Summary: 28 May 2008, Brussels - Stop exploiting energy "as if there's no tomorrow." This, as articulated by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was the key message of Tuesday's conference on energy efficiency, attended by European Parliament President Hans Gert Pöttering and 1990 Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev.
"More effective energy use is something we can easily achieve," said Mr Pöttering, launching the Global Energy Conference on awareness-raising and energy efficiency.
The twenty percent increase in energy efficiency (one of the three pillars of the EU's 20/20/20 by 2020 target), he added, "is completely attainable" - this, "without a drop in well being or production".
The previous day, the Parliament's plenary hall played host to the 9th Energy Globe Awards, which celebrated projects promoting the use of clean and renewable energies from around the world.
"Climate change is not just an environmental issue", said Kofi Annan. "It is an all encompassing threat": engendering, as he put it, regional conflict, imperilling the world's food supply, and making areas unsuitable for animals and food harvest. The scientific consensus, according to Mr Annan, is becoming "not only more complete, but more alarming". "And yet," even with some scientists warning that we are "close to the point of no return", he complained, "we continue to exploit resources as if
there no tomorrow, in a very unsustainable manner." If we continue to consume energy at today's pace, warned Mr Annan, by 2020 we'll need 50% more energy to meet our needs. "Let no one say that we can not afford to make emission cuts," he concluded. "It will cost far less to cut emissions now than to pay for the consequences later".
Gorbachev's green glasnost
1990 Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, also speaking at the conference, drew on personal experience - both as a young man growing up in Stavropol and a rising star in the Communist Party - to explain how his understanding and appreciation of climate change grew over the years (leading him to found, in 1993, Green Cross International, an advocacy group). Europe, he later argued, had a lot to learn from the experience (and errors) of the USSR, where - by the mid-80s, under Gorbachev's glasnost -
the "number one issue [on people's minds] was the environment".
Complaining about the attitude that the West took vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and the challenges it faced throughout the 1980s, he warned: "if we take the same attitude towards developing countries as we did towards the USSR", we will face "a catastrophe." Our European friends seemed to have liked Russia under Yeltsin, he complained, switching gears; they "liked seeing Russia in that sort of bad shape". Today, however, added the last leader of the USSR, "Russia is resurgent". That said, Mr
Gorbachev urged "a new agreement between the EU and Russia." Yet, he noted, "every time we've come close to an agreement," something or someone has stood in the way. "If you have a situation where one country has a veto in these matters [...]," he said, "this will not work". "If a country does no like the EU, it can withdraw from the EU".
The Gala: celebrities on hand to reward eco-friendly projects
The previous evening (Monday), the Energy Globe Awards - featuring appearances by Hans-Gert Pöttering, José Manuel Barroso, Janez Janša, Kofi Annan and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as performances by Zucchero, Dionne Warwick and Alanis Morisette - were held at the plenary hall of the European Parliament in front of more than a thousand guests.
The Globes, which reward local and regional projects that contribute to energy conservation, environmental protection, or the supply of basic resources such as water and electricity to remote and poor communities, went to the following candidates (from a pool of 853 entries from 109 countries):
Air: Austria (Fronius International GmbH: CO2-free transport)
Water: Mozambique (Helvetas: sustainable water supply)
Fire: Spain (Solar Millennium AG: Andasol Solar Power Plant Projects)
Earth: Peru (Ciudad Saludable: Sustainable Solid Waste Management Program in the city of Cahuaz)
Youth: South Africa (Andasol Solar Power Plant Projects: Young People against Climate Change)
After a ballot in which guests could vote for their favourite project, the Energy Globe World Award went to Austria.
A special award went to Mikhail Gorbachev in recognition of his work with the "Green Cross Foundation".
The ceremony, hosted by actress Désirée Nosbusch, also included appearances by India's former environment minister Maneka Gandhi, and Bollywood film star Aamir Khan.
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