International

In mid-May, I flew to Benghazi to meet Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC), a visit coordinated with European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton and NATO allies. I was the first Western Foreign Minister to travel to Libya since the crisis began. What I saw reminded me of my country 20 years ago, just after Poland’s first free elections, which, together with the fall of the Berlin Wall barely six months later, came to symbolize the Cold War’s end.

From Washington, the enthusiasm of the French for intervention in Libya is seen with a mixture of relief and puzzlement. The Americans do not want the job and are happy that someone else does. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s willingness to intervene (alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron) helped close a dangerous gap between the world of “values,” which would call for direct American intervention against Muammar al-Qaddafi, and the world of “interest,” which impelled President Barack Obama to restraint.

OK, so three weeks ago, I officially moved to Los Angeles. It is not that I wanted to live in Los Angeles. Or work in movies. I fell in love. With a man who wants to live in Los Angeles. And works in movies. Life has its own plans.

It wasn’t that any of this was a surprise: Gaddafi had made his position clear from the start: “Either I rule over you or I kill you, destroy you, ” said Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Shalgham, who turned against the regime.

“She was thin; she had no fat to protect her,” recalled Elsabe Louw, a South-African who together with her husband Jack, are Lora’s adoptive parents. “If you touched her, you could see she was hurting.”

“Delegates, come to order,” demands a young man in a gray suit and knocks impatiently on the table. When things settle down, he adjusts his tie and, with brows furrowed, begins to examine the group. There are 17 of them, all dressed nicely, clinging on to their placards in eager expectation of the next motion. The U.K. is sitting next to the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., while Argentina, Brazil and China have taken their seats at the other end of the table.

This summer has been one of weather-related extremes in Russia, Pakistan, China, Europe, the Arctic – you name it. But does this have anything to do with global warming, and are human emissions to blame?

While it cannot be scientifically proven (or disproven, for that matter) that global warming caused any particular extreme event, we can say that global warming very likely makes many kinds of extreme weather both more frequent and more severe.