Eberhard Rhein’s proposals for an new international climate regime (see his guest blog post from yesterday) has the merit of being more concrete than what I have seen from the EU up to now in terms of efforts to put a global agreement on the rails. Nevertheless, I have two fundamental problems with it (like… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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Climate change, Global Warming, sustainability, sustainable development |
25 March, 2008
The following article is a long guest post by Eberhard Rhein, Senior Analyst at the European Policy Centre. Eberhard looks at the challenges for the EU in the area of international cooperation on climate change. I will publish my own reaction to Eberhard’s interesting contribution tomorrow. —————————————————- 1. By 2020 the EU will account for… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
A few interesting stories caught my eye over the Easter weekend (which was pretty Xmas-like here in Brussels with snow and winter-like temperatures): At the end of last week, the International Herald Tribune reported about a few older “young boys” on some exotic island “plotting to save the planet”, but only if they could make… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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Climate change, Global Warming, Population growth, resource depletion |
20 March, 2008
Is the current chaos in the financial sector the beginning of a global systemic collapse? Two of my favourite American authors certainly seem to think so. Thomas Homer-Dixon, the author of the excellent “Upside of Down“, goes as far as to claim “Global capitalism teeters on the brink” in an opinion piece for the online… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
19 March, 2008
In the Guardian, George Monbiot calls carbon capture and storage “another great green scam”. “Like biofuels and micro wind turbines, carbon capture and storage turns out to be another great green scam. It will come too late to prevent runaway climate change; the government has no intention of enforcing it; and even if it had,… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
18 March, 2008
Europe’s energy-intensive industries surely have done a great job in the last six months convincing European policymakers that stringent CO2 measures for their sector would lead to relocations and thus “carbon leakage”. As a result of this successful lobbying, EU leaders last week felt obliged to make promises to protect these industries by possibly giving… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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carbon trading, Climate change, European Commission, Global Warming |
16 March, 2008
The Spring Summit of European political leaders has been another showcase of why this generation of policymakers will be unable to deal with the current climate-energy chaos. Although the 27 decided to support the Commission’s climate/energy package, short-term protection of European (or better German, French, and other national) economic interests and jobs is still much… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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Climate change, Eco-competitiveness, European Commission, European Union, Global Warming |
14 March, 2008
The most recent environmental Eurobarometer tells an interesting story when you are able to dig a bit deeper. Of course, it is useful for DG Environment to be able to “learn” from the survey that “Europeans put the environment centre stage” and that 64% of EU citizens feel that protecting the environment “must be given… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
13 March, 2008
Politicians should stop pretending that decarbonising our economies can be done on the cheap. This is the conclusion of a damning analysis of EU climate/energy policies published by Oxford energy professor Dieter Helm in the Wall Street Journal today. Helm starts his evaluation with a critical look at the EU’s achievements in terms of emission… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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Climate change, European Commission, European Union, Global Warming, Stern report, sustainability |
12 March, 2008
I sometimes complain that our political elites have lost all long-term vision focused as they are on feeding the quick-news-hungry media with sexy soundbites which have little value for the societal challenges these policy makers are supposed to tackle. It is therefore very encouraging that, occasionally , there is a political figure who manages to… » read more
Posted by Willy De Backer
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Climate change, ecological footprint, Global Warming, Peak oil, resource depletion, sustainability |
