United States of America meet the European Union
For the first time in four years US and EU talks to each other again about climate changes and how to decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases. Today the US was represented by their assisting Foreign minister in the meeting in Helsinki and several environmental ministers from Europe attended as well. It’s a step in the right direction starting up the meetings again but unfortunately they have lost a lot of time in getting results for the climate.

Yesterday the World Wildlife association, presented their “Living Planet Report 2006”, and that’s not a very pleasant reading. The report shows that mankind consumes more than 25 % over the earth’s production capacity. The ecological footprint from human beings has tripled during the last 40 years, it says. The Swedes ends up as number 8 (with 6.1 ha) in the list of leaving big ecological footprints. People in US and Canada have twice as big ecological footprint compare with an average Europe and seven times as big as an African, according the WWF report. I spent Monday and Tuesday in the Copenhagen-Malmo region which is a very expending region and you can’t miss that every region wants to develop and attract more people to go there. These urban hotspots create demands that need quite big ecological footprints. Let us hope it is possible to handle this problem with urbanization and the fact that a small part of the population on earth consume most of the resources.

In Gristmill blog Sunday 22 October I read about Bill McKibbins new essay about how close we are to an ecological catastrophe. He writes about how, James Lovelock, a famous scientist and James Hansen, NASA:s top climatologist, looks at the earths state. Last year in December Hansen said we had ten years to reverse the flow of carbon in the athmosphere before we cross a threshold and creates a different planet and soon it's only nine yeras left. It’s interesting to read and you find it in the link below.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/22/145810/84