50th post ! (alongside with some personal thoughts)

Yep, this is my fiftieth post. I am quite happy of this new version of elrst.com as it enables me to blog on sustainable development related topics. Energy and climate change represent the majority of published articles as I think that sustainable development is strongly related to the choices we do concerning our energy consumption.

This is why I mostly write news article on energy topics. I am generally very positive on the articles I write even if the current situation is grim and the perspectives are very bad if we don’t do anything. But everyday I read that people are becoming more and more aware of the situation and are willing to change their habits.

Climate change is now a source of concerns worldwide, the energy scarcity is becoming a threat to developing countries, as an example, Buenos Aires in Argentina is fearing black out as the energy demand is increasing faster than the energy supply. Similar examples are found in Asia.

But to me, 2007 will represent a turnaround in the fight on climate change as 1942 was a turnaround year for WWII. I will outline below the reasons of such a reasoning.

In January, the European Union decided to take strong actions on climate change and the US President became aware of energy scarcity. Meanwhile, the IPCC, the world climate experts, met to release the first part of AR4. AR2 was the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, so one can think that the latest Assessment Report will lead to a reinforcement on climate change mitigation worldwide.

In February, the Chinese government decided to act more against pollution as 2006 was the worst year in that regard. More and more concerns arise as too much greenhouse gases emissions might endanger local population. The local government will thus work on bringing local population toward awareness of this issue. French were urged to decrease their energy consumption.

In March, Chile begun investigating on nuclear to answer its growing energy demand as well as Morocco (this will be the subject of an article soon). The EU committed itself to use 20 percent of renewable energies by 2020 when it is only using six percent right now. In the meantime, Mr. Al Gore talked in front of the US Congress on the planetary emergency climate change represent. Brazil also expressed major concerns on climate change and the impact it would have there.

And the beginning of April is indeed bringing its share of good news. The US federal government will from now on consider that greenhouse gases are pollutants and hence will decrease its emissions in the transportation sector. The IPCC is meeting again to talk about the impacts global warming would have if nothing was to done to mitigate it.

Things are moving. The increasing concerns we currently witness will hopefully lead to actions pretty soon, and it is time as climate is warming up. The winter we just had was the hottest ever recorded. The first steps has been putted in place.

Now, climate change is not a topic only talked by ecologists. But as climate is becoming hotter, action is more than ever what we need.

On a personal note and to infer this article, my quest for employment continues. I begin to think of not working in the domains I tackle here. This should help me finding a job more quickly. Five months is indeed a long time to wait, even when one remains busy with a blog, learning to drive and many other things.