URL: Latest posts
We need to change – but to what? and how fast?
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“cognitive dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.” We are living in a time of cognitive dissonance – on the one hand, many p...
A more democratic EU? Stop government secrecy!
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In UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s EU speech this week he talked of the need to increase the EU’s “democratic accountability”. One little known fact is that the most secretive and undemocratic piece of the EU is actually &ls...
Europe must transform itself into a resource efficient economy – and 2013 is the year to work out how
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On Friday I attended the second meeting of the high level “European Resource Efficiency Platform” (EREP). I’m Friends of the Earth Europe’s ‘Sherpa‘ in this process, assisting Friends of the Earth Europe’s Di...
Measuring to manage: Commission launches consultation on measuring our use of resources
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Ever thought it was strange that we measure – and try to reduce – our climate changing emissions, yet we don’t do the same with our resource use? In fact, there isn’t even general agreement on how to measure our use of resourc...
Resource Efficiency for Engineers
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This morning I gave a presentation on “Resource Efficiency policy for Europe” as part of a ‘sandpit’ on “Engineering Solutions for Resource Efficiency” organised by the UK’s Engineering & Physical Resear...
Resource Efficiency flagship launches tomorrow
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The European Commission’s President José Manuel Barroso will launch the Flagship Initiative on resource efficiency tomorrow. As mentioned in my previous post, this should start to spell out what the Commission intends to do to address the chal...
The EU2020 Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative – what is it?
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At the start of March, the Commission published its new EU 2020 strategy, “A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, which included a commitment to “Sustainable growth – promoting a more resource efficient, greener...
A quick catch-up
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I’m sorry about the months of silence on this blog – things have just been too busy, and I didn’t seem to be able to make the time to post. However, I’m hoping to change that now & post more regularly! Here’s a few r...
Measuring Europe’s resource use – a briefing and conference
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We live in a finite world, and global use of natural resources – land, water, materials – continues to increase, as does our emissions of global warming gases. Yet the EU doesn’t consider resource use in its policymaking – it...
Changing our culture to achieve sustainability…..
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The Worldwatch institute have just released a fascinating – and lengthy – publication on ‘Transforming Cultures’ as part of their ‘State of the World’ series. It covers a wide range of issues, from the environmenta...
Commission nominees give written responses to Parliament’s questions
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Next week in Brussels the European Parliament’s committees will be cross-examining the nominees for the new Commission – the timetable is here. The Parliament has sent written questions to the nominees already, and has now published their...
Interesting post on different approaches to foreign affairs between Commission and governments
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The ‘Charlemagne’ blog from the Economist has an interesting post discussing what he learnt from his contacts as he wrote an article about the new EU representative for foreign affairs, who heads up the new External Action Service (EAS),...
A twitter feed too….
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One of the problems I’ve found with blogging is that I often see interesting articles, but don’t get around to creating a blog post. I’m now trying out Twitter as a way of dealing with this problem. On the web page of this blog (but...
The 20-30-40% issue and some Copenhagen blogs….
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I’m not at Copenhagen, and I don’t work directly on climate (though of course much of what I do is closely linked to climate). However, it’s a bit strange to have an EU Environment blog without mentioning Copenhagen! One key EU ques...
Barroso outlines responsibilities of Commissioners-designate
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European Commission President Barroso has sent letters to all the people he has nominated as Commissioners, outlining his view of their priorities. All the letters are available on the Commission web site here. (I got this link from the excellent END...
“Other worlds are possible” – a new book on climate, development and growth
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New Economics Foundation has published a new book, “Other Worlds are Possible”, which contains a set of essays on climate change, development & growth. It features contributions from Dr Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-win...
Some challenges for the new Environment Commissioner (updated)
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So, Commission President Barroso has nominated his new Commission, and moved around some roles. Given the name of this blog, clearly the Environment Commissioner is particularly important, and President Barroso has nominated the current Slovenian DG...
Some important changes in the new Commission
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Following on from the previous post, Barroso has made a number of changes to the division of responsibilities in the new Commission – here’s some notable changes: A new DG Climate Action has been created, made up of the climate section of...
