Take a break
In everything it’s important to take a break now and then. I will take a break in writing this blog for two weeks. I’ll be back around Easter. Have a nice time until then.

Climate and politics
I read an interesting article some days ago. It was written by Victor Galaz, a political scientist. He describes amongst other things the problem with solving the climate changes by political decisions. He finds that epidemiologists have solved the problem with the chaos having actors from the state, private and local authorities better than the climatologists. WHO seems to be better equipped than UNEP to handle the crises. Political will, can make difference if one dares to discuss the hard question.
Victor Galaz really puts the finger on a problem in the modern society; we have a tendency to handle problems with more complex administrative and political systems. That strategy is very successful in the short view but after a while the societies becomes trapped in decreased marginal profit. New challenges demand more and more extensive investments with lesser and lesser effect. The complexity in the society increases with less dirigibility. The public becomes more dissatisfied as the political system doesn’t deliver solutions on the problems. I think Victor Galaz at the Stockholm Resilience Centre points out something important in his article.

Taking the lead....
David Miliband, secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writes about the draft Climate Change Bill in his blog today. In that, the UK sets the goal to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050. It contains a system of legally binding five year “carbon budgets” for the future. Read more about this in today’s news release at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2007/070313a.htm
And why not visit David Miliband’s blog
http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk/blogs/ministerial_blog/default.aspx

You can watch David Miliband self explaning a little about the Climate Change Bill in the videolink below. I think he is on the right way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3F9TT2jDs

Good work Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel has succeeded in putting together a proposal for decision that all the heads of the states in Europe could join. Congratulations! But, and there’s always a but, much hard work still remains. The decision has to be understood and achieved by the nations. It has to be achieved at all levels in society. First it has to be decided what each country has to do in separate negotiations. What will you do to contribute to the goal?

European Union Top Meeting going on
I heard on TV that the German chair just got the mission to conclude a document about the agreement about 20 % energy supplies from renewable sources etc. It seems as the heads of the European States has reached an agreement in this politically difficult question. We’ll see what the media will report tomorrow.

Looking forward to tomorrow……
Today the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, expressed his hope that tomorrow, the world will witness the most powerful decision against growing emissions of greenhouse gases. It’s the European Union top meeting in Brussels he’s referring to. Today, he made a speech on a climate conference in Stockholm when a commission on Sustainable development was launched. I’m not that surprised by the composition of the commission, three ministers, the Prime minister is the chairman, some professors, some CEO:s (Volvo and Vattenfall), one General secretary from WWF and some more people. Don’t misunderstand me, they are quite qualified individuals, but isn’t it a very traditional way to compose such a commission. Although it’s good that, the minister of finance , Anders Borg will be a member in the commission. It is said that the commission shall interconnect with the work for sustainable development on local and regional level. It sounds good but I wonder how this is planned to happen? How shall the strategies be transformed to real activities in the local society.The Prime Minister talked at the seminar about the decisions he hopes will be taken at the top meeting tomorrow; decrease of the emissions of greenhouse gases by 30% (at least 20% and voluntary additional 10%), 20% of renewable fuels in the energy supply, and finally energy efficient measures decreasing the use by 20 %. He predicts that Angela Merkel and Tony Blair will be in favor of the decisions as himself. Good luck with the work.

Imagine all the people in the world, what an impact.
In the blog http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/
You can read about a joke published in The Journal of Unlikely Science where the idea “If we merely cut out one breath in three, we could decrease the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere each year by a staggering 0.63 gigatonnes,"
According to the “winner” of Richard Branson’s grand price of $25 million, one way of solving the problem would be having fewer humans on the planet, presumably by reducing population growth. Either that or we each need to use less energy. I think they are right in that.