The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) has just ended at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Even while world leaders were discussing how to curb demand for fossil energy the fight for control of supply of them continued unabated. On the Iran-Iraq border the two countries are moving troops around to impress each…
Author: Benno Hansen
“The Risk of Caution” by Joachim Spangenberg
The second of three videos: Dr. Joachim Spangenberg, Vice Chairman of the sustainable Europe Research Institute Germany e.V. (SERI), speaks at “Climate change and conflict – The Danger of future wars”, Klimaforum09 Sunday the 13th of December 2009. The video is of the first half of his presentation only (the rest I got on audio…
Jürgen Scheffran at Klimaforum09
I attended “Climate change and conflict – The Danger of future wars”, Klimaforum09 Sunday the 13th of December 2009. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Scheffran, Institute for geography in the KlimaCampus at University Hamburg, Germany and The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) made the first presentation. The event had an initial resource…
Nnimmo Bassey: “Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole”
The alternative to the official UN COP15 summit is called Klimaforum09 – free, open for all and packed with interesting speaks, workshops and exhibitions. It opened this Monday, the 7th of December, simultaneously with COP15. The main attraction was, hands down, Naomi Klein. She is also getting the attention on the website so far: Last…
New Greenpeace chief: “civil disobedience appears to be the only way”
Watch Kumi Naidoo, the new executive director for Greenpeace International, address climate change in his “inauguration YouTube video”: “After several years in the anti-poverty movement I came to see how the struggles against poverty and the struggle to reverse catastrophic climate change are two sides of the same coin. All our different struggles are linked…
Holy Water War continues
I have largely given up covering the Israel-Palestine strife over water. But I keep bookmarking stories at my Water of The Holy Land Diigo list. However, Al Jazeera just released this video: “This policy is not a new policy, there are lots of examples of Israel trying to force Palestinians to leave their land so…
I’m TH!NKing about climate change
As duly advertised I’m spending my time blogging about climate change and COP15 in a European Journalism Centre project called “TH!NK ABOUT IT”. Thus, not a lot of updates here lately. But ironically, this has caused some bookmarked stories to go nowhere as I haven’t addressed conflict at TH!NK yet. Here is a couple. Later…
Video: NATO chief on security challenge from climate change
Climate change will have a significant impact on our overall security environment both in the south and in the north. All of his examples have been detailed here at Ecowar. But he says two things: One, the solutions should be political, not military; and two, the military can contribute by lowering CO2 emissions.
Bloody Blog Action Day 2009
I did an Ecowar post for Blog Action Day 2008 on poverty but for the 2009 topic on climate change I ended up with a rant on the Danish (COP15 host) government: Something is rotten in the state of COP15 at TH!NK ABOUT IT. Perhaps I “should” have summed up the previous Ecowar and climate…
The military – green or black?
Destroying the Environment Is Also a War Crime [Throughout human history there have been] many deliberate acts to destroy or exploit the natural environment to achieve military goals. In the 5th century BC the retreating Scythians poisoned the water wells in an effort to slow the advancing Persian army. Roman troops razed the city of…
Our mobiles are bleeding
We don’t want to think too much about it. But every time we buy a new gadget we support a mining industry of questionable ethics. In the case of the mines in eastern Congo it is extraordinary brutal. In a time of desperate need for re-forestation to fight climate change, in Congo wide swaths of…
100 Places to Remember – at least 8 of which are to die for
Having wandered through the exhibition at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen and now also enjoyed the accompanying book of 100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear I can’t help but take note of a couple of them here. Because the descriptions in some cases explicitly mentions conflicts. Granted: Many will change with potential drastic consequences. Be…