Mr. Becker's group is also trying to persuade power plants to uphold minimum local standards of air quality.
One, floated in Mr Miliband's speech, is to persuade power firms to change their business model, selling comfort instead of kilowatts.
As tension rises on the streets of Athens, Mr. Samaras and his energetic finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, have been conducting a charm offensive across Europe to persuade power brokers like the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French president, François Hollande, and a phalanx of influential bureaucrats in Brussels that Greece means to stick to its pledges.
There is no clear boundary line between mysticism and metaphysics, cosmology, theosophy (a system of thought claiming special insights or revelation into the divine nature), occultism, theurgy (the art of compelling or persuading divine powers), or even magic.
David Cameron has arrived in the Gulf at the beginning of a low-key arms trip aimed at persuading regional powers upset by Britain's response to the Arab spring to buy more than 100 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets.
That threat has persuaded Washington power brokers to cooperate on a series of bestselling Woodward books - and now it has worked its magic again to produce Plan of Attack, the inside story of the war against Iraq.
Even then, first votes for Labor were stuck at a perilous 37%, meaning it would have to rely on second-preference votes cast by Greens and independents.Dismal poll ratings were what persuaded Labor power brokers to sack Kevin Rudd as party leader and install Ms Gillard.
With an American presidential election due in November 2012, and a leadership transition in China at about the same time, these will prove tricky waters to navigate for both sides in the year to come.It has always been more difficult for the rising power to persuade the incumbent power that its intentions are benign.
The world is accustomed to dealing with this kind of problem, which involves persuading the bumptious power that its interests lie in cooperation rather than in confrontation.
Huang argues that it still signals the breadth of state's power, persuading the public there's no use in opposing the Communist Party.
