Category Archives: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

A slew of electric truck plans may deliver the goods for China’s EV ambitions

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ..

An article by Norihiko Shirouzu for Thomson Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Having just broken ground for a new factory in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, the head of electric car startup Singulato Motors has grand plans: build up to 50,000 electric vans per year and ride the crest of a wave for e-truck demand in China.


Visitors looks at the frame of an electric vehicle next to a Foton autonomous truck at the stall of the BAIC Group automobile maker at the IEEV New Energy Vehicles Exhibition in Beijing, China October 18, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

For a growing number of automakers operating in the world’s biggest vehicle market, it’s time to invest in electric vans and trucks. They’re convinced by increasingly stringent restrictions aimed at reining in pollution, generous subsidies as well as robust demand for light-duty trucks as e-commerce flourishes.

“We think China’s about to see an electric commercial vehicle revolution,” Singulato co-founder Shen Haiyin told Reuters in an interview. “In many ways, the EV future might arrive faster with commercial vehicles than passenger EVs.”

Singulato, which is due to launch its first electric car by the middle of next year, hopes to open the e-truck plant by 2020 and quickly ramp up annual output to 50,000. Shen envisions two main models that would appeal to e-commerce and logistics firms: a small intra-city delivery van the size of the Ford Transit or the Toyota HiAce, and a delivery truck under 2 tonnes.

Growing momentum for e-trucks could prove to be a tipping point for the electric vehicle, first in China and eventually worldwide – encouraging the mass adoption that Tesla Inc and other EV makers are aiming to give rise to with passenger cars.

“It’s a new game,” said Bill Russo, head of Shanghai-based consultancy Automobility Ltd and a former Chrysler executive. “The advantages of electric vehicles become apparent when vehicles are deployed into transportation and logistics services fleets.”

Impediments that come with electric vehicles, such as the high cost of the battery and cumbersome charging needs, could with a truck fleet be erased to make the total cost of operation cheaper than gasoline or diesel.

Batteries could be designed smaller since routes would be predictable, charging stations and schedules could be deployed more strategically and as trucks are often operated around the clock, economies of scale could be achieved, Russo said.

Foton, part of Beijing-based BAIC Group and China’s biggest maker of light-duty trucks under 6 tonnes, is also looking at expanding further into electric delivery vans, people with knowledge of the matter said.

In August, a group of Foton officials gathered in a small spartan office in low-rise building near Tokyo’s posh Ginza district. Eager to develop a compelling mini delivery e-van, they had come to seek advice from a highly regarded engineer, now retired from a Japanese automaker.

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Question for this article:

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

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The officials, who believed that Japan’s minicar technology could offer a good base for a low-cost van, wanted his input on how to design one that could be sold for as little as 50,000 yuan ($7,225), according to two people who were at the meeting.

“That was a second visit since late last year,” said one of the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They’re serious,” he said.

A representative for Foton declined to comment. Foton has some electric commercial vehicles on the market but volumes are still tiny with around 800 sold last year.

BOXY AND PRACTICAL
While electric trucks may not grab the public imagination in the same way Tesla’s electric vehicles have done, their advent has long been advocated by many auto experts.

Skeptical of the merits of the industry’s rush into long-range passenger cars, they believe battery electric technology, because of its heavy weight and the limits on driving ranges, has a more natural home in short-haul trucks. That’s particularly so for intra-city delivery vans and trucks plying routes that are pre-determined or at least predictable.

Last year, the number of electric light-duty commercial vehicles – both all-electric and plug-in hybrids – sold in China was roughly 200,000, about 6 percent of the market for trucks under 6 tonnes.

Nissan Motor Co, one of the first global automakers in China to develop an e-truck line-up through its venture with Dongfeng Group, believes that demand for light-duty e-trucks will quadruple in four to five years. Its joint venture, Dongfeng Motor Co Ltd, is aiming to lift its electric commercial vehicle sales six times to 90,000 by 2022.

Nissan’s partner Renault SA is also on the case. Its new venture with Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd plans to launch three electric delivery vans in two years, starting next year.

Warren Buffet-backed BYD and Geely [GEELY.UL] also have some electric trucks and vans on the market, although volumes are still quite small.

Growth in e-trucks fits hand in glove with efforts by Beijing and Chinese local authorities to promote electric vehicles – both to jump-start a domestic auto industry that lags global rivals in internal combustion engine technology and to combat smog – a constant source of public discontent.

Subsidies, up to 100,000 yuan from the central government alone, are helping to propel the shift. Nissan’s most popular electric commercial vehicle, the Dongfeng D94 van, is eligible for combined subsidies of up to about 80,000 yuan from the central government and regional authorities, knocking roughly a third off its purchase price.

Nearly two dozen cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have put in place restrictions on fossil-fueled trucks coming into city centers. Beijing for instance last year banned heavier trucks from entering the city center between 6 a.m and 11 p.m. and next year will place further limits on diesel and some other commercial vehicles.

“We’re betting on the e-truck because pretty soon only e-truck and e-vans will be allowed to enter city-centers,” a Nissan China executive said, declining to identified as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “With the continued rise of e-commerce, we see a bright future in electric delivery vans.”

East Asia, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

UN agriculture agency chief calls on world’s mayors to make ‘global commitments local realities’

.. DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION ..

An article from UN News

It is important to make “global commitments local realities,” José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told the meeting and UN Headquarters, discussing common challenges to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as climate change and food security.


Video of the meeting

The special event, From Global Issues to Local Priorities was co-hosted by María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the UN General Assembly, alongside Mr. Graziano da Silva.

About 68 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050 – mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, where hunger and poverty are highest.

He said that it is essential to engage local authorities to achieve SDG 11 –promoting sustainable cities and communities – fundamental for achieving all the other goals.

Focusing on SDG 2, which calls for the eradication of hunger and all forms of malnutrition, as well as the development of sustainable agriculture, he pointed out that the number of people suffering from both hunger and obesity has increased over the last three years, especially in urban areas where “people are more likely to eat cheaper processed food high in trans fats, sugar and salt.”

“We urgently need to transform our food systems,” he underscored. “We need to put in place food systems that offer healthy and nutritious food for everyone, while preserving our natural resources and biodiversity” by integrating actions “from the production to the consumption of food.”

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Questions for this article:

The culture of peace at a regional level, Does it have advantages compared to a city level?

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City dwellers can no longer be considered food consumers and rural communities food producers. 

“Sustainable development calls for the strengthening of rural-urban linkages based on a territorial approach,” he said, pushing for “a rural-urban continuum.”

Turning to the New Urban Agenda, which was adopted at Habitat III in 2016 during the Quito Conference, Mr. Graziano da Silva said the FAO Framework for the Urban Food Agenda would be launched in Rome on 7 March.

Sustainable development requires “a systems thinking, rather than granular responses,” he argued, adding that the Framework presents ideas to generate employment, strengthen local food value chains and reduce the high levels of food waste found in many cities.

Indicating that some 80 per cent of all food produced globally is now consumed in urban areas, he said that urban consumers would be “a very effective entry point in promoting the transformation to more sustainable agricultural production and value chain development.”

“Implementing the food systems approach may be challenging”, he concluded, “but it is fundamental to ensure healthy and nutritious food for all while safeguarding the planet for future generations.”

Also speaking at the meeting was UN Habitat Executive Director Maimunah Mohd Sharif, who delivered her remarks through video message.

A host of mayors, former mayors, economists and urban development experts shared experiences of effective local practices, innovative strategies and lessons learned in addressing global challenges including climate change, food insecurity and malnutrition, food supply and consumption sustainability, and people’s wellbeing from a sustainable and resilient food system perspective.

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, United Nations,

Solar Energy Provides Hope for Poor Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ..

An article from Inter Press Service (reprinted by permission)

Solar panels shine on the rooftop terraces of 10 neat buildings with perfectly straight lines and of uniform height, an image of modernity that contrasts with the precariously-built dwellings with unplastered concrete block walls just a few metres away, with rooms added in a disorderly manner, surrounded by a tangle of electric cables.

Villa 31, the most famous shantytown in the capital of Argentina, due to its location in a central area of Buenos Aires, is undergoing a transformation process, not without controversy, in which clean energies play an important role.


Solar panels are seen on rooftops of the La Containera social housing complex in Villa 31, and in the background can be seen the towers of the luxurious office area of the Argentine capital. The shantytown has a privileged location within Buenos Aires, next to La Recoleta, one of the city’s most sought-after neighborhoods. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The State is building hundreds of new homes with rooftops covered by solar panels, which bring energy to a neighborhood where access to basic services has always depended on informal and unsafe connections.

For decades, Buenos Aires city government authorities periodically promised to eradicate Villa 31, which first emerged nearly 90 years ago, and today is a postcard of poverty, which at the same time shows the vitality of thousands of people who carry out commercial and productive activities despite their deprivation anddependence on the informal economy.

But the threats turned into hope in 2009, when a local law was passed that ordered the urbanisation of the Villa, paving streets, giving property titles to the local residents and – in short – turning it into just another neighborhood of a city that historically saw it as a foreign body impossible to hide.

In Argentina, the word for slums and shantytowns is villa. A survey released by the government in 2018 indicates that around the country there are 4,228 villas, home to around 3.5 million people, out of a total population of 44 million.

In particular, in Buenos Aires proper there are 233,000 people – or 7.6 per cent of the population, not counting the working-class suburbs – living in shantytowns.

The urbanisation of Villa 31 is a monumental task that only began to be carried out in 2016 and today is slowly changing the face of a veritable city within a city, which has grown enormously in size in recent years.

According to the latest official data, 43,190 people live there, in 10,076 houses, compared to just 12,204 people livingthere when the severe economic crisis broke out in 2001.

Since then, despite the fact that Argentina experienced several years of economic growth, Villa 31 was the only option found by more and more families who couldn’t afford to buy or rent a house in the formal market.

Villa 31 covers 44 hectares between Retiro, one of the capital’s main railway stations, and La Recoleta, one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in Buenos Aires.

“We came to Villa 31 four years ago, after the building where we lived in the neighborhood of La Boca burned down and we ended up on the street,” Valeria Barrientos, a married mother of four children between the ages of two and 13, told IPS.

Barrientos, whose husband is a truck driver, says it is “a gift from heaven” to have hot water and electricity provided by solar energy, even when there are power outages – especially frequent in Villa 31, where the supply is unstable, and where many homes have irregular, precarious connections to the grid.

Her family has been living in the La Containera section of the Villa since September 2017, which takes its name from the fact that it was a depot for old containers until three years ago. They were offered an apartment there, to be paid over 30 years, because they lived on a plot of land in the Villa where a highway is now being built.

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Question for this article:

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

(Continued from left column)

La Containera has three-storey buildings with solar panels to power the thermotanks that heat water for bathrooms and kitchens, to fuel the pumps that raise the water to the tanks, and to provide the homes with electricity.

“We installed 174 solar panels on the rooftops in La Containera,” Rodrigo Alonso, general manager of Sustentator, an Argentine company with 10 years of experience in renewable energy, told IPS.

Alonso recalls that “the first time I came to the Villa I was amazed when I saw the huge bundles of cables running from the electricity poles to the houses. The power is paid by the state, but the houses have very unsafe connections.”

“The change today is huge, because the new houses have a guaranteed power supply and do not have to pay for the energy. In addition, the surplus electricity can be injected into the grid,” he added.

Arrangements to feed the energy generated by the solar panels into the power grid and to obtain a credit from the distribution company are expected to be formalised in Argentina this year, when the Distributed Generation of Renewable Energies Law, approved in 2017 and whose regulations were completed last November, comes into effect.

The solar panels are part of the building and are not individual. Therefore, if in the future there is surplus energy to add to the grid, it will be compensated with a credit for the consortium managing the buildings, which will be subtracted from the charge for energy consumption in the common areas of the housing complex.

Solar panels are also being installed to guarantee energy in the most ambitious project going ahead in Villa 31: the construction of 26 buildings with more than 1,000 homes, on land that belonged to the state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF).

These new homes are earmarked for the people whose houses will be demolished for the construction of the highway and other roads, although many local residents are skeptical.

“We are concerned that the promises will not be kept and that many families will end up in the street. We are going to defend each family’s relocation,” Héctor Guanco, who has lived with his family in Villa 31 for nearly 20 years, told IPS.

The availability of solar energy makes a decisive difference in a country where electricity tariffs have risen by more than 500 percent in the last three years.

“Going from informality to formality can mean economic pressure that is very difficult to bear, because you have to pay a mortgage for housing, plus taxes and the public services,” Facundo Di Filippo, a former Buenos Aires city councilor, told IPS.

Di Filippo was the author of the law for the urbanisation of Villa 31 and is now president of the non-governmental Center for Studies and Action for Equality.

He is critical of the way in which the city government approached the urbanisation of Villa 31, arguing that “the focus has been on improving the vicinity of an area of Buenos Aires that has a high real estate value, in order to benefit private businesses.”

The new buildings were built with sustainability criteria that are unprecedented in Buenos Aires, as demanded by the World Bank, which provided a credit of 170 million dollars to finance the urbanisation process.

“The walls have both thermal and sound insulation, which reduces energy consumption. In addition, a rainwater collection system was placed on the roofs to irrigate the housing complex’s green spaces,” Juan Ignacio Salari, undersecretary of urban infrastructure for the government of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

“We are also trying to move forward with the World Bank to finance a programme to replace household appliances, because many Villa 31 residents have very old refrigerators or air conditioners, which are very energy inefficient,” he added.

“The people of Villa 31 want to regularise their situation and pay for the services they receive. The state must help them do this,” said the official, who added that the plan is to put solar panels on the new buildings and formally connect the other houses to the power grid.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Latin America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Students are striking around the world to protest against the lack of action to stop global warming

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

A survey of the press by CPNN

Students are striking around the world to join with the Swedish girl Greta Thunberg who sat outside the Swedish parliament last year to protest against the lack of action to stop global warming. Now, up to 70,000 schoolchildren each week hold protests in 270 towns and cities worldwide.


student strike in UK
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In the UK, according to the Guardian on February 15, thousands of schoolchildren and young people joined a UK-wide climate strike amid growing anger at the failure of politicians to tackle the escalating ecological crisis. Organisers said more than 10,000 young people in at least 60 towns and cities joined the strike. They estimated around 3,000 schoolchildren and young people gathered in London, with 2,000 in Oxford, 1,000 each in Exeter and Leeds and several hundred in Brighton, Bristol, Sheffield and Glasgow (see video below).

In Switzerland, according to Euronews thousands of students, some as young as 14-years-old, took to the streets of several Swiss cities on Friday [January 18] to denounce the lack of government action to fight global warming.

In the Netherlands, also according to Euronews, thousands of Dutch students skipped their classes on Thursday, February 7, to join a demonstration in The Hague calling for greater action on climate change. Kim van Sparrentak,a 29-year-old student, who is running in the European Parliament elections this year, told Euronews’ The Cube why people like her had been inspired to protest. “This is really the climate generation we are talking about here. This generation is now on the streets to start protesting and to show that they want a different world, a better world and a future for themselves.”

In Belgium, according to Forbes Magazine on February 7, high school students have managed to grind traffic in Belgian cities to a halt over the past month, staging repeated walk-outs from class in protest of adults’ inaction on climate change. The demonstrations saw 35,000 children and young people take to the streets two weeks ago. But this week, their protests caused something much bigger than snarled traffic – they forced the resignation of Joke Schauvliege, the Flemish climate minister.

Deutsche Welle describes the actions of students in Germany: “It’s a cold January morning in front of Cologne Central Station. As people stream out of the main entrance, it’s noticeable that there are quite a few teenagers. Strange, considering it’s a school day. Most of them have come in small groups, while others hang out in the main square outside of the station with friends. Many have brought homemade cardboard signs with them bearing painted-on slogans such as “We are here, we are loud, because you are stealing the future from us,” and “We do not learn for a ruined future.” At the same time, a separate climate protest is taking place in the nearby city of Bonn, where young people marched up to the UN Campus to demand that their voices be heard. Students ditching class to protest . . . has become a common scene in many large cities — students eschewing lessons at school to protest for climate protection.”

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Question for this article:

 

Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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In France, according to France 24, several hundred high school and university students skipped class to demonstrate in front of the French ministry for the environment in Paris. At the heart of the demonstration is a deep disappointment with France’s failure to fulfill its commitments under various climate agreements. The protesters aren’t buying rhetoric about stimulating the economy. “We want climate change to be taken into account. Of course the economy is important and makes a country prosper. But to have a country, you need a planet. And if we destroy it, there won’t be an economy at all,” said Zelia, a high schooler. The demonstration in Paris on Friday, February 15 had a relatively modest turnout of 300 to 400 students, but they are getting organised quickly. Students have pledged to join their peers around Europe in weekly demonstrations leading up to March 15, when Thunberg has called for a global strike.

In Canada, according to the Montreal Gazette, students in Quebec are now taking matters into their own hands in the battle against climate change. A coalition of groups from universities came together Friday, February 8, to launch a call to action under the banner “La planète s’invite à l’université.” Small collectives from Université du Québec à Montréal, Université de Montréal and École de technologie supérieure launched the joint appeal, and are inviting students from across Quebec to join them for a provincewide climate strike on March 15. It would be followed by a second strike day on Sept. 17, and it’s all part of an international mobilization of young people demanding drastic action from their governments.

In Australia, according to the News, school students striking for climate change want adults to join them for a global event on March 15, and organisers say they already have support from a growing number of unions, including the National Union of Workers, National Tertiary Education Union, United Firefighters Union, Hospo Voice, the Victorian Allied Health Professionals Association and the National Union of Students. The National Union of Workers, one of the most powerful unions in the Labor Party and part of its right-wing faction that supports Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, said it was supporting the strike and the students standing together collectively for their future. “They are inspiring leaders, and we support them in making our political leaders listen,” the union said.

In Austria, as reported on February 17 by Metropole, Viennese students launched their KlimaStreik last December but have been gaining more momentum recently, with last Friday’s (Feb 8) strike attracting around 150 participants at Heldenplatz and receiving media coverage. Local schools have worked closely with FridaysForFuture to ensure students do not get in trouble for skipping class, with some even sending teachers along and incorporating the protests into their “Political Education” curriculum.

In the United States, US Youth Climate Strike have issued a
press advisory announcing that they will partiipate in a global day of climate ation on March 15 in all state capitals as well as the US Capitol. “We are US Youth Climate Strike, a collective movement of youth in the United States who are fighting for the conservation of our planet. We are joining the movement “Fridays for Future”, sparked by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and her weekly Friday “school strikes for climate in front of the Swedish Parliament, and thereby bringing the movement to the United States.”

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

United Nations: Guterres underlines climate action urgency, as UN weather agency confirms record global warming

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from the United Nations

In the wake of data released by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), showing the past four years were officially the ‘four warmest on record,’ UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent climate action and increased ambition, ahead of his climate summit in September.


The five data sets used by WMO to monitor global temperatures confirm that the past four years have been the warmest on record. (Click on image to enlarge.)
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His reaction on Wednesday came after WMO issued a report confirming that 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were the four warmest years recorded to date. The analysis, based on the monitoring performed by five leading international organisations, also shows that the global average surface temperature in 2018 was approximately 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) baseline.

“The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. The degree of warming during the past four years has been exceptional, both on land and in the ocean.”

“Temperatures are only part of the story. Extreme and high impact weather affected many countries and millions of people, with devastating repercussions for economies and ecosystems in 2018,” he said.

“Many of the extreme weather events are consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. This is a reality we need to face up to. Greenhouse gas emission reduction and climate adaptation measures should be a top global priority,” said Mr. Taalas.

Noting “with concern” this data, which was first released in November 2018, UN Secretary-General Guterres said it confirms “the urgency of addressing climate action”, and echoes the science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its October 2018 special report on the impacts of a global warming of 1.5°C.

The IPCC report that found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities” and that global net emissions of carbon dioxide, attributable to human activity, would need to fall by about 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.

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Question for this article:

 
Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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The Secretary-General stated that, “to make these transformations, we need to significantly increase the global level of climate action and ambition”.

In order to mobilize political will, Mr. Guterres is convening a Climate Summit on 23 September this year, focusing on nine key areas:

1 Raised ambition on climate mitigation measures.

2 How to manage the transition to alternative energy sources.

3 Managing industrial transition.

4 Coming up with solutions through agriculture, oceans, forests and nature-related environments.

5 Focus on infrastructure, cities and through local action.

6 Issues of climate finance, notably carbon pricing.

7 Increased resilience and adaptation, especially for the most vulnerable.

8 A focus on social and political drivers.

9 Citizen and political mobilization.

The Secretary-General is working closely with Member States and non-party stakeholders to enable outcomes in these areas to the Summit, in order to send “strong market and political signals that can inject momentum into the race” to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries committed collectively to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Informing the discussions at the Summit alongside other key scientific reports, WMO will issue the full 2018 State of the Climate report this coming March.  It will provide a comprehensive overview of temperature variability and trends, high-impact events, and key indicators of long-term climate change such as increasing carbon dioxide concentrations; Arctic and Antarctic sea ice; sea level rise and ocean acidification.

It will be accompanied by UN-wide policy recommendations statement for decision-makers on the interplay between weather, climate and water supply, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, United Nations,

Greta Thunberg: My Message to Davos Elites: Act As If Our House Is on Fire. Because It Is.

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from Common Dreams reprinted under under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

The following is a slightly edited version of remarks delivered by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg to attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday, January 25, 2018.

video of Greta’s speech
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Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%.

And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness.

But Homo sapiens have not yet failed.

Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognize the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance.

We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.

Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Either we do that or we don’t.

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Question for this article:

 

Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5C of warming or we don’t. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t.

Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.

We all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the living conditions for future generations. Or we can continue with our business as usual and fail.

That is up to you and me.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

Here in Davos—just like everywhere else —everyone is talking about money. It seems money and growth are our only main concerns.

And since the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, people are simply not aware of the full consequences on our everyday life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is. That needs to change today.

No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of our future and present economics.

We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilization—and the entire biosphere—must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.

We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.

Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Europe, global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT,

France: The “Yellow Vests”. Sixty Days That Have Turned Everything Upside Down

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article by Pierre Duquesne with Cécile Rousseau in L’Humanité

Since November 17, the “yellow vests” [gilets jaunes] have brought the people back to the fore, revealing the extent of the democratic crisis. An unprecedented mobilization has brought a halt to Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term.

Emmanuel Macron loves, decidedly, the small Norman villages. Before debating for seven hours in a gymnasium in Grand-Bourgtheroulde on Tuesday, he made a stop at the Berd’huis, a small village in the Orne, in April 2018, for an appointment with Jean-Pierre Pernaut. This seems to come from another time.

A year after his election, the president felt powerful. To the unions who were fighting against the transformation of the SNCF, he warned that he would go “to the end”. To the students who were fighting against Parcoursup’s selection logic, he was saying that they had better think again “There will be no chocolate exam in the Republic,” he added, from a grade 2 class. Shamelessly, he said “thank you” to retirees for losing income because of the rise of the CSG.

“A lot of the way has been traveled but there is still much to do,” he said at that time. The capitalists could not fault him. For them, the assessment was already largely positive. The TFR on financial investments was crossed out with a stroke of the pen. The flat tax, an anglicism useful for concealing the end of the progressivity of taxation on capital, had just passed like a letter to the post office. In 2019, the Cice engraved in marble will make 40 billion euros for businesses. The difficulties? They “do not stop me and, I am not naive, I even expected them,” he declared, this president of the ultra-rich. He had not expected, obviously, that social anger would spring up around him, that the cry of greater fiscal justice would resound under the windows of the Elysee, where he was completely barricaded. Nor that this dispute would occur everywhere, far exceeding a few demonstrations at place de la Republic et Nation, and that it would flood the upscale streets of the capital.

“It’s a crucial moment in his five-year term”

We have yet to know if the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron reached a turning point on November 17 or December 1, when riots ignited the chic neighborhoods of western Paris? Or on December 10, when, for the first time, Emmanuel Macron conceded that he had made mistakes, in a televised interview. A yellow jacket remarked to L’Humanité that “The monarch has lost his splendor.” For the President of the Republic, everything changed when he was forced to flee a taunting crowd at the prefecture of Puy-en-Velay, set on fire and still smoking. Later that evening he said “It’s a central moment of my five-year term,” in speaking with deputies of LaREM [his political party, La Republique en Marche]

Nothing, indeed, will be like before. Because we have now seen the emergence of faces and figures that until now were invisible. It was necessary to see, on the barricades and in the demonstrations, the yellow vests in the live interviews of the TV channel BFMTV to understand the satisfaction of ordinary people to finally be shown in the television news.

There resurfaced a whole people that some people thought had been swallowed up forever in the “suburban nightmare,” a “pacified proletariat” succumbed to the cult of goods and property. A “closed session of the ego” where one would live “separated together” in a well-marked routine, far from the world of demonstrations and collective struggles.

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(Click here for the French version of this article)

Questions for this article

What is the future of the Gilets Jaunes movement?

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But this was not to be! Thousands of employees, workers and employees fraternized and demonstrated for the first time.

An example was Dimitri, a 31-year-old carpenter, interviewed last Saturday on the Champs-Élysées. “I had not voted since Chirac and even the, because my grandmother had pushed me! I was not interested in politics but I participated in the first act of yellow vests because I cannot continue to live in this unequal society. In Poissy, we organized ourselves in groups and distributed leaflets in the region to raise awareness. In the demonstration, I met people in all conditions, unemployed, stretcher bearers, young people, old …

This movement will leave traces at home, and not just because he was beaten by the police, during the act IV. This resident of Carrières-sous-Poissy (Yvelines), earning 1,700 euros per month, came out with a knee injury, a broken phone and the determination that he would not give up. “I was shocked, but I am passionate about this movement, this desire to find the right way to justice. As Macron has already repealed the carbon tax, we must continue. This political expression pushes him today to demand a change of Constitution, believing that the citizens’ initiative referendum (RIC) does not “go far enough”.

Nothing will be as before, because this movement combines social and democratic demands.. . . This movement, although it has overflowed the big trade union centers, can not however be detached from the world of work, according to Benoît Coquart, sociologist at INRA. “I spoke with an employee of Amazon, when we met at the demonstration. she told how it is very difficult to organize, to make demands, in this company where there are many temporary workers and short-term contracts [interim]. But what they can no longer do in their workplace, these workers can do through this type of movement in the streets which, at first glance, takes place outside the world of work,” reports the researcher. “Macron will be on interim,” one could read on a wall in Dijon, between two slogans demanding the resignation of the head of state.

“The first social movement of the new global age”

As for the concessions released by Emmanuel Macron on December 10, they did not move the big capitalist of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. “It’s true that 15 billion euros, that’s a lot. But if it helps to restore civil peace, it’s worth it, “he said, before quoting Lenin:” We must always be one step ahead of the masses. ”

Nothing will be as before, because, for the first time in a long time, the dominant classes were afraid of this “monster who escaped his parents”, these people “factious” and “seditious” (Christophe Castaner), this “hateful crowd” (Emmanuel Macron). But their repressive strategy was not enough to extinguish the demonstrations that continued between Christmas and the New Year.

“This is perhaps the first social movement of the new global age, as defined by the sociologist Saskia Sassen. This is an age when states have voluntarily delegated some of their powers to the European Union or independent administrative agencies, removing them from the decision of the citizen,” according to Danielle Tartakovsky, historian and specialist social movements, speaking to Echoes.

The great strength of this movement that has united under the clothing of “yellow vests” individuals from a very broad range of political views, could also become its weakness in the future. For the moment its claims are egalitarian and rather progressive, but it is still far from having the force to be inscribed in the long history of the labor movement. It remains to be seen what will happen with regard to institutional policy. In short, everything remains to be done if 2018 will enter permanently in the lineage of 1995, 1968, 1936 and 1789, as recently claimed by a sign of yellow vests.

(Thank you to Kiki Chauvin, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, Europe, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Canadian police block journalists from covering indigenous pipeline protest

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from Nation of Change

While arresting indigenous pipeline protesters in northern British Columbia, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recently began prohibiting reporters from covering the demonstrations. In response, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a statement demanding that Canadian law enforcement cease restricting access to reporters covering the pipeline protest.


(click on photo to enlarge)

On Sunday, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs issued a  statement  saying all five Wet’suwet’en clans, including the Gidimt’en, oppose the construction of oil and gas pipelines in their territory.

“The provincial and federal governments must revoke the permits for this project until the standards of free, prior and informed consent are met,” Phillip said in the news release.

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Question for this article

Indigenous peoples, Are they the true guardians of nature?

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Last October, LNG Canada announced its plans to move ahead with constructing the $6.2 billion pipeline. Although TransCanada subsidiary Coastal GasLink claims that agreements have been signed with all First Nations along the route for LNG Canada’s $40-billion liquefied natural gas project, demonstrators argue that Wet’suwet’en house chiefs, who are hereditary rather than elected, have not given consent.

According to the RCMP, at least 14 people have been arrested for blockading a forest service road in order to prevent access to the pipeline. Journalists and several media crews attempting to cover the pipeline protests have recently reported that the RCMP is restricting access to the site and prohibiting journalists from witnessing further arrests.

“Authorities in Canada should immediately end the arbitrary restrictions on journalists covering the police breakup of the pipeline protest,” CPJ North America Program Coordinator Alexandra Ellerbeck wrote in a press release  on Tuesday. “Journalists should be able to freely cover events of national importance, without fear of arrest.”

“It sounds like the RCMP is once again using every tactic that they can to bend the law as much as possible to prevent journalists from gaining access to sites,” said Tom Henheffer, vice president of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). “This is a tactic that is very commonly employed and is very difficult to fight against in the moment because [police] know that when you’ve got a bunch of officers with guns telling people what they can and cannot do, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the law is on the RCMP’s side or not – because it takes too long for a journalist to get a lawyer, go to court to get an order to allow them to get on to the site.”

By restricting access to the demonstrations, Canadian law enforcement are attempting to control the narrative by preventing journalists from witnessing their actions. According to some reports, most communication from the site recently went dark due to an alleged satellite issue, but the RCMP issued a statement on Monday denying any involvement with the suspiciously beneficial disruption of communications in the area.

North America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Germany: Renewables overtake coal as main power source

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ..

An article from Deutsche Welle (reprinted by permission)

Renewable energy became Germany’s dominant source of electricity in 2018, beating coal  for the first time in history, experts from the Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute said on Thursday.


“Green” energy sources  such as solar, wind, and hydropower accounted for 40.3 percent of German net electricity production last year, rising by 4.3 percent compared to 2017. Experts said coal-fired power plants supplied about 38 percent of electricity in 2018.

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Question for this article:

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

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Germany has set  ambitious energy targets  for the upcoming decade, aiming to have renewable sources provide 65 percent of energy by 2030. The percentage had grown from 8.5 in 2003 to 16.2 in 2008 and 27.2 another five years later.

Even with the 2018 landmark, the change is “not happening quickly enough,” Fraunhofer Institute professor Bruno Burger told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.

“If Germany continues at this rate, we are going to miss our 2030 targets,” he said.

More sun, less water

Nuclear energy accounted for around 13.3 percent of electricity in 2018. However, the country is committed to shuttering its nuclear power plants by 2022.

Climate change seemed to have a positive effect in 2018. A dry and hot summer meant solar power provided 16 percent more energy than the previous year, but it also shrunk the output by hydropower plants, according to the Reuters news agency.

The German government’s coal commission is set to present its plan for finally phasing out coal  in early February.

Europe, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Gilets Jaunes [Yellow Vests]: the “contagion” has reached 22 countries in the World !! The media silence is deafening …

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from Reveillez-vous

The French media are careful not to broach this subject: the movement of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) is being taken up all over the world: in Europe, in Africa, in America, in Asia … To counter (at my small level) this media silence , I propose you a “world tour of the Gilets Jaunes” …


Pic19-009 LAHORE: Dec19 Engineers protesting for their demand at irrigation office. ONLINE PHOTO by Malik Sajjad

In Taiwan, the League for Tax and Legal Reform (which has been fighting since December 2016 for tax justice), organized a Gilets Jaunes march on December 19th. In Taipei (capital of Taiwan), more than 10,000 protesters answered the call
(Source: Taïwan News)

In Bulgaria, anti-government protesters started wearing yellow vests as early as 16 November (Source: LCI)

In Canada, Gilets Jaunes from Alberta and the provinces of Saskatchewan are protesting the government carbon tax and the recent signing of a migration pact( Source: CTV News)

In Croatia, on December 15, 2018, Yellow Vests demonstrated in Zagreb, Pula and Rijeka (Source: Index.hr)

In Egypt, a lawyer was arrested for 15 days after publishing a photo of himself wearing a yellow vest to support protests in France (Source: Jerusalem Post). The sale of yellow vests has even been banned in Egypt !!( Source: The Guardian)

In Germany, Gilets Jaunes protested in front of the Brandenburg Gate and Munich (Source: Spiegel)

In Hungary, thousands of Gilets Jaunes have protested the Orban government in the streets of Budapest ( Source: Le Monde)

In Iraq, on December 5th, Gilets Jaunes demonstrated in Basra to get more job opportunities and better public services. The government fired on the demonstrators with live ammunition (Source: NBC News)

In Israel, economic uncertainty and corruption led to a gathering of Gilets Jaunes in Tel Aviv on Dec. 14 (Source: Jerusalem Post)

In Italy, the Gilets Jaunes inspired a pro-government but anti-European movement: “We are inspired by the French Gilets Jaunes, but we are motivated by other issues. Unlike the French, we support our government. We protest against Europe. We want Europe to no longer interfere with Italian politics.” (Source: The Guardian)

In Jordan, protesters critical of the country’s economic situation began to don yellow vests as protests spread outside the capital (Source: The National)

(Article continued in right column)

(Click here for the French version of this article)

Questions for this article

What is the future of the Gilets Jaunes movement?

(Article continued from left column)

In the Netherlands, on 1 December, Gilets Jaunes demonstrated in Dutch cities. New demonstrations took place on 8 December, during which peaceful protesters passed through Rotterdam ( Source: NL Times)

In Pakistan, hundreds of engineers organized a day of protest in Lahore wearing yellow vests (see photo above) (Source: Pakistan Today)

In Poland, December 12, a group of farmers blocked the A2 motorway
30 kilometers from Warsaw, claiming compensation for the pigs they were forced to slaughter (due to African swine fever) and protesting against the importation of untagged Ukrainian agricultural products from their country of origin. Agriculture Minister Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski met with protesters to explain that the government would meet all their demands ( Source: New York Times)

In Portugal, on 21 December 2018, a gathering of Gilets Jaunes was organized under the slogan “Vamos Parar Portugal”, which translates roughly to “Stop Portugal” ( Source: Euronews)

In Russia, on December 23, 2018, protesters wore yellow vests at a rally against the increase in parking fees in Moscow (Source: Kommersant)

In Serbia, a civil rights organization “Združena akcija Krov nad glavom” (translation: combined action, a roof over the head) began to wear yellow vests in their demonstrations to oppose expulsion of a resident of Mirijevo district in Belgrade and to show solidarity and a common cause with the movement of French Gilets Jaunes (Source: N1 Info)

In Tunisia, a derivative group, the Gilets Rouge (“Red Vests”), appeared on Facebook, calling for protests against the country’s economic situation(Source: Independent)

The symbol of yellow vests was also used by protesters in the UK, Sweden and Greece (Source: BBC)

In Belgium, the “Gilets Jaunes” movement has been very active for one month.
Riot police in Brussels were hit by billiard balls and cobblestones on 30 November. They fought back with water cannons. 60 arrests were made for public disorder(Source: Mercury News)

Several oil depots were blocked in Wallonie on November 16, 2018 ( Source: Le Monde). Some Belgian Gilets Jaunes have started to form a political party for the Belgian federal elections planned in 2019 under the name of “Mouvement citoyen belge” (Source: Le Soir)

On December 8, protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Charles Michel tried to cross a riot fence. Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the protesters. Protesters threw stones, flares and other items on the police, Hundreds of protesters were arrested (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

The media are careful not to talk about this global contagion of the “Gilets Jaunes” phenomenon. This is to avoid motivating even more Gilets Jaunes in France !! Charge to us to circulate this information

(Thank you to Kiki Chauvin, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT