Inauguration of Politkovskaya Room at the EU Parliament:

President Hans-Gert Pöttering will unveil a plaque at a ceremony officially naming parliament’s press conference room after murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya

Wednesday, June 4, 2008, 4.30pm.

Also:   Tuesday June 3, 2008, the Parliament will look at Media pluralism:
A report by the culture committee will be issued that looks at media concentration in the EU.

TOP STORY

4.4 Cents and Sensibility - Bay Area initiates first-of-its-kind fee on biz greenhouse-gas emissions.

Businesses in nine San Francisco Bay Area counties will pay 4.4 cents for every ton of greenhouse gases they spew, after the district air-quality board voted 15-1 last week to approve the fee. Set to take effect July 1, the fee will affect more than 2,500 businesses; the district estimates that perhaps seven power plants and oil refineries will have to pay more than $50,000 a year, but most businesses will pay less than $1.

The fee is modest enough that dramatic emissions reductions are unlikely to occur, but proponents laud the precedent.

Businesses were, unsurprisingly, less enthusiastic, expressing concerns about the cost of tracking and reporting emissions, duplication of state efforts to address warming, and the authority of an air-pollution board to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. The fee is expected to generate $1.1 million in the first year, which will help pay for projects aimed at reducing the region’s emissions.

Climate Destruction Will Produce Millions of ‘Envirogees’
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2008.

The rise of environmental disasters from climate change and destruction of ecosystems will create a surge of refugees across the planet. Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee.

It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven’t been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth’s various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons.

In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth’s surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis — a manufactured war with its own clock. And the clock is ticking.

From earthquakes in China to cyclones in Myanmar to water rationing in Los Angeles, societies are shifting like their borders. And all the outcry over so-called illegal immigration neglects to answer one time-honored question: If the borders aren’t standing still, why should the people who live in their outlines do so? Especially when they’re under attack from catastrophic floods, fires, droughts and any number of other environmental dangers?

Right now, the 1951 Geneva Convention does not recognize the envirogee phenomenon, instead focusing on immigration as a result of political persecution. But then again, it was established over five decades ago when Earth’s climate was anything but a terrorist. But the Geneva Convention, like everything that must adapt or die, needs to mutate in time with the rest of the world and its hyperconsuming inhabitants in order to remain relevant in our still-new millennium.

Here are some startling envirogee numbers to crunch: According to the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Earth’s fracturing communities will have 150 million envirogees by 2050. According to Australian climatologist Dr. Graeme Pearman, coastal flooding resulting from a mere two-degree rise in temperature would kick 100 million people out of their danger-zone homes by 2100.

Here’s more scary data. Desertification is claiming land from China to Morocco to Tunisia and beyond at an increasing rate. New Orleans and parts of Alaska are slowly sliding into the sea, while the former, as Hurricane Katrina ably illustrated, is becoming a reliable target for intensifying weather events, human corruption and half-assed infrastructure. Aquifers around the world are shrinking, while acidification is claiming cropland in Egypt and beyond. Hypoxia has claimed portions of the ocean itself with alarming speed, as stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific lose oxygen and, by extension, the marine life that not only feeds millions but establishes the continuity of the food chain.

No food chain, no food. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

But numbers are fallible, which is another way of saying the above figures are most likely best-case scenarios. In other words, the future is now. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the IPCC might have taken home a Nobel for their statistics and bleeding hearts, but their math was significantly off. Worse, the rate at which these things happen is rising exponentially.

“The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations accelerated over recent decades along with fossil fuel emissions,” explained a report on methane and CO2 rises by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Organization for Atmospheric Administration. “Since 2000, annual increases of two ppm or more have been common, compared with 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s and less than one ppm per year during the 1960s.” As for methane, in 2007 it exploded by 27 million tons after a decade with relatively no rise at all. Think about that next time you eat that Happy Meal.

So what’s an envirogee to do, other than opt out of wasted fantasies like Happy Meals, factory farming, bottled water and Hummers? What else? Move.

Which is what envirogees worldwide are already doing right now, by choice or by gunpoint, and will do more often than not as situations on the ground and in the air deteriorate.

The conflict raging in Darfur is a sobering example of the complexity of the situation. It has so far displaced 2-3 million people, and for all the talk of political or religious persecution, the fact remains that it is at its root an environmental crisis. An arid desert whose water is drying up by the day, Darfur is one of the first flashpoints of our new phase of climate conflict, a conflict that U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon explained in the Washington Post as one “that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.” But this too should have been foreseen: According to remote sensing, Darfur sits atop of an underground lake that once used to hold over 600 cubic miles of water and dried up thousands of years ago.

And like Darfur, we are numbly sitting atop our climatological past while it races to catch up with us. Parched by thirst and hungry for fossil fuels which, in turn, only exacerbate that thirst and the wars it engenders, envirogees are streaming out of these hot zones into less murderous ones, whose inhabitants are circling their wagons on the outsiders. Civil wars are breaking out. Outsiders, in turn, are becoming invaders. The irony is rich.

It gets richer, or poorer, depending on where you stand on peak oil. The planet’s shrinking petroleum reserves are now more valuable than ever, and the prices for its capture and capitalization show zero sign of returning to normal. That expense is also beginning to be measured in lives, as carbon concentration exponentially increases and weather events become more extreme.

And you all know what they say about extreme times calling for extreme measures.

We’ve been here before, which is to say on the brink of extinction. In one instance, drought shrunk our numbers to about 2,000 scattered in a diaspora across Africa, a fearsome thought for a 21st century superpower that may be entering its own permanent drought. But the wrinkle is different this time around the tightrope: We built this coming dystopia with our own hands.

And that’s going to reshape not just immigration policy, but the concept of immigration altogether. And that’s where the envirogee comes in. The envirogee, you see, is on the run from himself.

In other words, and no matter how much blowhards like CNN’s Lou Dobbs bitch and whine, the inconvenient truth of climate change, and its rampant resource wars for what’s left of the planet’s stores, remains a reality. Beneath genocide in Darfur lies a desert that used to be a lake. There probably isn’t a better metaphor for our current hyperhighway to hell in existence, if one could argue that it was a metaphor to begin with. But one can’t, because it is reality, pure and simple. And so are envirogees, regardless of the outdated assertions of the Geneva Convention or the staid refusals of the insurance industry to wake up and smell the hurricanes.

“If we keep going down this path,” French prime minister Nicholas Sarkozy argued to the superpowers gathered at the Major Economics Meeting in Paris last month, “climate change will encourage the immigration of people with nothing towards areas where the population do have something, and the Darfur crisis will be only one crisis among dozens of others,” he stressed.

That is, we won’t be worried about Mexicans coming to the U.S. for economic reasons, or Africans doing the same in France and England. We will be worried about hyperviolent cyclones, floods and droughts destroying what’s left of our jobs and the people who want them, as we all pack our crap and move northward, where temperate weather and more bountiful supplies of water, gas and food lie. We will be the ones enduring the hard stares and perhaps bullets fired from locals who are circling their wagons against victims of their own consumption and apathy.

Whether or not we can settle, literally, with that solution, time will tell. But according to the continually underperforming science of climate crisis, we won’t settle for long. Barring any meaningful sociopolitical or economic engagement, to say nothing of much-needed technological revolution, on the issue, we’ll have turned from territorial citizens into climate nomads, all in a cosmological eyeblink.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

Oil: Power Has Changed Sides. (News?)
Monday, May 19, 2008, by: Jean-Michel Bezat, Le Monde
In the beginning of the 1970s, when a barrel of black gold cost less than $2, no one imagined that one day an American president would be reduced to begging the king of Saudi Arabia for an increase in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC’s) production to bring down prices. Yet the West has reached that point. After an initial rebuff in mid-January, George W. Bush was at it again on Friday, May 16, during his meeting with King Abdullah in Riyadh. With no more success than the first time, unless one counts a limited and temporary increase.

The time is long gone when Standard Oil of New Jersey, Anglo-Persian, Gulf Oil and their four other “sisters” dominated the world market. When President Roosevelt got King Ibn Saud to open Saudi wells to foreign companies in exchange for American military protection (1945). When Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh - guilty of nationalizing hydrocarbons - could be overthrown with impunity (1953). When one could pretend to believe that oil is an inexhaustible cornucopia.

Market power has changed sides. It has slipped away from consuming countries and from Big Oil (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP …). The development of the price per barrel ($138), is being determined behind the scenes in the Kremlin and in the meanders of the Iranian government, in Nigerian mangroves and on the banks of the Venezuelan Orinoco, in OPEC’s Viennese corridors and in the halls of the New York Mercantile Exchange. And, above all, in Saudi palaces.

The world is experiencing a third oil shock - slower than those of 1973 and 1980. The barrel, the price of which has increased six times in as many years, is more expensive in constant dollars than it was in the beginning of 1981. Its price may ebb by some $10 or $20 in coming months, but nothing is less certain. Analysts as respected as those of investment bank Goldman Sachs see the price going to an average of $141 in the second half of 2008 and to $148 in 2009. OPEC no longer rules out $200.

The Wahabite kingdom, the only country able to put a million additional barrels on the market, balks at that idea. It even stiffened its tone recently, when it announced that between 2009 and 2020 it would limit daily production to 12.5 million barrels a day to preserve its reserves and the interests of future generations along with them. “Every time there are new discoveries, leave them in the ground, for our children will need them,” the king has resolved.

Nothing induces the Saudis to open the spigots. They consider the market to be well-supplied and stocks of crude and gas to be at good levels.

They are especially worried about the United States’ energy policy, which aims to reduce US “dependency” on Middle Eastern oil - a watchword launched by Mr. Bush and re-echoed in a single voice by presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. All that’s necessary to understand the stakes is to hear the Saudi energy minister’s denunciations of the bio-carburants being developed on the other side of the Atlantic.

On top of that, comes certain American congresspeople’s desire to submit the oil market to the anti-cartel rules of international trade, even to suspend arms sales if Riyadh doesn’t increase its oil production. These initiatives worry and exasperate OPEC. The strategy of the Vienna cartel - which has given up setting a price range since 2003 - seems simple: supply the market to avoid any break, reduce the “security cushion” to a minimum (2 million barrels a day) and thus maintain the highest prices possible without compromising economic growth. With three-quarters of global reserves, the thirteen OPEC member states have the means to enforce their policy.

Spiking Prices:

Consumer countries’ dependence is linked to the fragility of the multinational companies. Oil states and their national public companies share 85 percent of the world’s reserves.

The majors no longer hold more than 15 percent and are having trouble reconstituting that percentage to the extent they draw those reserves down. What weight does “giant” ExxonMobil - the biggest listed company in the world - carry compared to Gazprom or Saudi Aramco? The great Western companies’ access to oil fields - closed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Mexico, ever more difficult in Russia, Venezuela and Algeria - would involve “returning to the period before the 1970s’ nationalizations,” believes Nicolas Sarkis, director of the “Arab Oil and Gas Review.”

Will it be necessary to make war for the precious liquid? Unimaginable, even if the thirst for oil was one motive for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, as acknowledged by former Fed boss Alan Greenspan. What was the payoff? By increasing tensions in the Middle East and reducing supply, the war contributed to the spike in prices. Taking possession of these reserves by force would be a “rear-guard battle,” with the oil-producing countries in “a position of strength” today, Mr. Sarkis notes. “They can sell their enormous dollar reserves and deprive the warmongers of oil by offering it to more pacific countries. To China, rather than America!

A number of industrialized countries learned their lesson from the 1973 and 1980 crises and reduced their dependence. They need less oil to create the same amount of wealth.

In the United States, successive administrations have resolved the issue the same way: “the American way of life is not negotiable.” A policy that has led to US dependence on imported oil moving from 60 percent to 80 percent.

In the immediate future, the problem is geopolitical: access to the resource is contracting. Longer term, the problem is geological. One trillion two hundred billion barrels of oil remain, or forty years’ worth of consumption at the current rate of extraction. The most optimistic multiply that number by three, adding in the so-called “unconventional” crudes (heavy oils, bituminous shales). Unfortunately, they are very costly to extract. Fields are diminishing in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Mexico, Indonesia …

The only answer resides in a reduction in consumption. Now, the spike in prices has reduced demand at the margin only, since transportation operates at 97 percent, thanks to crude derivatives. Such a reduction is vital to reinforce energy security and fight global climate change. The least expensive, cleanest oil is oil that isn’t burned.

=============

The New York Times missed the Le Monde article but reported on something completely different, but also of extremely important value. In effect it is the second half of the same story.

While the Europeans made oil even more expensive by taxation - so they managed to decrease consumption - the US just insisted on providing seemingly cheaper fuel to consumers, making thus sure that consumption does not decline at the same rate as the consumption in Europe. The imports of oil to the US grew, the National debt grew, the value of the dollar fell, and Washington thought that by having an advantage in the lower exchange rate the exports will grow to help decrease the debt. But these were castles in the air, and what we got in return is now a furious Europe.

Please read the attached article that foresees pressures that could lead to closed borders to merchandise, by invoking protectionst barriers - and also countervailing taxes on the inequality on expenditures on energy.

The US is in a downward spiral if it does not change policy.

Maximizing social change on a global scale
Rick Ulfik, Founder and Executive Director „We the World“,
May 21st 2008, UN Headquarters

The UN Youth and Student Association of Austria (www.afa.at) came May 21, 2008 to the UN headquarters in New York, as part of the “Sustainable Future Campaign” (www.sustainable futurecampaign.com), for a working lunch on the topic “Maximizing social Change on a Global Scale.”

The Key Note Speaker was Rick Ulfik, Founder and Executive Director “We the World”  www.weheworld.org)

Josef Manti from Austria was the Spokesman for the Sustainable Future Campaign.

• Creation of awareness of the policy needed for communities to support sustainable development
• Analysis of sustainable development and its regional, national and international impacts
• Sensitization of opinion leaders and the general public for the concern the United Nations maintains on the issue of sustainable development.
• Support of the UN Millennium Development Goals

Next planned event will be held in Vienna, May 27, 2008 with the Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Research, Dr. Jahannes Hahn:

Sustainable Science
Johannes HAHN, Federal Minister for Science and Research of the Republic of Austria
May 27th 2008, Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Eustacchio & Schaar, Vienna

In the US, there exists a US Partnership towards a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This partnership talks of a Global Commons Organization pursuing “Inspired Futures Campaign.”
and an Inter-Generational Partnership fot Livable Futures.

The Youth came up with a whole series of potential partnerships and we post the material that was distributed:

It was heartening to hear from the speaker: “We have to ask ourselves how to behave so we have less impact on the environment in use of energy, on the economy, the environment - it is about the possibility for everybody to do something.” The atmosphere was of enlightened hope - this until a lady covered with Islamic headdress, sitting at the front table with two similarly covered ladies, complained about those in Africa that are hungry while the developed countries try to put them to work in a colonial system. Rick Ulfick took this as something that shows us the urgency of the overhang of the tipping points. The food riots and the fact that COSCO in the US also had to ration the sale of rice.

I felt that the direction the comments by the lady may have taken to mean that the problem of hunger in Africa are the biofuels, so I felt compelled to remark that this has rather to do with the fact that people have lost the incentive to grow their food and that the case of Malawi proved the point that a country can get from basket case to exporter of grains in just 3 years. What made me even less impressed by that Islamic intervention was the fact that when the meeting proceeded presenting further positive points, they simply got up and left. I hope that the young Austrians understood that they just witnessed an oil interest point that is part of the UN problems.

I was happy to hear Rick intone: “Inspire, Inform, Involve” and explain that if you organize a concert, people will come to hear the music, and you have the chance also to tell about the critical issues, and they will be inspired to act.

United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, December 2008

from: Andrzej Czajkowski <andrzej.czajkowski@undp.org>
On behalf of Anna Darska, the Head of UNDP Office in Poland, please find enclosed a letter on United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, December 2008.

Dear Colleagues,
Greatly appreciating your expertise in environment and development issues, I would like to kindly request your assistance in identifying innovative climate-friendly solutions, to be presented during The United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Poznan, Poland from 1-12 December 2008.

Following the 2007 Climate Change Conference in Bali, the 14th session of Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and the 4th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will be held from 1-12 December 2008 in Poznan (Poland). More than 10 000 participants from over 190 countries are expected at this event, with the UN delegation to be headed by the Secretary-General. The conference will be a crucial step to prepare the conclusion of the new global framework for the period after 2012 at the next meeting in Copenhagen. The debates in Poznan will focus on finding effective measures of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impending global climate change. Special attention will be given to financing and development issues, diffusion and transfer of relevant technologies.

The conference will be accompanied by the exhibition presenting practical responses to climate change challenges, organized by the meeting host - the Polish Ministry of Environment. The goal is to present the most important and spectacular practical examples of already working installations, mechanisms, equipments or whole technologies, which are climate-friendly and can be transferred successfully to other countries. The organizers are particularly interested in the following:

● inventions, technological and organizational innovations to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. use of renewable energy sources)

● examples of successful transfer of specific technologies and their popularization in the developing countries

● technological solutions supporting the adaptation to climate change (e.g. water management and collection solutions, anti-flooding solutions, etc.)

Such an exhibition would be presented for the very first time during the Conference of the Parties and we believe it would support the political negotiations, providing ready-to-use examples of innovation. In order to achieve this, the Ministry expects - instead of mere description of activities - very concrete and tangible interactive display units. Following the Poznan summit, the organizers intend to prepare a mobile version of the exhibition, to be presented globally.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), through its Bureau for Development Policy and the office in Poland, is supporting the Polish Ministry of Environment in the preparation of the conference, particularly in terms of collecting best examples of climate-friendly solutions used globally.

On behalf of the Ministry of Environment we would like to invite you to provide innovative examples of technology reducing CO2 emissions as well as technology transfer for the exhibition, which would be an excellent opportunity to promote your and your partners’ achievements. Should you be interested in showcasing the examples of your work, please kindly provide a brief description of the technology solution you wish to present in Poznan including a short note on its climate change impact, as well as the name of the contact person and the institution responsible for the project. Please kindly note that we are interested in every solution that fits the priorities mentioned above, not only those developed within UNDP projects.

Please note that the Polish Ministry of Environment will not cover the costs of transportation and insurance of objects that will be sent to Poznan. Therefore please kindly indicate whether your institution will be able to cover the above costs. In case it is not possible, please provide the estimation of the amount necessary.

We would be grateful to receive the initial declaration of interest from your side, including the brief description of the invention you wish to present, no later than 31 May 2008.

Thank you very much for your kind cooperation and contribution to the success of the exhibition.

Should you have any additional questions, our contact person is Andrzej Czajkowski: e-mail:  andrzej.czajkowski at undp.org, tel: +48 22 576 81 79

Andrzej Czajkowski
Communications Associate
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Poland

Tel: +48 22 576 81 79

Fax:+48 22 825 49 58
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From:  gdeville at envirosecurity.org
“The Bali climate talks have failed to deliver the tangible results so many craved. However, even the weariest pessimist would have to acknowledge the significant step that the Bali talks made, demonstrated by the agreement to hold global negotiations over the next two years leading to Copenhagen in 2009.

In this context, Europe can show how change can be achieved. While it is currently not a major player, Europe still has a vital role to play as a torch-bearer, if not yet a consolidated political leader. Such vision is required now more than ever as Europe is hosting two COPs in succession, providing Europe with a special opportunity to demonstrate leadership”.

{Above talks about the Poznan (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) COPs of the UNFCCC.

Above Forgets to note that the US can also make a terrific contribution in the 2008 elections for US Presidency. This if next US President will be ready to participate in the leadership on climate change. The problem is nevertheless that the US does not change Presidents before January 20, 2009 - so - at Poznan the US willl still be outside the leadership circle and foreseably still considered a wall-flower.

We bring this up as it increases the onus on the EU to become central player, have contact with the US President-elect and make sure that his people take into consideration the EU proposed route when forging a new US aproach to climate change policy.}
The findings (of the ideas presented in this posting) are among the key recommendations in the newly issued Report of the Conference ‘From Bali to Poznan – New Issues, New Challenges’ organised in December 2007 by the Institute for Environmental Security in cooperation with Globe Europe, Globe EU and e-Parliament. The Report is now available for download at gdeville at envirosecurity.org

—–
Institute for Environmental Security
The Hague - Brussels - London - California - New York - Washington DC
International Secretariat
Anna Paulownastraat 103
2518 BC The Hague, The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 70 365 2299
Fax: + 31 70 365 1948
Email:  info at envirosecurity.org
Url: www.envirosecurity.org

Let Us Look Closely At Some Of The UN DAILY NEWS from the UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
28 April, 2008 =========================================================================
Analyzing the news we find that now even the UN makes clear prediction that climate change in Africa is bound to become a security problem with the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal among the first that must address this inevitable danger. All these countries belong to the Arabized Africa.

But Mr. Ziegler of the UN “Right to Food” Program just shoots his mouth at the US and at the EU for trying to decrease their dependence on imported oil by emulating the great Brazilian experience with biofuels. Rather then being helpful, Mr. Ziegler calls for a moratorium that could only benefit his Arab friends.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon visits now the economic offices of the UN in Vienna and Geneva, and speaks up about the real World needs. He will then meet high level UN officials from Economic and Human Rights offices. He will also meet the foreign ministers of Austria and Slovenia, and the President of Switzerland. Our mai