“Next US President Urged To Outline Climate Policy” is the title of a Reuters briefing coming from Norway - April 10, 2008, by Alister Doyle in Oslo and Wojciech Moskwa in Warshaw.

OSLO - “The next US president should signal a shift in global warming policies before taking office to help a UN meeting in Poland in December take steps to work out a new climate treaty, Poland said on Wednesday.”

Under President George W. Bush, the United States is the only rich nation opposed to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions until 2012. Many nations expect a shift under Bush’s successor, whether a Democrat or a Republican.

“The American approach is changing,” Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki told a news conference during a visit to Oslo to discuss Poland’s hosting of the main UN climate talks in 2008, in Poznan from Dec. 1-12.

“Unfortunately the Poznan conference is between the election and the (inauguration) of the new president. So it is difficult,” he said. The election is on Nov. 4 and Bush steps down on Jan. 20, 2009.

“We expect at least a declaration from the president-elect, a clear declaration of a changing of attitudes to the entire problem. That could be a very important step for creating a new Protocol,” Nowicki said.

Republican Presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all favour far tougher caps on greenhouse gas emissions than the largely voluntary approach under Bush.

Many nations are awaiting the policies of the next president before deciding their own level of ambition. The United States and China are the top greenhouse gas emitters, mainly from burning greenhouse gases.

Further, Reuters gives as background - POST KYOTO:

Bush argues Kyoto would cost too much and wrongly omits goals for poor countries such as China and India. His administration agreed last year to a UN goal of working out a new long-term treaty by the end of 2009 to combat climate change after Kyoto’s first period.

Under a plan agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December, Poznan will be the half-way mark towards agreeing a new climate pact in Copenhagen in late 2009 to help slow ever more droughts, floods, melting of glaciers, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Nowicki said that Poznan should discuss issues such as how to finance the fight against climate change, and to help poor people adapt. UN studies project that developing nations are likely to be hardest hit by disruptions to farming.

“Generous financing is needed to get the developing world into a deal,” Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim said.

Nowicki also said that Poland had commissioned a report for the conference about the possibility, strongly favoured by Japan, for curbs on industrial sectors such as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to produce a tonne of steel or cement.

 www.SustainabiliTank.info.

We even raisesd the question with the US Permanent Representative to the UN - Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad - and he said that from his previous experience in transition of government, he will personally arrange in New York for a Hybrid delegation to Poznan. See:

“The Poznan Meeting On Climate Change, December 2008, That Is One Month After The November 2008 US Presidential Election, Could Spell Out News Of An American Policy Vacuum That Would Doom The UN Copenhagen Road Way - Our News Are That US Permanent Ambassador To The UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, May Have Ideas For A Way Out.”  www.SustainabiliTank.info Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Posted in UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Reporting from Washington DC, Global Warming issues, Real World’s News, Future Meetings, Archives, Futurism, Iraq, Afghanistan |

 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/03…

but now there is talk at the UN that the gentleman may in effect run for President of Afghanistan and perhaps will not even be in his present position by December ??

So, from all of the above - me are glad that the subject has surfaced, but we have doubts that what the Polish Minister said can carry the day.

10.30 – 10.40
Opening and welcome address
Corrado Clini, GBEP Chair

10.40 – 11.00
Biofuels: a solution for climate change
Luca Belelli Marchesini, University of Tuscia, Department of Forest Science and Resources

11.00 – 11.20
Case study of bioenergy project
Gian Piero Latini, Agrotec spa

11.20 – 11.40
Opportunities to promote biofuels production in Central and Eastern Europe – EUBIA experience and perspective
Angela Grassi, EUBIA European Biomass Industry Association

11.40 – 12.00
Strategy to meet EU target on biofuel production and consumption – Italian scenario and perspective
Giuseppe Caserta, ITABIA Italian Biomass Industry Association

12.00 – 12.20
The European Commission proposal for a new Directive on the promotion of biofuels – opportunities and challenges for the private sector
Raffaello Garofalo, EBB European Biodisel Board

12.20 – 12.30
Conclusion

 http://www.sepromania.it

From: Polish Cultural Institute [mailto:mail@polishculture-nyc.org]
Sent: Montag, 31. März 2008 18:25
To:  mail at polishculture-nyc.org
Subject: No. 312: “BORDERLANDERS: FINDING THEIR VOICE” FESTIVAL

The Polish Cultural Institute
presents

The Borderland Foundation in Sejny, Poland,
and the work of its Borderland Center of Arts, Cultures, and Nations
- practising dialogue where the paths of cultures and people cross -

Festival Program:
l
SEJNY CHRONICLES
American Premiere at La MaMa E.T.C.
April 10-20, 2008
10
CAFÉ EUROPA
An Evening of Arts and Letters on the Theme of “Borderlanders”
The Bowery Poetry Club
April 14, 2008
10
FILMS ABOUT THE BORDERLANDS
Millennium Film Workshop, Inc.
April 9-17, 2008
101
BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE: MEMORY WORK IN THE BORDERLANDS
A Conversation with Krzysztof Czyzewski, president of the Borderland Foundation
The New School for Social Research
April 16, 2008

The Borderland Foundation’s work involves an artistic rediscovering of the area’s rich multicultural heritage, which had been all but destroyed by two world wars.                                             – Ian Fisher, The New York Times

In just over a decade Mr. Czyzewski has won an international reputation, helping to set up about a dozen similar centres as far afield as Mostar in Bosnia, Uzhgorod in Ukraine and Arad in Romania.
– Stefan Wagstyl, The Financial Times

Before multitudes from the Eastern European borderlands emigrated to the Lower East Side around 1900, and before many others perished or were resettled in the hell of WWII, the little town of Sejny in northeast Poland was home to Lithuanians, Poles, Jews, Russian Old-believers, Belarusians, Roma, and Germans. As immigrants, they brought their borderland identity with them to the multicultural experiment of America.

For a long time people had been emigrating from Sejny. Today, this little town is exporting to diversified societies worldwide its pioneering methods of community work as a laboratory for multiculturalism. The aim of Borderlanders: Finding Their Voice is to present the ideas and practices of the Sejny-based Borderland Foundation in building bridges between cultures and ethnicities. Multiple identity, exile, immigration, and the arts’ creative role in multicultural community work are the themes that relate the festival’s events to each other.

All performance events are presented in the Lower East Side as a tribute to the multicultural heritage of a district that was home to many Eastern European immigrants in the early 20th century.

BORDERLANDERS: FINDING THEIR VOICE is presented by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York in association with La MaMa E.T.C., Bowery Poetry Club, Millennium Film Workshop, Inc., and the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, New Schoolfor Social Research.

Special thanks to Professor Elzbieta Matynia of the New School for Social Research for her dedication and creative input.

Special thanks to LOT Polish Airlines CARGO

 European leaders need to follow France and Poland’s example and take a
tougher line on China with real political threats - such as an Olympic
boycott - if the situation in Tibet does not improve, writes John Fox.

[Comment on EUobserver] The threat of a boycott.

28.03.2008 - 14:55 CET | By John Fox, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
As EU Foreign Ministers meet in Slovenia for their regular informal discussion of world affairs, momentum is gathering for a tougher EU line towards China over Tibet.

President Sarkozy, the first EU leader to say that he had not ruled out a boycott of the Olympics, has been discussing policy towards China with Gordon Brown in London this week. Brown has of course already said that he will meet the Dalai Lama when he visits London in May. And Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, has now said that he is going to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony.

But what is a proportionate response from the EU to the Chinese Government’s handling of the protests and large scale detentions and other activities going on behind the media blackout in Tibet and the neighbouring regions?

The initial EU response was certainly weak and only served to embolden the Chinese Government. Javier Solana’s statement that he “intended to be at the Olympics” was the wrong message to be sending to the Chinese authorities after they had potentially just killed up to 100 protesters.

The EU’s objectives on Tibet are: to prevent a repeat of violence from both sides; to prevent large scale detentions of Tibetans by the Chinese authorities and retribution including torture and executions; to get unrestricted media and international observer access to Tibet; and for the Chinese Government to engage in real dialogue with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government in exile on a lasting solution.

To do this the EU needs a more critical approach towards China which contains real political threats. EU leaders need to make clear to the Chinese Government that they are prepared to boycott Olympic ceremonies and to consider a broader boycott of the games if necessary. The EU should be prepared to suspend dialogues and cooperation activities with China and cancel planned visits. This is a language which China understands and regularly uses against the EU over Tibet, Taiwan and human rights issues.

The EU also needs to challenge what the Chinese Government is saying in public. Gordon Brown is right to see the Dalai Lama when he visits – other EU leaders should too, to challenge China’s ridiculous attempts to portray him as a terrorist and to sideline him. EU leaders should challenge China’s insistence that this is an internal issue – protests are worldwide and EU publics demand that their leaders intervene. The EU should also challenge China’s closing down of Tibet, demanding that international observers and media be let in.

EU Foreign Ministers need to have a hard discussion at Gymnich this weekend. The next few months are only going to see protests and pressure increase. The EU needs to be ready to respond: to take a hard line with China which treads the fine line between pushing it away and using the intense attention on China to get real progress on Tibet.

The author is senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

At the five years’ mark, we still think that deposing Saddam was right - staying in Iraq for oil was wrong. Investing that over half trillion dollars waisted (costs are already over $800 billion considering also the fight to depose Saddam) in creating an economy less dependent on oil would have been a much more reasoned choice. What now?

www.SustainabiliTank.info posts the following Washington Post article as a memorial to what we were saying since the start of our website. Sure - the surge has started to work, but to what end? Will the US be able to hold Iraq together as one state common to all its communities? Is it really important to have it as one integrated oil exporting source, at a time that we will anyway start to decrease our economy’s dependence on oil? After removing Saddam we could have left the Iraqi’s to sort out their future by themselves. Had they come up with a Saddam-alike, the US could have gone in a third time - less cost and nothing lost. If the US still insists in keeping Iraq in one piece - will this not push the country even more into future collusion with Iran? The Shiia are the majority and the only part of Iraq that really seeks independence are the Kurds. Why hold them back from achieving their goal? Even Turkey starts to understand that a secure Kurdistan, cards played right, could be to their advantage, and the EU, without pressure from the US, would also shine some light in that direction. The Sunni monarchs of the League of Arab States are yet years away from understanding the emerging new neighborhood in which extreme religious interpretation is bound to highjack also their own states - this because they had that false hope that the oil-money can help them deflect the ire of their own people to targets abroad - the likes of Israel, and even their own benefactor - the United States. This sounds sick - but sick it is. It was that oil-money, that to different degrees, paved the way and paid for the radicalization of the world’s two billion Muslims.

And what did all of this do to the value of the dollar and to US economy at large?

Surely, The Washington Post does not make our points, but then it presents a reasonable description of how sad America feels on this day - after five years of war and just one year after the start of a real attempt to manage that war.

The EU Observer looks into the damages the continuation of the war did to EU-US relations and to the split it created within the EU. What is the value loss to the US from above? How long will take the healing process?

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

 http://euobserver.com/9/25856/?rk=1

Five Years In Iraq
Iraqis and Americans Offer Perspectives on the War
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 19, 2008; A01

The planning ministry in Baghdad explodes after being hit during the second day of U.S. raids on the Iraqi capital March 20, 2003. (Faleh Kheiber - Reuters)

For a majority of Americans, today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of an Iraq war that was not worth fighting, one that has cost thousands of lives and more than half a trillion dollars. For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed.

It has been about a year since Army Gen. David H. Petraeus arrived to command U.S. forces in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker took over as the chief U.S. diplomat, and the military deployed 30,000 more troops to protect and rebuild neighborhoods.

Officials now running the U.S. effort express frustration that the gains wrought by their new political, security and economic policies — in particular, sharply reduced violence — are continually weighed against the first four years of the war, when Iraq unraveled in insurgency and sectarian strife.

“I came to Washington to describe what we’re doing,” Charles P. Ries, Crocker’s senior deputy in charge of reconstruction and the Iraqi economy, said during a visit last week. “At almost every meeting, somebody wants me to describe what we used to do. . . . I know why people raise these questions, but I don’t feel it’s something I can speak to. The times were different then.”

Today’s policy is fundamentally different from the impatient mind-set of 2003, in both lowered U.S. expectations and a less imperious approach to dealing with Iraqi authorities. “In those days,” Ries said, “we decided what [the Iraqis] needed, and we built it.” Today, he said, Iraqis are asked what they want, and then told that while the United States will help, they will have to pay for most of it themselves.

Yet as the administration requests additional war funding and calls for a pause in promised troop withdrawals, some question its right to a second chance. “Like a tourniquet,” the troop increase “has stopped the bleeding,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army Ranger and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, reported last week after his 11th trip to Iraq. What he has not seen, Reed said, are the surgery and recovery that would begin to heal the wound that Iraq has become. And even U.S. officials acknowledge that the “surge” has not led to the political reconciliation the administration had hoped for.

Others see the past year’s successes as fragile and reversible, and less consequential than the pain that preceded them. “I think they have it righter than they ever have before,” Daniel P. Serwer, an Iraq expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace, said of the administration. “But the fact is that those four other years did exist, and they condition a lot of what can and cannot happen now. There’s a history here, there’s a lot of blood and guts on the floor — literally.”

The White House tends to dismiss such longer memories. While it recognizes the inclination to “relitigate the past” when a milestone such as the fifth anniversary is reached, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, “our focus is on the way ahead and making sure that the current situation and the future situation gets better.”

In addition to new directions on the ground in Iraq, officials point to a newly effective structure designed to avoid the kind of ad hoc decision-making that led to early bureaucratic gridlock and mistakes, such as decrees dissolving the Iraqi army and banning Baath Party members from government jobs. President Bush’s appointment last spring of Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan has “helped streamline the process and made sure that there is . . . a senior-level official who can devote his full, undivided attention” to the subject, Johndroe said.

The once-bickering State Department and Pentagon are reporting new levels of cooperation. Diplomats who recall Donald H. Rumsfeld’s insistence that the Defense Department control all aspects of early postwar policy note approvingly that it was his successor as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who recently called on Congress to increase the State Department’s budget.

Many U.S. officials participating in the new efforts talk about those years as though they belonged to another administration. “We weren’t here five years ago,” said one who, like several interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity about past policy on the grounds that it would undermine the present.

“In the early days, they had an idea of something, a plan, of how it was going to be,” the official said. “They would remove Saddam, and democracy would flower. They took this plan and rammed it down into the reality of Iraq, which nobody understood. What did they know about Iraq? Who were they listening to?” In the past year, the official said, “there has been a coming to grips across the board with Iraqi reality.”

One of the more troublesome realities is that Iraqi leaders have been slow to take advantage of the “breathing space” that the troop increase was supposed to create. The administration has often noted that Washington and Baghdad operate on different clocks, with the U.S. timetable for demonstrable progress running far faster than its Iraqi counterpart. In an interview last week, Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, acknowledged that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation” or in the provision of basic public services.

In congressional testimony scheduled for early next month, both Petraeus and Crocker are expected to make the case that enough forward movement has been made to justify continuing the current strategy, and to warn that an abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops could jeopardize the gains of the past year.

But while a strong congressional appearance by the two men last September quieted talk of funding cutoffs and brought a brief rise in public attention, their upcoming testimony appears to have sparked little anticipation.

As the administration struggles to focus on Iraq’s future, it is competing with a presidential race locked in debate about how the war began and how to end it, a Democratic Congress determined to fight over every additional dollar, and a weary, distracted public.

Indeed, once a top public concern, Iraq has been muscled aside by the economy and the political campaigns. In a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center, more people knew the names of the head of the Federal Reserve Board and the president of Venezuela than knew the approximate number of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Some public views about the situation in Iraq have eased over the past year. But others, including baseline judgments about the war itself, have hardly budged. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds said the war was not worth waging. Less than half, 43 percent, think the United States is making significant progress, and majorities continue to judge the war’s benefits as not worth its costs.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

——————————-

And From the EUobserver - Iraq and the EU: Five Years On.

20.03.2008 - 09:21 CET | By Renata Goldirova from Brussels.
It has been five years since the United States began its military operation dubbed ‘Iraqi Freedom’. The war resulted in a deep rift in transatlantic relations, caused a split within the European Union and made Iraqis the single largest group seeking refuge in Europe.

On 20 March 2003, thousands of troops from four countries - the US (250,000), the United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000) and Poland (194) - invaded Iraq. The invasion led to a quick defeat of the Iraqi regime, with its leader, Saddam Hussein, being captured in December 2003 and executed in December 2006.

The US and its allies cited allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed and was actively developing weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the invasion. However, no evidence of weapons of mass destruction have been found in the country’s territory.

“Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting … The answer is clear to me: removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision,” US president George W. Bush said on Wednesday (19 March).

Some estimates suggest that up to one million Iraqis have been killed since 2003, while the financial burden amounts to some $9 billion for London and $845 billion for Washington. Former head of the IMF Joseph Stiglitz has recently estimated the cost to be as high as $3 trillion.

But Mr Bush referred to the costs of the war as “exaggerated estimates”. “No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure - but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq,” he said.

EU split:

The issue of military intervention against Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime became the biggest ever test for the EU’s common foreign and security policy, as member states were not able to speak with one voice.

Several countries, led by France and Germany, were opposed to US-led invasion, while others took part.

At the time, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld exacerbated the divisions by saying: “Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem.”

“You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe,” Mr Rumsfeld famously said.

Since 2003, a number of EU countries such as Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia and the Netherlands have withdrawn their soldiers from the violence-torn country, mainly due to public opinion.

At the same time, troops from Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic remain deployed in Iraq.

Pressure from Iraqi refugees:

According to fresh numbers released by the UN high commissioner for refugees earlier this week (18 March), asylum requests from Iraqis climbed to 38,286 in 2007, a sharp increase from the 19,375 claims in 2006.

A number of non-governmental organisations have therefore blamed the EU for not doing enough over a major refugee crisis, pointing to the fact that the treatment of Iraqis varies significantly from one member state to another.

For example, Sweden’s reception facilities have been under huge pressure, as the Scandinavian country is the only one within the 27-nation bloc granting refugee status or other protection to almost all Iraqi asylum seekers. A total of 9,065 Iraqis applied for refugee status there in 2006, compared to 2,330 the previous year.

The EU “cannot continue to ignore one of the world’s major displacement crises,” says a statement of a group of eight NGOs, including Amnesty International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.

In general, it is estimated that six million people inside Iraq need urgent humanitarian assistance as a result of the conflict. Some 2.5 million are internally displaced, while an additional two million are hosted by neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan.

G20 energy chiefs push for more egalitarian climate pact

By JUN HONGO and SHINICHI TERADA
Staff writers, The Japan Times, March 16, 2008.

CHIBA, Japan — Energy and environment ministers from 20 top emitters of carbon dioxide kicked off a discussion Saturday to explore the creation of an international framework for fighting global warming to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

AP PHOTO shows - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (left) shakes hands with Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari as Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita looks on at the opening of the 4th Ministerial Meeting of the Gleneagles Dialogue in Chiba on Saturday.
With Japan hosting the Group of Eight Summit to be held in Toyako, Hokkaido, in July, trade minister Akira Amari and environment minister Ichiro Kamoshita have been tasked with securing the groundwork for a climate-protecting agenda that can bring all countries on board.

“It is crucial that we create a framework that all major greenhouse gas emitting countries take part in,” Kamoshita said in opening the meeting, which is known as the G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development. The meeting ends Sunday.

Regarded as a preparatory meeting for the G8 summit, the Chiba Gleneagles Dialogue will focus on strategies for distributing climate-friendly technologies, investment in climate protection and structuring the post-Kyoto framework.

The industrialized nations also will discuss methods to give financial and technological support to developing economies to fight climate change.

“Both developing countries and industrialized countries can aggressively pursue their fight against climate change” by implementing efficient energy policies, Amari said in his opening comments for the meeting, also know as the G20 summit.

The Group of 20 consists of China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, South Africa, South Korea, Poland, Mexico, Spain, Australia and the EU, in addition to all G8 members.

The countries represent approximately 80 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Representatives of the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank also attended the meeting.

The Kyoto Protocol, drafted in 1997, requires major industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent, between 2008 and 2012.

Japan’s goal under the pact is to reduce emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012, but it is looking highly unlikely to reach the target.

Japan has insisted that a post-2012 framework must ensure fairness in allocating reduction obligations, and proposed that climate-change initiatives be based on sectoral approach.

Under the “bottom-up approach,” industries that produce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, for example the steel, electricity and oil refining industries, would aim to cut emissions by using the best available energy-saving technology. Such sectoral potentials will be calculated and amalgamated to set quantified national target.

Developing countries would also receive technology from developed countries, such as Japan.

“There is a rough consensus that this is an effective tool,” to reduce greenhouse gas emission, trade minister Amari told reporters after Saturday’s session on technology. “But there were some opinions that some aspects of the approach are not clear enough.”

U.S. Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, chief of the American delegation, said Saturday evening that the U.S. welcomes the sectoral approaches proposed by Japan.

“There is also active discussion on this concept. . . . our position is that these proposals are on the table for active discussion and we welcome it,” Dobriansky told The Japan Times.

But such countries as China and South Africa were reluctant to adopt the system and said they need to study the effectiveness of the approach more, a Japanese government official said.

Japan also proposed developing 21 technologies to help the world halve its current greenhouse gas output by 2050.

These include coal- and gas-fueled power plants with near-zero emissions, solar power advances, vehicles powered by fuel cells or biofuels, hydrogen-based steelmaking, and advanced nuclear power.

Earlier in the day, environment minister Kamoshita held bilateral meetings with Dobriansky and Phil Woolas, the British minister of state for department for environment, food and rural affairs.

“Japan is playing a positive role in putting its proposals forward but it’s too early to say what the reaction from the U.K will be,” Woolas told reporters after talks with Kamoshita on quantified national targets and sectoral approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emission.

“What we agreed is that we would look at each others’ proposals, and share the understanding of how we can reach an agreement. What is important now, since Bali, is that we discuss the solution” for global warming, he said.

The Gleneagles Dialogue was launched in London in November 2005. Results from the fourth and final meeting in Chiba will be reported at the Toyako summit.

U.N.-led talks in December in Bali, Indonesia, launched talks to push for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto’s first phase, which ends in 2012, only requires industrialized countries to cut back on emissions.

——————

World needs revolution in climate change: Tony Blair.

By KAHO SHIMIZU, Staff writer, The Japan Times, March 16, 2008.

CHIBA - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday urged both developed and developing countries to break their stalemate and reach a global deal that will allow all major carbon dioxide emitters to take collective action on climate change.

In addressing the opening of the 4th Ministerial Meeting of the meeting, dubbed the “G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development” at Makuhari Messe Convention Center in Chiba, Blair said, “failure to act on climate change now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible.”

The three-day ministerial meeting, also known as the G20 because it involves countries outside the G8 major industrialized economies, includes China and India. It began in 2005 following the G8 summit held in Gleneagles in Britain, when Blair was prime minister.

The meeting has been held every year since then, and this year’s discussion in Chiba marks the last G20 meeting prior to the G8 summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, in July.

Confrontations between the rich and poor nations and even among the rich countries themselves, have stalled negotiations on finding a new framework to curb global warming after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

“The dilemma is this: how to cut a deal that has both the developed and developing world in it, recognizing that the obligations on the one can’t be the same as the obligations on the other,” Blair said.

Because the scale of change needed is so great, he said, any global effort should go beyond just trying to ameliorate the situation.

“We’re not talking about an adjustment here, we’re talking about a revolution,” Blair said. “It is to transform the nature of economies and societies in terms of carbon consumption and emissions . . . and without collective action, collectively agreed at a global level, the revolution is unlikely to occur.”

Hence the need for a global deal, Blair argued, and he believes that once such a deal is in place, it will give the world’s businesses and industries an impetus to see environmental technology as a huge business opportunity, not as a cost.

While acknowledging that agreeing on a global framework is hard, Blair said the time has come to act.

“No one underestimates how huge this challenge is. But the time has come,” he said. “The rest is political will and leadership. And now, in my judgment, is the time we have to show.

—————–

Sunday, March 16, 2008, The Japan Times.
EDITORIAL
Renewable energy surges forward.

Renewable energy is developing rapidly in terms of investment and energy production. The Renewable Energy 2007 Global Status Report made public in late February is food for thought for energy policymakers, citizens, and power and other companies. Renewable electricity generation capacity reached an estimated 240 gigawatts (GW) worldwide in 2007, a 50 percent rise over 2004.

Renewable energy represents 3.4 percent of global power generation. In 2006, “new” renewable energy, excluding large hydropower sources, generated as much electric power worldwide as one-quarter of the world’s nuclear power plants.

The report was prepared by REN21 or the Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century, a Paris-based global policy network, in collaboration with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C. The report states that global investment reached an estimated $71 billion (roughly ¥7.3 trillion) in new renewable power, fuel and heat-power assets in 2007, excluding large hydropower projects. Jobs in the renewable energy sector exceeded 2.4 million. Wind power accounted for 47 percent of the investment; solar photovoltaics (PV), 30 percent.

In the same year, global wind-power generating capacity is estimated to have increased 28 percent to 95 GW; grid-connected solar PV capacity was up 52 percent to 7.7 GW. Production of biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) in 2007 topped an estimated 53 billion liters in 2007, up 43 percent from 2005.

As of the end of 2006, China had the biggest renewable energy-based power-generation capacity, with about 52 million kilowatts (kW). Japan came in sixth with 7 million kW. The European Union has a renewable energy target of 20 percent of final energy by 2020; China’s target is 15 percent of primary energy.

Dr. Eric Martinot, lead author of the report, says, “The subject (renewable energy) has never been more relevant as concerns have become stronger about energy security, fossil fuel prices, climate change, air pollution, supply sufficiency and other issues that renewables are uniquely poised to address.” His comment deserves serious attention.

Thursday, March 6, 2008, The European Union Studies Center of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with the help of the Alexander S. Onasis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), had the great opportunity to hear from one of Greece’s important political figures - Dr. Yannos Papantoniou.
Dr. Papantoniou currently serves as an Onassis Foundation Senior Visiting Scholar at the University of Athens. In 1981, he was elected as a member of the European Parliament and in 1984 became adviser to the prime minister on European Economic Community affairs.

Since June 1989, he has been an elected member of the Greek Parliament. He served as deputy minister of National Economy, then variously as minister of Commerce, minister of National Economy and Finance, and minister of National Defense under the Socialist, or Pasok, government.

On February 27, 2008, Greece Named Yannos Papantoniou As its Candidate To Lead the the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development , (EBRD). He has also been Governor of the National Bank of Greece in 2000.

Over the 12-month period in 2002-03, when Greece held the presidency of the European Union’s Council of Defense Ministers, Dr. Papantoniou helped to coordinate the policies that led to the creation of the European Military Force and its engagement in international peacekeeping operations as well as the establishment of the European Defense Agency.

Dr. Papantoniou studied economics at the Universities of Athens and Wisconsin, history at the Sorbonne (France), and obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Cambridge (U.K).

The topic at the CUNY presentation was: “Regional Security in Southeastern Europe.” We got obviously an explicit Greek point of view.

At first we got a tour of the European expansion from 15 to 27 States and we saw how this was possible. The Three Baltic States were adopted by the Scandinavian States and this helped their economic integration into the EU. Poland was helped by foreign investment and its relations to US Poles. The Central Europeans were helped by Germany and Austria (Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians - also Slovenia and the future accession of Croatia. The Creation of a partnership for peace at NATO helped Bulgaria and Romania.

So now we are left with the remnants of the Balkans. The situation came to an edge with Kosovo declaring unilaterally independence on February 17, 2008 and being by now recognized as an independent State by over 100 countries. Obviously Serbia and Russia do not recognize Kosovo - neither does Greece. We found in effect, on the internet, a 2007 official statement from Greece saying that they do not agree to an “imposed’ solution for Kosovo. They think of the old concept of Sovereignty under which you cannot dismember Serbia, this because if that succeeds, North Cyprus will also want to become an independent Turkish State …

Turke