roll each quarter into a 12-inch rope. Put two of the ropes alongside each other along the length of the dough, leaving a 1 1/2 - to 2-inch border between the two ropes in the center of the rolled-out dough. Fold the long side of the dough over to the center of the oval. Fold over the other long side so that it overlaps the center by about 1 inch, pressing down gently but firmly. Lightly taper the ends of the loaf. Put the finished loaf on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with melted butter. Repeat with the reserved dough.
8. Let the two loaves rise until each has doubled in size. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake about 30 to 40 minutes until dark golden brown. Dust loaves with powdered sugar.
Each of 20 servings: 320 calories; 5 grams protein; 57 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 7 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 34 mg. cholesterol; 129 mg. sodium.

Recipe for traditional German Stollen made year after year

By Tracy Sahler

Delmarva Daily Times (MD) 12 December 2007

Most years, at just about this time in December, I have my annual eye check. This doesn't involve an appointment or equipment, only a single copied sheet of an old newspaper article that I have been using for more than 15 years. That's when I started making traditional German stollen from a recipe my stepmother had clipped in 1978.
The copy is dark and the tiny fractions are almost impossible to decipher, so each year I squint and stare and take my best guess at how much candied fruit and other ingredients to add. I could have retyped it long ago and ended this particular challenge, but it seemed to have become part of the ritual of making the bread for my dad, my aunt and others who from fond childhood memories remember this bread. The bread always seemed to turn out pretty well, too.
My Aunt Andrea loved stollen, and for a number of years, I could always be found baking stollen in the kitchen the night before we would see her. She died in January, so in her memory, so that others may experience the wonderful tradition of homemade holiday bread, here is the recipe, complete with readable fractions.

Frau Neumann's Best Stollen
3/4 cup seedless raisins
1/2 cup candied lemon, orange and lime peel, diced
1/2 cup candied pineapple, diced
1/2 cup candied cherries, quartered
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup rum
1/4 cup very warm (105 to 110 degrees) water
2 packets active dry yeast
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon fresh grated lemon rind
3 eggs, beaten
5 1/4 to 5 1/2 cups flour
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened, divided use
1 cup blanched, slivered almonds
1/2 cup sifted confectioners' sugar

Combine raisins, candied fruit and currants in a bowl with rum. Toss fruit well, cover, and set aside for at least four hours.
In a cup, sprinkle yeast over warm water. Let stand several minutes, then stir until particles are dissolved. Stir in a pinch of sugar and set aside for five minutes.
Meanwhile, place milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan over medium heat. Stirring occasionally, heat until milk is very warm, almost hot to the touch. Stir mixture until sugar is dissolved and place in a large bowl. Add extract and lemon rind. Stir in yeast, which will be very foamy. Drain rum from the fruit and add the liquid to milk mixture. Add beaten eggs and stir well.
With a large kitchen spoon, gradually beat 5 cups of flour into the mixture. Then beat softened butter (using one stick plus 2 tablespoons) into the dough. Set dough aside 10 minutes.
Spread drained fruit on a layer of paper towels Blot additional moisture with more towels. Return dry fruit to a clean bowl, add 2 tablespoons flour and the almonds and toss well.
Place dough on a floured surface and begin kneading. If necessary, add a bit more flour as you work, but be careful not to over-flour the dough. Knead 10 minutes. Gently press fruit and nuts into the dough, about 1/4 cup at a time. Avoid overworking, or dough will discolor. Return stollen to a greased bowl. Brush dough surface with a tablespoon of the remaining butter. Cover bowl with a slightly dampened cloth and set in a warm spot for two hours or until dough doubles in bulk.
Punch down and divide into three equal portions. On a greased surface, roll out each portion to form a rectangle about 11 inches long and 8 1/2 inches wide. Spread the surface of each rectangle into a loaf by folding one long side into the center, then folding the other in so it overlaps the first one by about 1/2-inch. Press down each seam to hold it in place. With a spatula, transfer loaves to greased rimmed baking sheets. Taper ends of each loaf slightly to form a smooth, gently rounded shape. Grease stollen tops with remaining 5 tablespoons butter. Set in a warm spot and let rise for one hour.
Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 40 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees if loaves begin to brown too rapidly; however, they should be slightly crusty and well browned when done.
Remove loaves to a wire rack with spatula. Cool 10 minutes, dust with powdered sugar, and serve. Or, allow stollen to cool thoroughly, wrap in storage bags and freeze for up to 3 weeks. Thaw completely, warm in foil, dust with sugar and serve.

NB Under “Stollen recipes” on Google many other recipes can be found….