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September 6, 2005
Long way to go
The Greenpeace Energy Revolution Tour has been underway now for over 3 months, travelling through the rivers of Europe from Poland down to the Mediterranean, still on track for its final destination of Cairo in Egypt. We have communicated our message of clean renewable energy to literally thousands of people along the way, exposing examples of dirty energy such as the nuclear power plant at Cernavoda in Romania and the coal power plant in Turkey as we go. The Greenpeace ship SV Anna is now in Greece, where the popular exhibition explaining the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change has been set up.
It's been a strange week for the rest of the world. I've been helping out with the tour since July and have not really had access to my usual sources of news. So I have only recently become aware of the scale of tragedy unfolding in New Orleans. Although it is not something that can be directly attributed to climate change, it does put in to sharp contrast what we are trying to achieve with this tour.
Here in Europe, we have been experiencing severe droughts and forest fires on the Iberian peninsula, while flooding has been claiming lives and ruining crops and infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe.
These all seem to be examples of the kind of effects that are predicted to be more frequent if the world is allowed to continue warming. Traveling through these countries - 7 people died in one night during a flood when we were traveling through Romania - you get a sense of the kind of damage that sustained flooding or regular droughts can do. These are parts of the world that are spending every penny they have on industrializing as their borders open up, and will have little left over for flood defences, contingency budgets for the lost food crops, etc that would be needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The most important message we're trying to get though to people is that there is a solution and isn't yet too late. Witnessing the weather events of this summer just make us more urgent in our message.
The renewable energy potential of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region is truly vast. The benefits are also clear - clean air, energy independence and a contribution to stopping climate change. It's up to the Government's of these countries to make it happen
though. We're definitely seeing some evidence of progress, but there's still a very long way to go.
James Footner
Posted by Hussein at September 6, 2005 11:10 AM