Nuts From The Amazon Help Fuel First Biofuel Airline Flight, reports Nigel Hunt from London, for Reuters, February 25, 2008.

Nuts picked from Amazon rainforests helped fuel the world’s first commercial airline flight powered by renewable energy on Sunday. We guess - this in order to play it safe - Only one of the tanks was filled with this fuel mixture.

A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew from London to Amsterdam with one of its fuel tanks filled with a bio-jet blend including babassu oil and coconut oil. “Today marks a vital breakthrough for the whole airline industry,” Virgin founder Richard Branson told reporters in a hangar at Heathrow airport prior to the flight’s departure.

British billionaire Branson said, however, it was unlikely the nut of the wild growing babassu palm would play a key role as airlines turn to renewable fuel sources to cut the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. “We did not want to use biofuels such as corn oil which were competing with staple food sources,” he said, adding he believed algae produced in places like sewage treatment farms were the most likely future source of renewable fuel for the airline industry.

Biofuels, which are currently mainly produced from crops such as grain, vegetable oils and sugar, are seen by advocates as a way to cut emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

There has been concern, however, that an expansion in the area of crops grown for energy has helped drive up food prices, and some scientists have questioned the environmental benefits of so-called first generation biofuels.

Many scientists believe so-called second generation biofuels, which could be made from products such as municipal waste, will provide more substantial environmental benefits without competing with food crops for land.

The biofuels blend on the Virgin flight contained 20 percent neat biofuel and 80 percent conventional jet fuel. Branson said tests had shown it was possible to fly with a 40 percent blend.

Branson, whose Virgin Group business spans an airline, a rail service, drinks, hotels and leisure, has committed to spending all the profits from his airline and rail business to combat global warming by cutting carbon emissions.

Last year, Virgin started to power some of its trains using a fuel containing 20 percent biodiesel produced mainly using British rapeseed oil blended with US soybean oil and palm oil from the Far East.

The Brinkman Climate Change and Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN)  announces the release of a Post-2012 Information Toolkit, commissioned by the “The Netherlands Programme on Scientific Assessment and Policy Analysis for Climate Change (WAB).

The objective of the Toolkit is to provide factual underpinning for the negotiations on further commitments under the Kyoto protocol and the Climate Convention on post-2012 climate change mitigation policies .The facts and figures included in the Toolkit can assist in exchanging information, in substantiating positions and in making presentations.

The Toolkit provides graphical and numerical information on the results from various sets of publicly available climate scenario analysis and studies. The Toolkit has been built in the software package AIMMS that enables users to easily show large datasets in graphs and tables, to select variables or parameters and to create one’s own datasets or graphs in a simple way.

The Toolkit will be further developed and extended to cover issues such as LULUCF, mechanisms and adaptation.

The Toolkit, its manual and the AIMMS viewer software are now freely downloadable from the WAB website: http://www.mnp.nl/en/themasites/wab/prod…

Please feel free to contact us in case of any questions and / or suggestions:
On the contents and project: Sander Brinkman ( sander.brinkman at zonnet.nl)
On the Toolkit as such: Koen Smekens ( smekens at ecn.nl)

Within the framework of SNV – WWF project “Sustainable biofuel value chain development in an Existing African Oil Palm Plantation in Honduras” we are looking for a graduate student to do a 80-100 days study to better Hondupalma’s competitiveness of its African palm value chain (north coast of Honduras).

Interested candidates are requested to contact  wbron at snvworld.org.

Please feel free to share these ToR with any other contacts you may have.

*********************************************************
Willem A. Bron
Advisor Territorial Competitiveness / Bioenergy
Program leader Biofuels/Bioenergy CA
SNV – Netherlands Development Organisation
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, C.A.

Tel:    + 504 2369233  Fax:   + 504 2324997
Email:   wbron at snvworld.org

London launches low emission zone.

Mon Feb 4, 2008 6:03am GMT

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - London will become a ‘low emission zone’ on Monday, when transport officials launch a campaign to cut traffic pollution and improve the capital’s air quality, the worst in Britain and among the poorest in Europe.

The 49 million pound scheme will use a network of cameras to monitor the emissions of large diesel lorries, later expanding coverage to smaller commercial vehicles, and impose heavy fines on those exceeding EU exhaust limits.

Road hauliers are unhappy with the scheme, saying compliance will be expensive, but transport officials say improving the air quality will help millions of Londoners, especially those suffering from asthma and other respiratory problems.

Low emission zones are already planned or in operation in 70 towns and cities in eight European countries including Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

“This will be the first in Britain and the largest in the world by a significant margin,” said a spokeswoman from Transport for London, which will run the scheme.

“London’s air quality is the worst in Britain and among the worst in Europe. Levels of particulate matter in many parts of London are way over EU standards,” the TfL spokeswoman said.

“It will help improve the quality of life for people suffering from asthma, cardio-vascular conditions and all the conditions that particulate matter exacerbates,” she said.

The capital already has a congestion pricing scheme, a charge on vehicles entering the city centre, but that was aimed at reducing congestion rather than cleaning the air.

The new scheme will initially apply only to diesel lorries over 12 tonnes which have to comply with strict European Union limits on particulate or soot emissions from their exhausts.

The scheme will operate all day every day, and cover an area of 1,580 square kms (610 sq miles), far bigger than Hong Kong.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND FINES

Cameras at 75 sites in and around the zone will photograph vehicles’ licence plates and heavy fines will be issued for non-compliance.

The scheme will be extended to lorries over 3.5 tonnes, coaches and buses in July 2008 and to larger vans and minibuses in October 2010.

Road hauliers are not happy.

“We realise that the mayor has a statutory duty to improve the air quality of London but we don’t think the scheme as proposed will be effective in achieving that,” a spokeswoman for the Freight Transport Association said.

“It is costing the industry a huge amount of money to comply and some of the smaller operators will struggle,” she said, noting that exhaust scrubbers cost up to 5,000 pounds.

All lorries made after October 2001 automatically comply with the Euro 3 standards of particulate emissions of 0.05 grammes per kilometre, the level adopted by the scheme.

TfL said it identified 120,000 lorries of over 12 tonnes inside the zone during six months of monitoring last year, and estimates 10 percent do not meet EU standards.

Lorries that do not comply and have not been retro-fitted with exhaust scrubbers to bring them up to standard will be charged 200 pounds a day to be in the zone, with a penalty of 1,000 pounds if they fail to pay.

The scheme cost 49 million pounds to set up but is only expected to raise 2 to 3 million pounds a year in daily charges and a further 1 million pounds in penalty fees.

“This is to improve London’s air quality, not make money,” the TfL spokeswoman said.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

Netherlands says it will block EU deal with Serbia.
Associated Press January 28, 2008 from Brussels.

The Netherlands said Monday it would block a European Union pre-membership accord with Serbia until Belgrade brings key war crimes suspects to trial at a UN tribunal.

Such a deal has been supported by some EU nations that argue there is a necessity to reach out to Serbia, rather than isolate it, especially as Serbs prepare to elect a president and the southern province of Kosovo looks set to declare independence.

But opposition from the Netherlands would block the accord, which needs unanimous approval from all 27 EU nations.

“We will not sign an agreement until there is full co-operation” from Belgrade with the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, deputy Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans said on arrival at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

The ministers were to discuss the pre-membership deal on Monday. Some countries have held it up as a way to mitigate anti-Western sentiment in Serbia fuelled by European and U.S. support for Kosovo’s independence. Serbia is fiercely opposed to letting go of the predominantly ethnic Albanian territory.

But the Netherlands wants Belgrade to first hand over Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who led the Serb faction during Bosnia’s civil war in the early 1990s, to the UN tribunal in The Hague.

“We think its really important that Serbia becomes part of the European family,” Mr. Timmermans told reporters.

He added the EU must only sign a so-called Stabilization and Association Agreement “when there is full co-operation [from Belgrade] with the Yugoslav tribunal. We have not yet reached that situation.”

Belgrade says it is doing all it can to co-operate with the tribunal but that it cannot find Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic. While there is sympathy for that view in some EU capitals, the Dutch insist only their arrests would constitute full co-operation.

Most EU nations favour a pre-membership deal that would offer trade and co-operation advantages to Serbia and set it on track to open membership talks with the EU.

Olli Rehn and Javier Solana, the EU’s enlargement commissioner and foreign affairs chief, stressed the need to sign the agreement quickly.

“What is at stake is that the Serbian people are choosing between a European future and their nationalist past,” Mr. Rehn said. “We should today send a very strong signal [for] a European future for the Serbian people by deciding to sign this Stabilization and Association Agreement.”

Similarly, Solana urged EU governments to be “very constructive [and] show our commitment to get Serbia as close as possible to the European Union.”

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband insisted the bloc must “send a clear signal that we continue to see Serbia’s future with the European Union. Rather than against it.”

nbsp;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20…

Japan’s first ICC judge takes aim at ‘culture of impunity’

By KAHO SHIMIZU
Staff writer, The Japan Times, December 25, 2007.

As Japan’s first judge on the International Criminal Court, Fumiko Saiga hopes to use her expertise in international law as well as human and gender rights to pursue a world governed by rule of law.

Fumiko Saiga, Japan’s first judge on the International Criminal Court, gives an interview in Tokyo. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

Set up in 2002, the ICC is the first permanent international court to try people accused of the most serious crimes of global concern, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Saiga, 64, was elected in November to serve as a judge at the ICC in The Hague until March 2009. “The ultimate goal of the ICC is to eradicate serious crimes from the world and let the world (be) governed by the rule of law,” she said in a recent interview.

Saiga, a career diplomat, has served as ambassador in charge of human rights and a member of the U.N. Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

“The significance of the creation of the ICC is that we have a permanent institution that doesn’t allow ‘a culture of impunity’ to prevail in any part of the world,” she said. “Those (who) commit serious crimes will be tried and will not be able to get away with what they have done.”

So far, four cases have been filed with the ICC, including one dealing with Darfur, Sudan. The court issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Harun, Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader, for their alleged role in killing about 1,000 civilians in western Darfur between 2003 and 2004.

Because the ICC is still not well-known in Japan, especially given that all four cases referred to the court pertain to Africa, Saiga wants to use this opportunity to raise the court’s profile here.

“There has not been a trial at the ICC yet. As the trials go forward, I’d like to make the process visible for Japanese to promote people’s awareness,” she said.

Her ambition does not end there. Saiga wants to persuade all the countries that have not yet joined the ICC — particularly the United States, Russia and China, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — to ratify the ICC’s Rome Statute.

Saiga said expanding the ICC’s global membership would promote a united rejection of the culture of impunity.

“The ICC lacks member countries from Asia. Having Japan on board (is beneficial) for the court. With Japan’s membership, I hope other countries will be prompted to think about joining,” she said.

Although it was only two months after Japan joined the ICC on Oct. 1, making it the 105th signatory to the treaty, Saiga received 82 votes — more than the required two-thirds majority — and was elected Nov. 30 to fill one of three vacancies.

“It is very encouraging that many member countries voted in favor of Japan sending a judge. I feel high expectations from them,” she said.

Japan will be the ICC’s largest donor country, with an annual ¥3 billion contribution — the maximum Japan can provide under the ceiling set by the court.

The Earth Institute at Columbia University is the largest academic organization in the world that deals with all ramifications of Global Warming/Climate Change. It is an academic center with over 30 research centers and programs covering many aspects of science with application to concepts like Sustainable Development, Poverty Alleviation, Millennium Development Goals, the Development of Africa, removing hunger in developing countries - the Institute works with the UN, with aid organizations, and with big business. The Earth Institute’s Director, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, seems to be the person who has the key to the knowledge how to involve various stakeholders of Planet Earth. It is several dozens of Earth Institute people, like James (Jim) Hansen, that are justified of having contributed to the work that led to the awarding the Nobel Prize for peace to the IPCC.

Thinking of the results from Bali, I remembered the February 20, 2007 meeting at Columbia University that brought in a little less then 100 companies to a Global Roundtable on Climate Change sponsored by the Scientific American.
It is these CEOs, that listened to former Vice President Al Gore and to Jeffrey Sachs, and many others, about the need to act now and how to make even a profit from doing the right thing. It is eventually these same CEOs that will have to be engaged in order to make it possible to move the cart the limped out of Bali, to the implementation of the programs, that will be set up in Copenhagen.

 This is a reposting of the December 17th article and our comments then. By December 19th there were some moves in the Belgian Saga - next chapter to be written March 2008.

NYT Op-Ed Columnist, Roger Cohen on Belgium - A Surreal State.

Brussels, December 17, 2007

Belgium’s favorite Surrealist son, René Magritte, is famous for his painting of an apple on which he wrote: “This is not an apple.” He did the same for a pipe. Today he might aptly produce a rendering of his native land and inscribe on it: “This is not a country.”

It looks like a prosperous one, with its lace and chocolate stores, and beautiful Bruges, and its glassy sprawl of European Union institutions, and its very own tennis champion, Justine Henin. But for more than a half-year Belgium has been unable to form a government because its 10.4 million citizens can’t decide what the state is for.

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Forming a government against this backdrop of federalism run amok has proved beyond the powers of good King Albert and an outgoing prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who has redefined “outgoing” by staying. Magritte would have painted him and noted: this is not a departing leader. Surrealism is having a Belgian field day.

In the French-language daily Le Soir, Olivier Mouton opined last week that “On every front, we shoot, detest and accuse each other.” Yet the streets have been quiet since the elections back on June 10. The hour of hyperbole has sounded.

Behind it lurks the fact that Flanders wants its day. Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

The 27-nation Union has banished war from the Continent and marginalized danger. Belgium fissures even as E.U. leaders sign the Treaty of Lisbon that will ultimately yield an E.U. president who can run things for up to five years (and so become identifiable), a foreign minister and a workable decision-making process. E.U. security makes Belgian instability harmless.

“The best position today is to be a small country within a large economic entity and trading area,” Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister told me. “That’s why we want an independent Scotland within the E.U.”

Flanders? Scotland? Brussels as Singapore-like city state? Wallonia? Kosovo? The map of Europe is not fixed. But I suspect its overall stability is. I am attached to Belgium — two of my children were born here — and I’d favor its preservation, but I can’t say it’s necessary within an overarching E.U.

As for a Belgian government, it would be nice to have one, but not essential. There’s no Belgian franc to go wobbly. There’s no monetary policy to set. There’s scarcely a country to govern, given how far European integration on the one hand and national devolution on the other have gone.

This is the 21st-century world the United States will face: a mysterious Europe with a more identifiable phone number living its postmodern version of paradise as its nation states get less meaningful or dissolve; and a rising Russia and China hurtling the other way, toward 19th-century-style nationalism, militarism and assertiveness.

Such dissonance will require American flexibility and imagination, enough to understand that the essence of the Belgian crisis is: this is not a crisis.

———————-

We loved this article because we feel somewhat part of this story.

Back in 1975 I wrote as a mini-thesis for a class in International Relations, at The American Graduate School For International Management, the former AGSIM and Thunderbird, at Glendale, Arizona, on the Topic Of A United Europe With The Break-Up Of The Present Political States. I did already then Speak of separate EU members called Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels, born by break-up of Belgium under the safety blancket of the EU. I looked then through all of the European States and gleaned out the ethnic entities that would like their own home government within the security of a European Parliament that recognizes them as equal partners. I was even, for a transition that allows some sort of three House structure, with the leadership of the economically strongest States - not by necessity all present membership - constitute a Governing Board to help in this reorganization that recognizes the will of the people rather then archaic Nationalism that was losing its influence anyway. Why not all present Member States in this third House? Just look how two Greek members are already in the Union, so are several other member States that might not be required in this transition supervisory capacity. The Other two Houses - a Senate and a Proportional House of Representatives, will then be built along USA lines. Eventually, not only Belgium and the UK will take advantage of this reorganization. Spain, Germany, France and Italy will follow. Most probably Poland, Austria, Rumania will follow. Is there a limit to this process? Who knows? Perhaps the large City unit, as exemplified by Brussels will be that - the German Federal Republic gas such City-States already now.

———————

Belgium forms interim government.

By Jochen Luypaert for EUobserver December 19, 2007.
Exactly 192 days since the June election, Belgian political parties have finally succeeded in forming a new government, albeit only a temporary one.

On Thursday (19 December), outgoing Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt formed an interim government, designed to last until 23 March next year.

The coalition will include Christian-Democrats and Liberals from both sides of the language border, as well as the French-speaking Socialists.

This ‘emergency’ government is designed to tackle pressing issues, such as the mounting energy and food prices.

It is also hoped that a new government will reduce the international interest in the political crisis, which is believed to be detrimental to foreign investment.

In the meantime, talks about state reform can continue without affecting governmental decisions, giving parties time to reach an overall agreement on the issue by Easter.

Flemish parties are however being criticised for entering a government without being given guarantees by their French-speaking counterparts that they will support substantial state reform later on - fuelling fears that problems are only being postponed to a later stage.

Mr Verhofstadt is expected to renew his oath on Friday, making the new government the third in a row he will lead.

After Easter, Yves Leterme of the Flemish Christian-Democrats will take over Mr Verhofstadt’s office and establish a ‘normal’ government.

On Sunday, the Belgian parliament is expected to give a vote of confidence to the new government.

Why did it take so long?
Long formation negotiations are fairly common in Belgium which is deeply divided along linguistic lines.

The richer Dutch speaking Flanders is located in the north. Wallonia, located in the south of the country, is poorer and French-speaking. Brussels, the capital and located in Flanders, is officially bilingual but mainly French-speaking.

But it has never taken so long to form a government. The previous record of 148 days – set in 1988 - was broken in early November.

In order to amend the constitution and reform the state, an overall two-thirds parliamentary majority and a majority in each language group is required.

Broadly, Flemish parties demand that the regions are granted more powers in areas such as health care, employment and fiscal matters.

But French-speaking parties fear that this will undermine the financial solidarity between the richer Flanders and the poorer Wallonia and will eventually lead to a break-up of the country.

Another obstacle was the animosity between Liberals and Socialists in both halves of the country, partially inspired by the Liberal fear that social-economic reform would be stalled, making the participation of the Socialists difficult to sell to their voters.

In addition, Mr Leterme - appointed twice by the King to form a government - has made himself deeply unpopular in the south of the country by making a series of gaffes.

Above is from the Greenpeace Austria blog as presented on www.derStandard.at

It is based on a demonstration they arranged at the largest Czech nuclear power plant with the intent to bring attention to the Bali meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

So far - so good - but did they consider that there are strong forces in the global economy that contend that nuclear power is clean power because it does not emit CO2 to the atmosphere?

We know that Greenpeace does not buy this argument, and that Greenpeace has contended that so much fossil energy is used in the readying of the Uranium fuel for the nuclear plant, that the argument is actually less then convincing.

But we have a totally different way of looking at nuclear power that negates completely its non-emitting CO2 argument on the impact on climate change - even without having to talk about CO2.
We wrote about this several times on www.SustainabiliTank.info And the argument is as follows:

Climate Change is a derivative of Global Warming which in itself is a result of humans disturbing nature’s balance between the incoming energy from the sun and the outgoing energy that the earth radiates back into space.
We call this Sunlight and Earth-light.

The Greenhouse Gases are interfering with the Earth-light and therefore global warming that causes climate change. That is all nice and clear. What is has not sunk yet into our consciousness is that it is not only coal and oil and natural gas that are bringing out from the depth of the earth stored energy, that it took eons to collect and we squandered them in 150 years and are continuing to do so at a maddening pace spewing the CO2 into the atmosphere.

Also bringing out from the earth atoms that when breaking up eject energy that was stored in them - does send energy into the atmosphere - and this energy cannot escape into space as Earth-light. So, nuclear energy ends up adding upon global warming which then causes climate change - just like the carbon fuels we all know. It is this aspect of nuclear power that makes nuclear power into a no-no when we talk about climate change.

So, dear friends from Greenpeace - please note that by writing STOP CO2 on the exhaust of a nuclear plant may be used as propaganda by some who want to make money from selling us nuclear power under the guise that those towers do not emit CO2. You may just have handed a publicity tool to the Madison Avenue public relation firm that pushes into our sub-conscience that considering the discussions at Bali - NUCLEAR IS GOOD FOR YOU!

I rather believe that for a dozen other reasons you already decided that nuclear is not good for us - but here you allowed an outlet to the nuclear business lobby that they may find as a useful publicity trick.