My Voice and Noise on the environment

There is a growing credibility gap between the seriousness of what we seem to be doing to our planet, and the green discourse and solutions offered. The challenge of saving our pied-à-terre is too big to allow the efforts needed to fall in the hands of other political agendas or pure rent-extracting environmentalism. To stand a chance we need to question all green proposals, without falling prey to a misguided sense of green solidarity. Stop the green waste!

Sunday, February 8, 2004

A brief encounter with NGOs

We met in some airport facilities with an assorted group of NGOs that were all dead set against a big hydro project in a developing country. After debating the pros and cons of hydro, gas, and special environmentally friendly small energy sources such as wind and biomass, if not a truce, and most definitely not an agreement, I believe that there was at least a general consensus that most concerns and differences of opinion had been analyzed in a comprehensive way.

Comprehensive? Forget it! Early next morning we all read an official announcement of a huge project to generate energy with coal. And I believe no one even mentioned coal the night before.

An extract from my Voice and Noise, Booksurge, 2006

Carbon emission indulgences?

I do not pretend how to solve it and neither am I set dead against them but, Carbon emissions trading which involves the trading of permits to emit carbon dioxide has too many similarities to the indulgences of sins for me to feel completely relaxed about it.

If we are going down the route for emission trading let us at least make sure that the environmental wrongdoings pardoned are really really wrong and the environmental good doings with which we are to pay for these pardons are really really good. I am not at all sure we are doing that today.