My Diaries

A Sad Earth from Chicago

December 12th: EU Council’s agenda is on the crisis and the Energy-Climate package. Poland, Germany and Italy are pulling back against getting a binding greenhouse gases emissions reduction objective. This is so tiring. All these short-term political visions. Do everything you can so as to not do anything. Don’t change anything.

Tiring. Just like all this people who act like they don’t know what it is about, like they don’t understand that we are facing an urgency. However it would probably be a solution to the crisis: “the green upturn”. So tiring. So tiring that people dither over what seems to me to be so obvious. Or am I crazy? Naive? Why isn’t it obvious? Really, there is enough information about global warming in the world as of today so that nobody can say ”i don’t know what the problem is with global warming”. Refusing to act against the climate change induced by our societies on our planet is consciously authorizing the death and misery of hundreds of millions of human beings.   …Woah. Now I feel better.

Vote for the Worst EU Lobbyist in Europe

This year again Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch offer us the possibility to vote for the worst Lobby and the worst Conflict of Interest ! The descriptions of the nominees are… eloquent !

Here is the presentation email which invites you to vote :

“Dear friend,

I thought you might be interested in voting at the ‘Worst EU Lobbying’ Awards 2008, the annual award for deceptive, manipulative or unethical lobbying in the EU.

This year you can vote in two categories: (more…)

The Worst EU Lobbying Awards were elected! Yeah!!!

So concerning the Worst EU Lobbying Award, the happy winners are… BMW, Daimler and Porsche – nominated together. They gained more than 30 percent of the votes. Their joint lobbying offensive designed to water-down and delay the mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets proposed by the Commission after voluntary targets were not met was deemed to be the worst and most deceptive by voters across Europe.

And the special greenwash prize for the most audacious attempts to gain unjustifiable green credentials was awarded to : the German Atomic Forum, which received more than a third of votes cast. It was nominated for its campaign aimed at improving the image of nuclear energy. Under the slogan “Germany’s unloved climate protectionists” it featured images of nuclear power plants placed in unpolluted and unspoilt natural environments.

More info at : www.worstlobby.eu/2007/winners_en

This morning reading the latest post from the IDEO blog, I discovered with delight the “Worst EU Lobbying Awards” website. The website is organized by Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch and every year has to vote in order to award the worst lobbyists in the European Union, as well as the worst Green Wash. The candidates are selected by the organizers who then put the full case online, with supporting documents. (more…)

Extremely shocking… And to think it happens in France, “le pays des Droits de l’Homme” (the country of human rights) really freaks me out. Either one denies it and hides one’s shame to be French or one denounces it because it is not one’s vision of what France should be. I chose the second option. (more…)