Jeremy Leggett

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EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate,

Yesterday, a "highly placed source" in Moscow was reported as saying the Kremlin intends to turn off the oil export pipeline to the EU on Monday, so great is Russian ire about the rhetoric in Brussels and warships in the Black Sea. If this is true, we are entering a whole new ball game in what has come to be called "energy security". Even if the report proves false, the west should be on red alert about energy export weaponry.

Barely noticed in the runup to the crisis in Georgia, Russia signed a deal that gives its energy giant Gazprom control over gas supply from neighbouring Turkmenistan - one of three former Soviet satellite states around the Caspian sea on which Europe is pinning its hopes for a future gas supply.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

This week the shape of the global energy crisis came into its sharpest focus yet. The world needs renewable energy fast, but as BP and Shell announced record profits, they also demonstrated that they are in essence retreating from renewables, perhaps with the exception of biofuels. They intend to focus their record billions on expanding production of what remains of traditional oil and gas, plus tar sands and liquid fuels from coal - ruinous in their effect on the climate.

The oil giants are recarbonising, wilfully choosing to forget both global warming imperatives and the need for renewables in national security terms.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, , ,

When Britain and Germany raced to scale up their aircraft industries for war in the 1930s, the British competed rather well. Recovering from a late start, we rapidly produced machines capable of winning the Battle of Britain.Today, the two nations are on the same side in a different battle, but Germany alone is mobilising as fast as it did 70 years ago. Our common enemy is global warming, and it is already at our gates. But while our German allies are turning out the renewable energy equivalents of Messerschmitts by the factory-load, Britain is again slow to spring into action. Worse, as we learned yesterday, officials responsible for UK mobilisation have told the prime minister it is impossible for us to build modern-day Spitfires in any number.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

Through his long years of greenhouse denial, George Bush must have been particularly grateful to John Howard. The Australian prime minister was quick to join Bush in refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocol, and has batted for his country's coal interests as trenchantly as Bush has batted for US coal and oil interests.Now Bush has had to deal with the impact on American public opinion of Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore's movie, and can no longer afford to ignore climate change. Howard, contending with a killer drought, is similarly finding that greenhouse denial is out of bounds. The flow of Australian rivers has fallen by a staggering 70% in recent decades.…  Seguir leyendo »