FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke
African, Danish and Canadian youth join the Yes Men to demand climate justice and skewer Canadian climate policy
Le Canada victime d’un canular @ courrierinternational.com
Deux faux communiqués ont mis la représentation canadienne dans l’embarras lundi 14 décembre. Le Canada y annonçait un très ambitieux plan de réduction de ses émissions de gaz à effet de serre. La révélation de la supercherie vient souligner le manque d’engagement de ce pays sur ce dossier.
Virtual Water by the World Water Council
Virtual water is the amount of water that is embedded in food or other products needed for its production. For example, to produce one kilogram of wheat we need about 1,000 litres of water, i.e. the virtual water of this kilogram of wheat is 1,000 litres. For meat, we need about five to ten times more.
Virtual Water by Timm Kekeritz on traumkrieger GmbH
One of the most important research papers in this field is Chapagain, A.K. and Hoekstra, A.Y. (2004), »Water footprints of nations«, Value of Water Research Report Series No. 16, UNESCO-IHE, Delft, the Netherlands.
Designer Timm Kekeritz created a poster, visualizing parts of their research data, to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceptible.
Energy self-sufficiency not military escorts for oil – The US gas garrison
The Carter Doctrine, established 28 years ago, put the US military in service of assuring the nation’s regular supplies of imported oil. This has near-bankrupted the US and corrupted the military, yet left the US insecure in energy sources and globally loathed. The time has come to demote petroleum and stand down the troops.
Energy reform in Mexico – Crude and oily
A controversial referendum and the future of the state oil company…
Competitive gas
The Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline projects will help in optimising gas supply in the country and bring down prices to an affordable level…
Oil rises above $125, Nigeria supports
* Oil above $125, Nigeria pipeline attack supports
* U.S. highway driving drops, May oil demand revised down
* Reuters EIA poll sees crude and gasoline stocks down
(Previous TOKYO, updates prices)
It is truth ?
- The Truth About Harvard ? and Faculty Group Rebukes Harvard President With Vote
- Can Harry Potter save ancient forests ?
Seen this Monday on ecoblog.it, an Italian blog about ecology and everything for who – really – cares about planet hearth, two post that pre-occupied myself a little.
The article about PM10 that links to La Repubblica (a major Italian daily newspaper) told about 310.000 Europeans died every years because of bad air quality and high pollution level…
The other one posted last Friday is about this serious study “Scripps Researchers Find Clear Evidence of Human-Produced Warming in World’s Oceans”…
Anyway, I hate Mondays…
- When the polluter doesn’t pay on EU Insider about Airbus
- When people are slave of a multinational marketing operation
- Appeasement Revisited by Vaclav Havel
- They Kill Journalists, Don’t They?
- GM pays to walk away
- Kyoto Protocol becomes law
Environment DG Mission Statement:
“Protecting, preserving and improving the environment for present and future generations, and promoting sustainable development.”
Last summer, while the Americans were focused on the Iraq crisis and on the presidential campaign, the American chemical industry was worried about what occurred in Europe…
The European Commission for Environment has put a final touch on the REACH – Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals - project, the first attempt for data acquisition on the 30.000 chemicals marketed in the United States and in the world.
In 1976, the Congress adopted Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the actual problem of the TSCA is that 80 % of the chemical substances today on the market were introduced before 1979. But Europe, at the time, followed the American model, in facts, the TSCA constituted an international reference.
In 2004 very high concentrations of toxic substances were found in some tested Americans and Europeans blood: last June at the WHO convention in Budapest, World Wildlife Fund detected 44 dangerous products in the blood of EU staff, including Margot Wallstrom, current vice-president of the communication at the European Commission.
In 2005 the American Chemical Council has to find new lobbying methods in a new international context dealing with an institution including twenty-five countries and twenty national languages. “All was new for us: new Parliament, new procedures, new political parties “, recognizes Joe Mayhew, adviser as a chief at American Chemical Council.
Update: Lobbying Code of Conduct?
The Brussels branches of leading American lobbying companies (Weber Shandwick, Hill & Knowlton, Burson Marsteller and Fleishman Hillard) met in January to form the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA). Limited to lobbying firms and excluding the lobbying staff of big multinational corporations, the new association provides for strict disciplinary procedures for members who fail to comply with a code of conduct laid down by the European Commission.
Many international corporations have a philosophy, governance and policy, and promote themselves their effort in ecology, sustainable development, and on and on… directly on their Web sites to inform visitors how they – try to – respect environment.
Nice but more of those companies produces chemicals, sports cars, or simply use natural resources to do business.
Some of them are interesting and I will show the Porsche example, cause try to explain effort in ecology selling V8 bi-turbo sport cars is so so so funny !
Porsche said:
We want to
- preserve resources and use them economically,
- avoid harming the environment,
- keep environmental impact to a minimum.
Now have a look to the ecological Cayenne 4.5-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, 331 kW, 2,430 kg
For all the others have yourself a look to major corporation’s Web sites…
This interesting article about GM trees will interest Kimberly-Clark (owner of the famous Kleenex and Scott brands) and Greenpeace who has launched the kleercut web site to promote his activism against the largest tissue product company in the world that contributes to the destruction of ancient forests in Canada.
Related links
- United Nations Forum on Forests
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- IUCN Forest Conservation Programme
The Amur leopard will have to change territory (and maybe be extinguished) if Russian government don’t changes his plans to build a pipeline bringing oil from Siberia to a terminal on the coast. The oil is destined for the Asian market, China could be the first client ?
At this point it should be interesting to consider strategic position of this pipeline for a big market such as Asia. Now that Ukraine has a pro-Occidental president, it will be very difficult for Russian government to deal energy and do good business with this new Ukrainian government “build up” by USA. Bush administration gave 65 millions dollars to Yushchenko, Soros Foundation and Madeleine Albright financed and invited many independent organizations to coordinate the orange revolution. The goal of this new (pro-US) government should be to keep Russia far away of the European energy business for the next 20 years, the “big deal” to make “big cash” for neo-liberals and energy monopoles.
Back to the cat, making some considerations, it will be very difficult to convince Russian government to spend more to change pipeline’s route to save the leopard. They are only 30 of the animals in the wild, less than the ones in captivity. It will be very hard for them to survive to the pipeline ’cause it should be built trough the Amour leopard’s range.
Hope for the cat that the job of Zoological Society of London will help and the final pipeline’s route will change.
Norwegians ! They want kill 5, just a quarter of the country’s total wolf population. The hunters love to shot (it is not a fun and fair sport ?) and do not have other idea than kill innocents and wonderful animals such as the wolf, for what…? To prevent the loss of domestic livestock.
Prevention is a word used in many justification for “preventive” violence act such as war, now the Norwegians hunters do they own one against wolves and who knows, maybe wolves have guns too…
Maybe yes, as we can see how hunters hide themselves in a safe place to shot the animals, are the hunters really afraid ? Or maybe they just do this watching Walker Texas Ranger having a long drink in hand and the gun on the other.
It should be more efficient to prevent the growing of stupidity by prohibit people have guns at home and license such as “free to shot for fun” that permit to kill (any) animals…
Check WWF or BBC web site for more info
