Yesterday’s meeting for Environment ministers of the European Union

When the ministers meet yesterday they handled the issue about the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). The idea is to put seven other directives together in one directive, the IED. One of the other directives involved is the IPPC directive, Integrated Pollution Prevention Directive and that one haven’t been that easy to supervise for the regional or local authority. I wonder if the ministers are at all aware of the implications of the change will have for the authorities that are in charge of supervision? This time I hope the integration of the directives in one will be in favour for the supervision, but I haven’t done an elaboration on that. The Swedish position by the minister will be that this can be taken for the parts which deals with ground, best available technique BAT and for big incineration energy plants. Hopefully, the change will make the supervision of the directive easier and at least not more difficult than it already are.....

Pessimism about negotiations about green house gases

How will they (heads of governments) succeed with next Climate agreement? I listened to the Swedish negotiator Lars-Erik Liljelund last week and I must say that he was rather pessimistic. He thought the negotiations wouldn’t be solved before the heads of governments sits down and possible not at all. There hasn’t been that much of real progress since 2001 and the Kyoto agreement. But of course a lot of talk and promises.

Today I read about what the Japanese Prime minister said yesterday; they are only ready to decrease their emissions of greenhouse gases by 15 % in 2020 counted from 2005. Calculating from1990 that’s only 2% more to accomplish, than what they promised in the Kyoto agreement from 1997.The Japanese government ought to be a shame, the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases and on of the large economies in the world, not performing better Climate politics. I share the pessimism with Lars-Erik Liljelund.

Oil-money from Sweden

In the beginning of this year, five of the Swedish Pension Insurance Funds owned shares for 15 billion SEK in companies involved in the Canadian project which aims at prospecting oil sand according to the Swedish newspaper DN. The government of Alberta, Canada, forecasted that the emission of greenhouse gases will be about 400 million tonnes in 2050, mostly because of the oil sand industry. That could be compared with the Swedish emission at 70 million tonnes last year.

Once more it is shown that economical interests and environmental interests must be handled in the same manner. I mean the official attitude in Sweden is to lower the emission of greenhouse gases, then, it’s most important that the Swedish Pension Insurance Funds doesn’t go another way around to get higher outcome of the capital and rises the emissions of greenhouse gases some other place on Earth.

Soil management

Often you can read about pollution of air or water, but not that often about pollution of the soils. Yet, there have been a lot of pollution of the soils during history. In a municipality we often work with polluted grounds and when somebody wants to build apartments or offices they must take responsibility for cleaning up the ground.

Climate changes may also release a lot of carbon stored in the soil. I saw a figure that around 70 billion tonnes of organic carbon are stored in Europe’s soils. This carbon has been stored in the soils for a very long time but may be released by the rising temperatures. The way the land and soils are managed can mean a lot for how they will emit the carbon, with following higher carbon dioxide percentage in the atmosphere. For example will longer crops rotation reduce the carbon emissions while deeper ploughing reduces diversity and earthworms, while grassy field margins will enhance soil biodiversity.

Local meeting about transport plan

Today I attended a local meeting about making a local traffic plan. We already have a Transport strategy which talks about what to do and stating a vision for the local transports. This new traffic plan will deal about how to reach these goals in the transport strategy. The meeting today was a kind of referendum with many of the different stakeholder’s organisations but also the different departments in the municipality. A consultancy talked about experience from different other cities in Sweden and we had a discussion about traffic problems we see in our own city. So far so good.

It is often easy to set up the vision and the goals in the strategy but when it comes to reality in how to reach the goals, what priorities to make; it usually becomes a bit harder to get the decisions from the politicians. Then it becomes a little more “realistic” measures. Lets hope this will not happen in our case so that we can keep to the strategy.

Growth, to what extent?

I saw an interview with a Swedish Eu politician Anders Wijkman, at the blog Klotet, Swedish radio. He was glad about the so called Stiglitz commission, with not less than four Nobelprize winners and the British Nicolas Stern, dealing with how to express GDP with regard to the environment as well. The Stiglitz commission is searching after new ways to describe economical equality, sustainable development and quality of life. Anders Wijkman said – there are limits for growth, although certain economists want accept it but it’s a fact. We live on a limited planet. He like The french initiative from Nicolas Sarkocy, with the Stiglitz commission.

He is right I think. We have to find economic instruments to measure and value how to develop the materials on Earth in the most sustainable way. Until now “the economical laws”, mostly treasured by economists and politicians, has lead us the wrong way in how to get as much real value as possible in a sustainable way. Let’s hope that the Stiglitz commission will make a good job.

Earth Hour

The manifestation “Earth Hour” started by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007 has grown in size and thereby also in importance. Now you can even listen to UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon in a video on YouTube proclaiming the participation in Earth Hour. The UN headquarters in New York will turn out the light during Earth Hour. He also urges all cities and all humans on Earth to participate and send a strong message to the politicians to deal with and solve the climate change problems.

My city, Karlstad will participate in the manifestation, will your city do that….?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nu4gYSOJn4