earth summit

Writing on the wall for fossil fuels

Posted by bex — 2 September 2002 at 8:00am - Comments
Choose Positive Energy petition hand in

Choose Positive Energy petition hand in

Greenpeace and The Body Shop presented 1,602,489 signatures to the Earth Summit in the form of an interactive mural calling upon delegates to agree to get clean, reliable, renewable energy into the hands of 2 billion of the world's poorest people by 2010.

Greenpeace and The Body Shop teamed up about a year ago to create the Choose Positive Energy Campaign, launched in January of this year. The demand: that governments vastly expand renewable energy for people across the world - the industrialised governments should expand their renewable energy supplies and all governments should commit to providing small-scale renewable solutions like solar and wind power, small-scale hydro, and biomass, to the world's poorest.

Article tagged as: baaba maal, climate change, earth summit, fossil fuels, impacts, renewable energy, the body shop

Renewables revolution clouded by nuclear "fall out"

Last edited 21 March 2002 at 9:00am
21 March, 2002

stop nuclear choose wind

Today's visionary declaration by North Sea Ministers to promote renewable energy in the North Sea was clouded by fall out from the on-going argument on radioactive discharges from Sellafield. 

North Sea Ministers including UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher agreed to "welcome the development of renewable energy, inter alia offshore wind energyThey agree to take action to exploit this potential fully and safely." However, Greenpeace warned that this historic commitment would be undermined by the continued support of the UK and France to the polluting nuclear industry.

The North Sea has huge potential to harness wind power and develop renewable energy. Just 1% of the resource could power more than 6 million homes. In contrast to the billions of euros of state support for the nuclear industry, renewables still receive insufficient funding.

Greenpeace political advisor Simon Reddy said,
"The UK and France have to understand that the policies they articulated in Bergen represent a fundamental contradiction. What use is it signing up to clean renewable energy if you simultaneously continue to support a failing industry that is polluting our environment? It's a policy that's about as stable as the ice shelf that's just broken off from Antarctica."

During the 5th North Sea Ministers meeting in Bergen, the UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher stated publicly: "The twentieth century was the century of oil, the twenty-first must be the century of renewable energy."

The conference saw Ministers from nine countries and the EU recognise that climate change brought on by the use of fossil fuels poses a potent threat to the ecosystem and coastal regions of the North Sea. They also acknowledged the need to develop renewable alternatives to fossil fuels like oil and gas.

The commitment by the ministers to take action to exploit the wind potential of the North Sea was welcomed by Greenpeace. However, the agreement will only be worthwhile if it leads to massive financial investment in the offshore wind industry. Greenpeace emphasised that only through a commitment to renewable energy technologies will governments be able to make a substantial and sustainable contribution to their Kyoto Protocol commitments.

Article tagged as: climate change, earth summit, EU, kyoto protocol, michael meacher, north sea, nuclear power, press releases, renewable energy

The History of the Climate Talks

Last edited 19 July 2001 at 8:00am
walrus on iceflow

walrus on iceflow

The road to Kyoto stretches back to the mid-1980s when increasing scientific evidence of human interference with the climate and growing public concern over environmental issues began to push climate change onto the political agenda.

Recognising the need for authoritative scientific information the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and in 1990 the IPCC published it First Assessment Report. The report confirmed that climate change was indeed a threat and called for a global treaty to address the problem.

Article tagged as: climate change, COP, earth summit, international policy, IPCC, kyoto protocol, UN