Copenhagen & the incapable European Union

I wake up this morning and I see that yesterday's minimal compromise in Copenhagen finished just close to a failure, in line with the failures of the European Union.

The pictures from the negotiations of the "world leaders" show Obama and Wen confronted with Merkel, Sarzkozy, Barroso and the Swedish prime minister Reinfeldt in charge of the EU Council presidency. The pictures show the EU of the many faces, and nobody knows whether they show the EU of the single voice.

The minimal compromise presented to the plenary by the group of 30 leaders including Reinfeldt and Barroso exhibits that the European Union is not able to march ahead on the world stage among 200 countries, to foster agreements that would show us being a positive player, an international agent of change.

The leadership failure of the Danish prime minister as conference president shows a member state of the EU that makes the Union look unprepared, pars pro toto.

The fact that leaders leave the Summit before the deal is finally agreed underlines their lack of judgement, their inability or their unwillingness to lead.

It is a large international meeting and the new European leaders - Ashton and van Rompuy - were not yet present, at least not visibly. The EU appears confused and confusing looking at how it dealt with the Summit, and a clear leadership inside the Union did not seem to emerge.

The question is: Will the EU be able to appear differently in the future, at similar occasions, with a well coordinated External Action Service backing the VP/HR Ashton and a European Council President van Rompuy who is able to stand in the front lines, negotiating for the Union while knowing to keep the many faces of EU leaders together and behind him.

Will there be an EU of fewer faces but clearer messages?

I have doubts. Ashton and van Rompuy look exactly like the two personalities who wouldn't be able to keep the EU crowd together while representing the Union as a strong player at such summits.

We will see as much confusion and as few leadership in the future as we have witnessed during these days of Copenhagen - because the leaders of the nation states prefer confusion over outcome, national pride over effectiveness. And van Rompuy and Ashton are too weak to change this.

The Copenhagen Summit, despite the fact that the world "took note" of the minimal compromise from yesterday evening, has displayed the incapable European Union, the one that knows to play blame-games but that doesn't know to work effectively, the Union that raises doubts whether the Lisbon Treaty will bring any changes to the better in the near future, both regarding leadership and outcome.

(Updated at 11:07)

Europol: 5 Billion Euro fraud in EU CO2 emissions trading

Via Raymond Frenken I was made aware of a Europol press release that reports about fraud in the EU CO2 emissions trading, including a graphic that explains how this worked.

But the sum is incredible: 5 billion Euros lost for the European taxpayer!!

"The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately 5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities."

Maybe I have missed something, but why don't the traditional media report about that?

COP15

If you allow me a prediction: The Copenhagen Climate Change Summit will end with no result.

The world leaders will call it a success because they will have a roadmap for future discussions. The pro-do-something groups will complain that nothing concrete has been decided. The anti-do-something groups will complain about the fact that there is a roadmap.

Nothing will change, discussions will continue.

(This is the only article I will write on the topic before the end of the summit. For the rest, my opinion on climate change has been voiced earlier, so no need to repeat.)

Creating noise: Blog Action Day '09: Climate Change

Wow, it is Blog Action Day '09, and this year it is on... Climate Change.

But what will this action day bring to the world:

More noise on a topic that is already covered by so many people that you actually don't need more people writing about it.

You don't need blog action, you need real action. So what the Blog Action Day will do is to create more noise in a debate where it gets more and more difficult to see who actually provides some added value to the discussions - or who is actually doing something to prevent our world from drowning in its own waste and resource overuse.

So thank you, Blog Action Day, for creating even more noise, so that nobody will hear the voices of reason!

I don't mind climate change

Quoting myself from a comment I made to a post of fellow euroblogger Stephen on Th!nk about it 2:

"I don’t mind climate change, I rather mind overuse of limited resources, destruction of natural habitats, and the rapid pollution of our environment, some of which [just] overlaps with concerns regarding climate change."

In other words: I think that the goal of preventing climate change is less important than the goal of changing our behaviours so that the earth will still be a liveable place with a healthy environment and enough natural resources for every human being, now and in future generations - no matter at what temperature this will be.

How eco-friendly is "Think About It 2: Climate Change"?

Think about it! has gone into a second round, this time covering climate change ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Summit at the end of the year.

But is #think2 really eco-friendly, eco-helpful, eco-sensible, eco-effective etc.?

If "some 90 bloggers from 43 countries" travelled to Copenhagen for the launch event last week - the majority by plane, I suppose - how much energy has been spent to make this happen? And won't this happen a second time with a possible closing event?

Using hotel rooms filled with electrical devices like huge televisions (I suppose they were there), running a conference venue with microphones and video projectors, including tasty buffets and joint trips, doesn't this all cost a hell lot of additional energy?

Giving new HD cameras to the participants, doesn't it mean a lot of energy has been invested to produce these devices, and will the bloggers not have to recharge these cameras after each 2-4 hours of filming?

And doesn't running a server for 90 blogs that will include a lot of video material over two months cost quite some energy too, not to talk about the computer time used to write the blog posts, edit the videos, run telephone conferences for podcasts?

In the end, won't even more people spend time in front of their monitors and mobile devices reading, watching, and commenting on what is posted on Think2 - without changing their lifestyle or without any decision-maker having the time to go through the content to find some new inspiration for a diplomatic process that doesn't follow the rules of the net?

Wouldn't the most eco-friendly solution be that they all stay at home, riding a bike from and to work and using as few energy as possible instead of spending time and electricity on blogging activities?

So isn't all this climate change conference hype part of the problem, and not part of the solution - which would be to radically change our lifestyle in favour of less energy consuming activities and behaviours?