Except INDIA 6 . | SATURDAY-SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20-21, 2012 Views International Herald Tribune THE GLOBAL EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON Publisher ALISON SMALE Executive Editor DAVE SMITH Managing Editor PHILIP McCLELLAN Deputy Managing Editor URSULA LIU Deputy Managing Editor KIRK KRAEUTLER Deputy Managing Editor KATHERINE KNORR Assistant Managing Editor TIM RACE Assistant Managing Editor RICHARD BERRY Editor, Continuous News RICHARD ALLEN News Editor SERGE SCHMEMANN Editor of the Editorial Page PHILIPPE MONTJOLIN Senior Vice President, Operations ACHILLES TSALTAS Senior Vice President, Innovation and Development CHANTAL BONETTI Vice President, Human Resources INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE editorial opinion Among the snipers of Aleppo Syria’s rebel brigades are often at cross purposes, creating a dangerous quagmire. The West can’t do much to help. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA Vice President, International Advertising CHARLOTTE GORDON Vice President, Marketing and Strategy PATRICE MONTI Vice President, Circulation RANDY WEDDLE Managing Director, Asia-Pacific SUZANNE YVERNÈS Chief Financial Officer Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, Président et Directeur de la Publication THE PHANTOM ISSUE The U.S. presidential candidates remain evasive about the need for effective and sane gun control laws. It took an ordinary citizen, Nina Gonzalez, to stand up at the presidential debate on Tuesday to raise what has been a phantom issue on the campaign trail: the lack of effective gun controls and any meaningful political discussion about this crisis. Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States. Ms. Gonzalez politely asked President Obama whatever happened to his pledge four years ago to fight for renewal of the ban on assault weapons. That ban, which prohibits the manufacture of semiautomatic firearms for civilian use, was put in place in 1994 and expired in 2004. It was a pledge that Mr. Obama and his administration never made a priority despite the many horrific mass shootings during his term. The current campaign is now focused on a handful of states where mention of gun control is considered politically toxic. At the debate, Mr. Obama said he wanted to get a ‘‘broader conversation’’ going on reducing violence, and ‘‘part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.’’ That kind of tepid talk will do nothing to push this crucial legislation through Congress. Mitt Romney was far worse. As the recently anointed candidate of the National Rifle Association, he flatly opposes renewal of the assault weapons ban, even though as governor of Massachusetts he signed a statewide ban in 2004 after the federal 10-year ban lapsed. In the statehouse, Mr. Romney unequivocally denounced the military-style weapons as ‘‘instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.’’ Both candidates tried lamely to connect various family, school and social factors to the murders made easy by inadequate and nonexistent gun control laws. In truth, gun laws are being loosened, not strengthened, by state legislatures. Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Romney shows any interest in discussing this threat to public safety. The scourge includes 4.5 million firearms sold annually in the nation and more than one million people killed by guns in the past four decades. Research shows that among 23 populous, high-income nations, 80 percent of firearm deaths occurred in the United States, where citizens suffer homicide rates 6.9 times higher than in the other nations. America needs sane and effective gun control policies, including the assault weapons ban, not political obfuscation. Benjamin Hall ANTAKYA, TURKEY In the Syrian city of Aleppo, there are neighborhoods that are almost entirely abandoned; blocks of buildings with their facades blown off, apartments open to the street; and other buildings, intact but empty, their curtains billowing out the windows. Broken water pipes have turned roads into debris-clogged rivers. And tribes of cats stalk around like predators; every now and then you pass one lying dead on the ground, its body torn apart by sniper fire. The snipers, both rebel and regime, are everywhere. The MIG jets are always overhead, and shelling continues day and night. You cannot escape the smell of dead bodies, and it feels as if it is only a matter of time before you are hit, too. This is life on the ground for the remaining residents of Aleppo. With only this in mind, it is easy to argue that the West should intervene — arm the rebels, help them overthrow the vicious rule of the Assads, and try to create something good from the chaos. After all, the rebels are outgunned, outsupplied and outfinanced. They are battling a force that is aligned with Iran and Hezbollah, and one that commits daily atrocities. And yet, all things considered, I can’t argue for intervention in Aleppo, or in the wider Syrian conflict. For a few days in September, I was embedded with the Ahrar al-Sham, or Free Men, rebel faction in the city. These men are fierce and battle-hardened. They sit chatting or sleeping while shells fall all around, and seem nonchalant while lobbing homemade bombs into government compounds. Some taunt the enemy. Others seem almost excited to fire their guns — for them the conflict is jihad, a badge of honor. We sat with one rebel marksman as he followed government soldiers through his scope and laughed as he shot at them. ‘‘My throat is full of victims,’’ he said. But every couple of streets in Aleppo is under the watch of a different brigade, and while they sometimes work together, they are just as often at odds. I have seen one brigade lay down covering fire to allow another group to retrieve the dead body of one of its fighters, only to see the same two factions scream at each other later in the day and refuse to cooperate in a battle that did not benefit them both. I have met some members of the Free Syria Army who prefer to enter Aleppo illegally rather than go through the gate held by the Northern Storm Brigade, a strict Islamist group under the umbrella of the F.S.A. ‘‘They’re not our guys,’’ one explained. In addition to great mistrust, there is a general lack of leadership. The opposition coalition in exile, the National Syrian Council, debates from Istanbul but gets no respect from the fighters on the ground. Last month, the leader of the F.S.A., Riad al-Assad, announced that he was moving his headquarters to Syria in an attempt to unify the different battalions under his watch, but rumors abound that he remains in Turkey. Other leaders who have tried to command respect are defectors from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and they are not often trusted. Many of the rebels are fighting for a noble cause, and have no motive beyond protecting their homes and families. But it is hard to pick them apart from those who seek to take advantage of the chaos to transform Syria into a Shariahbased fundamentalist state. In Aleppo, I heard Salafi jihadists talk of slaying the minority Alawites, and call for both the immediate support of America, and its immediate demise. These extremist groups are getting weapons from Saudi Arabia and Qatar already; they are not groups that the West would choose to arm. Compared with them, it is not clear that Assad is the bigger foe. It would be an error for the United States and the European Union to supply arms to the rebels or intervene on the ground. No one would be happier to see America mired in the country than Iran, which sees a chaotic Syria as the next best thing to an allied Syria. The most the West can do is impose a no-fly zone under the auspices of NATO to ground the government’s air force. This would level the playing field, giving the rebels space to try to form a more unified leadership near the Turkish border, while preventing the slaughter of civilians and the destruction of more cities like Aleppo. Since the rebels took over an air defense base near the city last week, this seems to be an ever more feasible option. But it won’t be easy: no-fly zones are hugely expensive, and Syria is no Libya; its air defense system is far more sophisticated. And even with a no-fly zone, it’s hard to see a way out of this quagmire. Turkey has been in discussions with the rebels and the government about the possibility of beginning a peace process, but it seems unlikely at this point that the rebels will stop until they have taken Damascus. So for all the horrors on the ground, it seems almost impossible that the United States and Europe can do much to help while the future is so blurred and so bleak. As President Bill Clinton once said, ‘‘Where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must act.’’ Despite what I have witnessed, I am not convinced we can in Syria. is a freelance journalist who writes on conflict and the Middle East. BENJAMIN HALL SIMON PRADES How to catch fish and save fisheries Over-fishing is destroying a major food source. But we have not reached a point of no return. We have time. Solutions exist. IHT ONLINE Global Opinion Latitude: Gul unleashed There seems to be little to block the Turkish prime minister’s drive to become ever more powerful — except perhaps his ally, the president, writes Andrew Finkel. nytimes.com/globalopinion Top environmental ministers from scores of countries all over the world are meeting this week in Hyderabad, India. Their goal: to reach agreement on how to protect 10 percent of the world’s ocean. Actually, they had set that goal two years ago under the Convention on Biological Diversity. You might be thinking, here we go again — easy to agree on goals; hard to agree on how to meet them. But it matters. The U.S. Commerce Department just declared major fisheries in New England, Alaska and Mississippi a ‘‘disaster.’’ Another new study found that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral since 1985. British and French fishermen have clashed as boats from Britain sailed into French waters on the hunt for scallops. But that bell tolls not just for the fishermen — it tolls for us as well. Fish are the primary source of protein for an estimated one billion people around the world. The journal Science recently published the first comprehensive analysis of more than 10,000 fisheries — roughly 80 percent of our global fish catch. The conclusion: fish populations worldwide are swiftly declining. This global analysis paints a stark new picture of a global ocean fished to exhaustion in an increasingly hungry world. So, why are we hopeful? It’s because the analysis of global fisheries has a silver lining. We have not reached a point of no return. We have time. Solutions exist. The good news is that many large commercial fisheries are already benefiting from the improved management of the last decade. The harder problem is with smaller-scale fisheries that local communities rely on for food and income. The fact is that small-scale fishers — who fish within 10 miles of their coast — account for nearly half of the world’s global catch and employ 33 million of the world’s 36 million fishermen, while also creating jobs for 107 million people in fish processing and selling. Mostly poor, they live mainly in areas lacking fisheries management, monitoring and enforcement. No one is in a position to formally declare their fisheries ‘‘disasters.’’ They must just endure their situation. Or — take control of it. A rising tide of local communities is doing just that. Here’s the emerging recipe proposed in that same Science study: Give local fishers exclusive access to their fishing grounds in the form of territorial use rights, or TURF. In exchange for the privilege of exclusivity, local fishermen agree to establish and protect no-take zones. Results include increased fish populations, richer marine habitats, and coastlines less vulnerable to climate change — and more food for people. Unleashing the self-interest of local fishermen to advance both conservation In exchange and economic develfor the privopment can create ilege of exone of those rare winclusivity, local win scenarios. fishermen A growing body of research shows that agree to esfish populations intablish and side a no-take zone protect nocan more than quadtake zones. ruple. Fish numbers outside the reserve can double. And, exclusive access enables investment and better management, increasing the catch’s value. It works. We’ve visited several local fisheries in Mexico and the Philippines this year — with heads of leading research institutions, NGOs and government agencies — and in each case, we witnessed increasing fish populations, increased catch value and better-protected reefs. TURF reserves are not a silver bullet. They might, however, be the silver buckshot. With nearly one billion people reliant on the ocean for their primary source of protein, stakes are high. If the most fish-dependent nations adopted widespread networks of TURF Reserve, they can potentially create enough fish recovery to feed hundreds of millions of people. That’s a big if, however. The solution is not to fix a small number of fisheries. We need thousands of TURF reserves in dozens of countries just to get the ball rolling. Ultimately, we need a commitment of governments, foundations, NGOs and the private sector to forge a major investment in near shore fisheries in the developing tropics. The coastal communities themselves must unfurl the ocean’s silver lining. Protecting 10 percent of the world’s oceans is no small task. TURF reserves offer one solution to start us down that path. But they are neither complicated nor expensive. Clearly this problem — and the opportunity — is bigger than all of us. And there are a billion reasons for us to act like it. Federal subsidies also created a network of green tech corporations hoping to benefit from taxpayer dollars. One of the players in this network was, again, Al Gore. As Carol Leonnig reported in The Washington Post last week, Gore left public office in 2001 Green tech looks less like worth less than $2 million. Today his a gleaming wealth is estimated beacon of to be around $100 virtue and million. Leonnig reports more like that 14 green tech corporate firms that Gore inwelfare. vested in received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in federal loans, grants and tax breaks. Suddenly, green tech looks less like a gleaming beacon of virtue and more like corporate welfare, further enriching already affluent investors. The federal agencies invested in many winners, but they also invested in some spectacular losers, from Solyndra to the battery maker A123 Systems, which just filed for bankruptcy protection. Private investors can shake off bad investments. But when a political entity like the federal government makes a bad investment, the nasty publicity tarnishes the whole program. The U.S. government wasn’t the only one investing in renewables. Governments around the world were also doing it, and the result has been gigantic oversupply, a green tech bubble. Keith Bradsher of The New York Times reported earlier this month that China’s biggest solar panel makers are suffering losses of up to $1 for every $3 in sales. Panel prices have fallen by three-fourths since 2008. Manufacturers will need huge subsidies far into the future — as Bradsher writes, ‘‘a looming financial disaster.’’ The U.S. share of the global market, meanwhile, has fallen from 7 percent to 3 percent since 2008. The biggest blow to green tech has come from the marketplace itself. Fossil fuel technology has advanced more quickly than renewables technology. People used to worry that the world would soon run out of oil, but few worry about that now. Shale gas, meanwhile, has become the current hot, revolutionary fuel of the future. Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Daniel Yergin projects that in 2030 the worldwide fuel mix will not be too different than what it is today. That is, there will be more solar and wind power generated, but these sources will still account for a small fraction of total supply. Fossil fuels will still be the default fuel for decades ahead. The Financial Post in Canada recently surveyed the gloom across the clean energy sector. ‘‘Revenues from renewable and alternative energy fell a little more than 12 percent’’ in 2011, the paper reported. Research and development spending on renewables is set to decline next year, according to United Nations figures, while the oil and gas sector is investing a whopping $490 billion a year in exploration. All in all, the once bright green future is looking grimmer. Green tech is decidedly less glamorous, tarnished by political and technological disappointments. The shifting mood was certainly evident in the presidential debate this week. Global warming was off the radar. Meanwhile, President Obama and Mitt Romney competed to see who could most ardently support coal and new pipelines. Obama is running radio ads in Ohio touting his record as a coal champion. This is not where we thought we’d be back in 2003. Global warming is still real. Green technology is still important. Personally, I’d support a carbon tax to give it a boost. But he who lives by the subsidy dies by the subsidy. Government planners should not be betting on what technologies will develop fastest. They should certainly not be betting on individual companies. This is a story of overreach, misjudgments and disappointment. Carl Safina Brett Jenks CARL SAFINA is founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, where he is an adjunct professor in marine sciences. BRETT JENKS is the president and chief executive of Rare, a global conservation organization based in Arlington, Virginia. A sad green story David Brooks The period around 2003 was the golden spring of green technology. John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bipartisan bill to curb global warming. I got my first ride in a Prius from a conservative foreign policy hawk who said that these new technologies were going to help us Americans end our dependence on Middle Eastern despots. You’d go to Silicon Valley and all the venture capitalists, it seemed, were rushing into clean tech. From that date on the story begins to get a little sadder. International Herald Tribune Al Gore released his movie ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth’’ in 2006. The global warming issue became associated with the highly partisan former vice president. Gore mobilized liberals, but, once he became the global warming spokesman, no Republican could stand shoulder to shoulder with him and survive. Any slim chance of building a bipartisan national consensus was gone. Then, in 2008, Barack Obama seized upon green technology and decided to make it the centerpiece of his jobs program. During his presidential campaign he promised to create five million green tech jobs. Renewable energy has many virtues, but it is not a jobs program. Obama’s stimulus package set aside $90 billion for renewable energy loans and grants, but the number of actual jobs created has been small. Articles began to appear in the press of green technology grants that were costing $2 million per job created. The program began to look like a wasteful disappointment. Immeuble le Lavoisier, 4, place des Vosges, 92400 Courbevoie France. POSTAL ADDRESS: CS 10001, 92052 Paris La Défense Cedex. 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