Europe – May 23

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Caroline Lucas: Painting a positive vision of a post-carbon world
Decca Aitkenhead, The Guardian
Green party leader Caroline Lucas: ‘We’ve got to get better at painting a positive vision of a post-carbon world. This is not about sitting around a candle in a cave’
—
… What Lucas says about the environment must be pitched at voters who know that climate change matters, but still hope it can be tackled with some minor lifestyle adjustments.

“And it can’t,” she says frankly. “But I appreciate that that can sound a scary agenda. I think what we’ve got to get much better at, as part of the wider green movement, is painting a much more positive vision of a post-carbon world that isn’t hairshirt. I always say, ‘This is not about sitting around a candle in a cave, this is actually about a more fulfilling quality of life.’ And the good news about this agenda is that so many of the changes we need to make for climate change are changes which in any case are usually pretty positive in themselves, and more likely to mean that we’re fulfilled as human beings.”
(19 May 2009)
Related by Caroline Lucas: A Green cure for Britain’s political malaise.

Wales plans for energy self-sufficiency with renewables in 20 years
John Vidal, Guardian
Ambitious, legally binding plans ‘set an example for the rest of the world to follow’, says Jonathan Porritt
—
Wales today laid out radical plans to make it one of the most energy- and resource-efficient countries in the world within a generation.

The government development plans, which are legally binding, are far in advance of anything planned for England or Scotland and would see it become energy self-sufficient in using renewable electricity within 20 years and reduce waste to zero by 2050.

The proposals would make Wales one of only three countries in the world legally bound to develop “sustainably”.
(22 May 2009)

EuroElections 2009 : Party of European Socialists (PES)
Luis de Sousa, The Oil Drum: Europe
This is the second installment in a series, that attempts to summarize the Energy policies put forward by the main political blocs running for the European Parliament. This analysis is on the Party of European Socialists – PES. It is the eternal runner up behind EPP-ED, never getting more than one third of the seats at the euro-chamber. Nonetheless, through the alternating democratic process at state level, it has had also a relevant role in shaping the European Union to what it is today.

PES is a federation of state parties that are either part of, or closely related to, the Socialist International, being the political group at the European Parliament that is formally closer to the way state parties function. Still, it gathers politicians with very different approaches to Society, diluting its identity.

Unlike in the US, where the word Socialism is a synonym for Planned Economics, in Europe it still retains some of its philosophical meaning of solidarity and equality. Especially during the rebuilding process following the Second World War, Socialism (or Social-Democracy in some states) in Europe became associated with John Maynard Keynes’ recipes for economic growth, in what can be considered a politicized process of popular Economics. The oil crisis (that hit Europe hardest during the 1980-1985 period) brought this Social-Economic view into question, with revamped interpretations of Monetarism becoming popular again, especially among Liberal parties, but extending to large swathes of the population. That, coupled with the fast expansion of the European Union (that brought rapid economic growth to many states), ended up moving some state-level socialist parties much closer to Liberalism.

… There are interesting references to alternative modes of Transport and Urban Planning; Energy Efficiency is especially tackled in a much more integrated perspective than that of the Commission. Also relevant is the acknowledgement of the importance of the EU’s neighbours and of the present role Nuclear has in the energy mix. On the negative side are the blatant promotion of agro-fuels and of-course, the suicidal CCS targets. It is pretty unbelievable to read in the same document proposals for an efficiency increase in power generation and proposals to reduce that same efficiency. All these incongruencies bring into question many of the numbers that quantify the tactical goals laid down.

But what is more concerning is the absence of urgency in dealing with fossil fuel depletion, the sense that reducing these energies’ consumption is dependent solely on the citizens’ and politicians’ will. Such is reflected in the way the party relegates Energy into the background, hiding its thorough approach from the common citizen and even failing to properly synthesize it. One day, can PES politicians reach the same level of energy lucidity that Andris Piebalgs seems to have?
(21 May 2009)
I’ve been tracking the responses of political parties to peak oil, etc. and what Luis describes sounds normal. The socialist positions sound more or less like the liberal Democrats in the US, as well as like the parties further to the left.

-BA