Word: worldly
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Attention seekers like the Salahis, and before them the Heenes, suffer the opposite delusion: believing that their success in the world of pseudocelebrity insulates them from real-world consequences. In a state of media-induced temporary insanity, you might forget that people could get annoyed at you for faking your kid's balloon accident or that the feds would not laugh off a breach of the President's security as a hoot for a reality show. You close your eyes and hear the crowd cheering for an encore when they're actually gathering torches and pitchforks...
...what the Salahis seem to understand that Woods did not is that in our world, attention is like gravity: a force that you cannot command to cease. Fight it, and it will plow you under. Ride it, like a downhill skier or a skydiver, and - well, you may still crash. But you'll make a very photogenic wreck...
...hundred miles north of Bangalore and 4,500 miles southeast of Copenhagen, where world leaders will meet next week in a landmark conference on climate change, sits the southern Indian village of Toranagallu. While the residents of this mostly rural hamlet may not realize it, the same environmental problems they grapple with in their daily lives may well be on the table at the U.N.'s Copenhagen conference, as attendees decide whether to overhaul an international carbon-trading mechanism designed to help developing nations cut greenhouse gases...
...Toranagallu illustrates another unintended consequence of the CDM system: it tends to prop up the dirtiest industries in developing countries such as India, essentially allowing the industrialized West to outsource the heavy lifting of greenhouse-gas reduction to the world's poorer nations. "The trouble is the design of the CDM has been to guarantee the cheapest option for the Western countries to balance their carbon books," says Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. "It's not [just]what is happening in India that is flawed, it is flawed in design...
...pollute if they offset their emissions by purchasing Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) - each representing 1 ton of carbon - from developing countries -where carbon-reducing modifications to power plants, factories and other facilities would be less costly. This was meant to promote the dispersion of green technology to the developing world, and also give emerging economies like India and China a financial incentive to start cleaning up their dirty industries. In mid-2005 the global carbon market sprang to life and three years later had grown twelve-fold to $126 billion, according to the World Bank. "In terms of total investment...