My Diaries

Starting yesterday, and lasting 2 weeks, the largest and most media covered Conference of Parties is being held right now in Bali, Indonesia.

As explained by Yvo de Boer, the Conference Executive Secretary, the objective of the conference is not to reach an agreement on the next round of targets for Green House Gases world emissions — two weeks of negotiations is too short to reach such an agreement, but rather, to get an answer to this question : “Ministers, what is your political answer to what the scientific community is telling you so very clearly?“

Watch the youtube video here to know more (2 minutes) :

And to those who wonder why Yvo de Boer is opening the conference in such an extravagant (and really not my taste!) patterned shirt instead of the classical black suit and tie, read my last post!

The following was read on the home page for the United Nations Climate Change Conference holding place in Bali, Indonesia, from 3 to 14 of December 2007. The Conference of Parties set on Bali this december aims at discussing about what measures should be taken to mitigate climate change, especially after 2012, end of the Kyoto Protocol. It is reassuring to see that all the participants are completely dedicated to the cause they are working for, so much so that they question the dress etiquette! (more…)

I just love it!

For non-French speakers :
The demonstraters’ posters say : “More CO2!” “More Cancers for our kids!” “SUVs for all” “Leave Kyoto!” “Bhopal it’s not that bad!” “Less birds more cars!” and in big and yellow, the main banneer : “CO2, I want it!” mimicking the Danone ice-cream brand Gervais slogan “Gervais, j’en veux!”.

They chant “It is fordidden to forbid to pollute!”, “We are here to make sure that the Grenelle for the Environnement [the big environmental brainstorming set up by Sarkozy and happening right now in France] is going to become the Grenelle against the Environnement!” “Yesterday I have been polluting, today I’ll keep polluting!” “Nuclear is a bomb! [meaning it is great] and it is good money for France! Let’s do it nuclear!”. They claim to represent “oil industries”, “chemical industries”, “car industries”, “nuclear lobbyists”, “GMO lovers” who “came to Paris to defend their right to sack the planet”! They had to demonstrate because, “under the pressure from ecologists, the list of infringements to [their] fundamental rights is everyday larger : quotas on CO2 emissions, fishing restrictions, prohibition to use toxic products, drastic anti-polluting norms… and maybe soon a moratorium on GMOs!!” (Late september, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Boorlo announced that there might be a moratorium on GMOs “because we can’t control dissemination, so we won’t take any risk”. It has triggered a tsunami of reactions, good from the left and green parties, unhappy from the agriculture syndicate –and agronomic industries, and embarrassed from the government.)

A quick update about the Act4Trees operation : it is doing good! In 12 days there was 5 million new leaves on the website. At this rate, in “only” 204 days AquaVerde association will be able to get their 10000€. Let’s hope it won’t slow down!

Just between us, an easy trick to spread the word: create a link toward one of the forests in your e-mail signature. In that way, your contacts will be able to know about Act4trees without you needing to talk about it!

Read on MEDAD (French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Planning and Development) website.
(I’ll pass the details, and please forgive my poor English since the translation is very technical and I didn’t spend too much time on it):

Our State Minister Jean-Louis BORLOO visited last August Météo France National Center for Research in Meteorology in Toulouse, and participated into a workshop about last summer’s climate conditions, and on the climate change question. Here below are some summarizing elements from the meeting, as presented by the Ministry :

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