"The Bill" - short film

In anticipation to the COP 15:

"The Bill" is a 4 min short film made by Germanwatch and funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.



Three friends meet in a bar and start talking about their lives. Cars, holidays, energy and diet represent a colorful range of "climate sins". With the appearance of the barmaid, the film takes a surprising change of course...
The screenplay was produced as a film in May, 2009. The actors Benno Fuermann, Bjarne Maedel, Christoph Tomanek und Ina Paule Klink took part; Peter Wedel directed.
Contakt: Peter Wedel, ECOFILM, peterwedel@web.de, http://www.eco-film.de/

Today is Earth Overshoot Day!

But what does that mean?

Earth overshoot day marks the day when we start living beyond our ecological means. We use more resources at a faster rate as what the Earth can regenerate in one year. So not a day to celebrate.

Source: Global Foorprint Network

The Global Foorprint Network is publishing that we would now require 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles, that means in less than 10 months we have used ecological services that take 12 months for the Earth to generate

And the overshoot day gets earlier every year!

This is definitely something to think about!

On the websites of Global Foorprint Network you find much more information about how this is calculated etc.

Of course the Earth Overshoot Day is something where all aspects of global actions are cncerned, still action ahs to be taken just in everyday life.

In CHAMP we will develop collection of calculators and guidelines on how to decrease the carbon footprint in travels, meetings and other activities that we hav ein projects. We want to encourage our cities and other stakeholders to think about this issue and to do what they are able to do.

More information on that will come later, here and on our website

Algae to the rescue

The California based company Aurora Biofuels have successfully cultivated a new strain of algae that absorbs twice as much CO2 and produces double the amount of biofuel as conventional strains. In a pilot facility in Melbourne (FL) this new algae strain has reached a daily biodiesel production of one gallon (3,79 liters) in a olymic pool sized pond.

According to Robert Walsh the CEO of Aurora:

"Algae have a built-in mechanism to be effective at low light and as it gets brighter during the day their uptake of carbon dioxide levels off,” said Mr. Walsh. “We’ve been able to go in and alter strains by natural mutation to cause the algae to deal with light across the whole spectrum. The algae continue to uptake CO2 through brighter light and are more productive."

The company plans to open a demonstration plant capable of producing daily 1,000 gallons of fuel in operation by the second quarter of 2010. A full-scale production facility is to follow in 2011.

Do you think the use of algae can contribute to the fight against climate change?

Source: greeninc

Report: Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns.

Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns – report developed jointly by several organizations is now available. Get to know more about the various perspectives on, and perceptions of, quality of life with a specific focus on cities and towns. The report stresses the challenges ahead to ensure quality of life in the long run for all social groups, and the crucial importance of sustainability and the environment as our life supporting system. The report sheds light on certain aspects of the current quality of life discussions in order to illustrate how different conceptions of quality of life influence the quality of life of others, and provides ideas for ways to meet the challenges that lie ahead. It aims to support individuals and politicians to discover a balanced concept for quality of life compatible with sustainable development. EEA Report No 5/2009

read more

Buy your own carbon emission permits.

In order to fight climate change, policy makers have developed carbon emission permits which control the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. There are a limited amount of permits and they must be bought by the polluters so they can keep on there production/pollution.

Sandbag is a non profit community organization who wants to influence this market by collecting money and buying carbon emission permits. This way there are less permits available which means the price of the emission permits will rise. If the price increases polluters will have to pay more for there emissions and will consider investing in cleaner technologies rather than buying emissions credits to cover their excess pollution.

Source: sandbag

The Volvo Experience

Volvo has launched a remarkable campaign in the Netherlands. People who purchase a Volvo C30 in the Netherlands can pick up there car in Göteborg (Sweden). The trip, visit to the Torslande car factory and Volvo museum are included in the car's price.

This is a nice initiative to promote Volvo and the Swedish culture, if it was not for the fact that the C30 is being assembled in Ghent (Belgium), located close to the Dutch border. These brand new cars have to travel over 1000 km north to reach Göteborg so there Dutch owners can fly to Sweden, pick them up and drive them through Denmark, Germany to finally reach the Netherlands.

This seems a bit of an odd strategy. You design and build a fuel efficient car, promote yourself as a green company then you ask your buyers to pick up the car on the other side of Europe.

picture: Google Maps

Will CCS be part of the solution?

Dealing with climate change can be done in different ways, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a possibility still in the development phase. The German pilot project shows us that CCS has a long way to go before becoming operational.

What is CCS and how can it help us in the struggle against climate change? The main idea is to capture and store CO2 so it does not reach the earth's atmosphere. This will be achieved by introducing a CCS technology near a large scale emitter of CO2, like a fossil fuel power plant. The CO2 is captured by scrubbing it from the air and can be stored underground.

The first pilot Carbon Capture and Storage power plant in Germany has not been successful so far:

"Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe project in Spremberg, northern Germany, launched in a blaze of publicity last September, was a beacon of hope, the first scheme to link the three key stages of trapping, transporting and burying the greenhouse gases.

The Swedish company, however, surprised a recent conference when it admitted that the €70m (£60.3m) project was venting the CO2 straight into the atmosphere. “It was supposed to begin injecting by March or April of this year but we don’t have a permit. This is a result of the local public having questions about the safety of the project,” said Staffan Gortz, head of carbon capture and storage communication at Vattenfall. He said he did not expect to get a permit before next spring: “People are very, very sceptical.”

The spread of localised resistance is a force that some fear could sink Europe’s attempts to build 10 to 12 demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage (CCS) by 2015. The plan had been to transport up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the power plant each year and inject it into depleted gas reservoirs at a giant gasfield near the Polish border….

Stuart Haszeldine, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh, warned of the danger of opposition towards CCS snowballing into a “bandwagon of negativity” if too many early projects were rejected. “Once you’ve screwed up one or two of them, people are going to think ‘if they rejected this in Barendrecht, there must be a reason’,” he said."

The public opinion is very negative towards these new technologies. As time is running out we need to deal with this threat now and by opposing helpful measures we are only getting further away from our goal.

Sources:
Grist
The Guardian

What about the Water Footprint?

The Carbon Footprint finally seems to have taken off and now a new tool emerges the Water Footprint. Similar to the Carbon Footprint the Water Footprint can be used to calculate your water usage.

This tool can also be used in a more interesting way, manufacturers can label there products' footprint so consumers are aware how much water a certain item uses during it's manufacturing process. Did you know that for the production of one cup of fresh coffee you need 140 litres of water while the production of one kilogram of beef requires 16,000 litres of water.

An pioneer in this field is Raisio a Finnish food manufacturer who introduced a H2O label on its oat flakes.

According to the New York Times:

"Over the past couple of years, the idea of reporting carbon footprints for various products, as a way of allowing consumers to make informed choices about the items they buy, has gained wider acceptance. Now there are signs that other indicators — including water-use footprints — appear to be coming into the mix.

The label used by Raisio indicates the water that the plant uses for growth and production, as well as what’s discarded as waste water. The company said it was “the world’s first food company to add an H2O label to product packaging” and that it had developed its own calculation model because no internationally established formula and product label yet exists."

Would you keep in mind a carbon or water footprint when deciding which product you will purchase? Or do you think labeling is getting out of control?

Source: Worldchanging

G8 summit in L'Aquila

L'Aquila (it), ravaged by a devastating earthquake earlier this year, hosted on the 8th, 9th and 10th of July 2009 the G8 summit. On the agenda: reaching an agreement on the climate change objectives.

The first day the G8 top came to the consensus that they will not allow a raise in temperature by more than two degrees Celsius in comparison to the level of the beginning of last century.

On the second day the G8 summit expanded with the emerging economies, the result: The emerging economies agree with the objectives but do not want to cut down there CO2 emissions with 50% by 2050.

During the last day they decided a change of course in there policy towards the fight against malnutricion. Instead of donating loads of food there will be investments in the third worlds' food production.

There have been made some important steps towards the climate change threath, let us hope they are sufficient and lead to action.

Reflection on The Green Week

The Green Week is now well behind us and it is time to take a moment and look back on this event. It has been a great opportunity for CHAMP to take part in a big and international event. We were able to reach many different actors and attend numerous conferences.

European commissioner for the environment Stavros Dimas said: “We need an ambitious international agreement at the Copenhagen conference in December followed by determined and effective international action. It is the future of our planet that is at stake and time is running out.” He added that, “Climate change is a cross-cutting issue that not only affects the natural environment we depend on but also has important impacts on our economies and social fabric.” We feel that the world is comming to crossroads, the decisions made in the upcomming COP15 will have a great influence in the outcome of climate change.

Picture by Sven Schultz

The Age of Stupid

Yesterdays evening event on the Green Week was a screening of the very new movie " The Age of Stupid", directed by Fanny Armstrong,a young and very dedicated British filmmaker.
Even if it was said before that this movie, of course, does not reflect the opinion of the European Commission, I think it was a very good decision of the organisers to show this movie at this event!
The auditorium was filled to the last seat and people were eagerly waiting outside to get in even half an hour before it started.

" The Age of Stupid" is a hybrid of animation, documentary and drama:
The Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

In small "flashbacks" the movie shows what already has had happened in year 2008 - and still no action was taken! The great devastation after Hurricane Katrina,melting of the glaciers in the Alps and droughts and fire in the US aswell as in Southern Europe.

Additionally the film follows people from all over the world:
- There is the yound woman from Nigeria, whose life is strongly influenced by the devastation SHELL has left behind when exploiting the oil resources and whose only dream is to become a doctor, a good one,as she stresses.

- There is the young and successful Indian man who started the first Indian low-cost airline in 2005....no matter what people tell about climate change effetcs

- the old man, working as a mountaineering guide in the French Alps, who cannot believe his eyes that his beloved glaciers melt faster from year to year

- the man from New Orleans, struck by Katrina and working on an oil platform

- a sister and brother from Iraq, who fled to Jordan from the war and are deeply traumatized by what they had experienced in their young lifes

- and the British family, who tries to live as sustainable as possible. And the father of the family who sells windmills. Well, rather: he tries to sell windfarms to towns at the windy British countryside and is fought against with all the town inhabitants can find.

A very characterizing situation is shown when a British lady tells the filmers that, of course, she is concerened about climate change and of course she is in favur of renewable energies - but please not in her neighboorhood.

Let this be enough telling -the film is very worth seeing!

At The Age of Stupid you can find more information!

The Green Week day one

Dear visitors,

As you have read in the post below we are currently at The Green Week in Brussels, where we are spreading CHAMP and attending conferences about climate change. During the first day of The Green Week we got an introduction of what is expected of the Green Week with conferences and workgroups on different levels and with multiple accents. With over 4000 registered participants this years edition set a new record.

Throughout the conferences we notice big expectations for the upcoming COP15 and the hope for a unified response to climate change. Along with the current economical crisis, which will make a climate change mitigation harder. Though if dealt with properly will create prosperity and green jobs hence be a part of the solution to weather this economical storm.

Keep up to date and visit us for an refelction of the second day of The Green Week.

CHAMP AT GREEN WEEK

The first opportunity to follow the CHAMP project will be at the Green Week where the CHAMP project staff will blogg directly from the Green Week. They will share views of the project by the participants, inform about the event etc.

Welcome to the official CHAMP blog

Dear visitors,

As most of us know Climate Change is bound to make a great impact and without taking sufficient actions many of us will face severe consequences for the damage done in the past decennia.

In CHAMP seven European organizations combine their strengths and with the support of life+ and Regione Lombardia we established the project in 2009. Our main goal is to deliver competence for local authorities by setting up training hubs throughout Europe. For the moment we have accomplished training hubs in Finland, Germany, Italy and Hungary. With our experience of MUE-25 and the implementation of Integrated Management Systems we intend to contribute to the fight against Climate Change.

In this blog we will update you on the progress we are making and express our ideas about the latest climate change developments.

The CHAMP team.