Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletinhomepage
Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets
Ian Traynor, The Guardian
France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.
It’s a snapshot of a single day – yesterday – in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.
(31 January 2009)
Arctic’s thaw brings security risks for NATO
David Stringer, Associated Press
NATO will need a military presence in the Arctic as global warming melts frozen sea routes and major powers rush to lay claim to lucrative energy reserves, the military bloc’s chief said Thursday.
NATO commanders and lawmakers meeting in Iceland’s capital said the Arctic thaw is bringing the prospect of new standoffs between powerful nations.
(29 January 2009)
Gulf’s green claims awash in a desert of deception
Fred Pearce, Guardian
The attempted green makeover by the Gulf states is beyond irony: with spiralling emissions, desert ski slopes and refrigerated beaches, can they be serious?
—
… The Gulf states are keen to promote green kit – and will throw cash at it as if they were buying a Premier League football team – but have rather missed out on the purpose. It’s like changing to energy-efficient lightbulbs, but driving a Hummer to the shops to buy them.
If you don’t fancy an ecoconference or visiting an ecocity, you can fly to the Gulf for an ecoholiday – for instance on Kuwait’s “green island”, a holiday retreat on an artificial island “fortified with concrete” where “even the sands at the beaches were imported from other countries.” Which again rather misses the point.
You can also take in an afternoon’s skiing at Dubai’s snow park – 3,000 square metres of artificially frozen snow in the desert. Or stay at the Dubai hotel that recently announced plans to refrigerate its beach so guests didn’t burn their feet.
Dubai is, of course, the sleepy old gold-smuggling port currently being turned, courtesy of several hundred billion petrodollars, into a shiny new megacity. It must qualify as the world’s most environmentally unfriendly city.
(29 January 2009)
