European Student Think Tank

There is no per­fect human being. We all have vir­tues and flaws. The same thing some­how applies to states, con­sid­er­ing that there is no abso­lutely self-efficient, developed and envir­on­ment­ally con­scious coun­try. Coun­tries cooper­ate with each other and build up “friend­ships” to cover their needs and max­im­ize their vari­ous interests. A “friend­ship” of com­ple­ment­ary interests is found between the EU and China with a view to end up their crises.

We have entered the age of man. An age where future geo­lo­gists will find rem­nants of our inter­fer­ence with nature in the sed­i­ments of Earth. We have man­aged to alter the (re)cycles that keep us alive includ­ing those for car­bon, nitro­gen and meth­ane. We enter the anthro­po­cene at a time when our mater­ial con­sump­tion is wildly unsus­tain­able. To redeem ourselves, Janez Potočnik, the Com­mis­sioner for Envir­on­ment, calls for a revolu­tion in resource efficiency.

“You are only 200 000 years old, but you have changed the face of the world. Des­pite your vul­ner­ab­il­ity, you have taken pos­ses­sion of every hab­itat and conquered swathes of ter­rit­ory, like no other spe­cies before you”. These sen­tences are from the movie called “Home”. After watch­ing it, I real­ized more accur­ately what is hap­pen­ing on the earth, how humans have been dam­aging their home planet for so many years and what can be done to restore the earth once more.

In the hunt for a secure energy sup­ply and sub­sti­tutes for dirty coal, Europe is peek­ing over the pond. The fossil fuel à-la-mode is called shale gas and exploit­a­tion in the US has vir­tu­ally exploded. Secure domestic gas sup­ply has become a game changer for the US and some are anxious to see if the EU can repeat the suc­cess. But oth­ers are less enthu­si­astic. Exploit­a­tion con­tam­in­ates water and cli­mate change claims made by pro­ponents are under fire.

Energy effi­ciency is hot. Lots of atten­tion dur­ing last week’s Sus­tain­able Energy Week and the recently released Energy Effi­ciency Plan has fuelled the fire. The European Com­mis­sion and NGOs are eager to pro­mote large scale energy sav­ings to reach the EU’s cli­mate and energy goals. But what is actu­ally energy effi­ciency and why is it so pop­u­lar? It has proven very tricky to reg­u­late and notori­ously dif­fi­cult to meas­ure. Some even argue that energy effi­ciency meas­ures actu­ally increase our energy usage.

The out­come of COP15 was broadly con­sidered a dis­ap­point­ment. With the cur­rent COP16 talks in Cancun, les­sons must be learned from Copen­ha­gen when dis­cuss­ing the EU´s abil­ity to set the agenda and com­pete in altern­at­ive energy solu­tions. The EU is speak­ing with one voice in cli­mate change talks and has made it a ques­tion of prestige to push for an inter­na­tional bind­ing agree­ment. Hence, is the EU really per­form­ing as badly in cli­mate change talks as it seems?