What is the EU trying to do?
Establish a working, sensible and efficient transportation system with currently available technology, find an alternative fuel to, literally, power the current petro-chemical based transportation system, build a bridge between the present system and some (undefined, so far) future system, or do something else?
Discussing which fuel or fuels mixture: bio-diesel, electricity, hamster-powered treadmill, to use is premature. Tho' not entirely pointless.
The high cost of crude is forcing fertilizer factories in the US to close, meaning there is a fertilizer shortage in the US, meaning -- who the hecks knows? IF this shortage continues we can confidently predict the gradual abandonment of cereal production on marginal land in the US.
Just as a note, that "marginal land" is pretty near anything west of central Kansas to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California.
I would be working to build as many Solar, Wind, Tidal, and other renewable power plants as I could and building the high transmission power lines required, if any are, to bring that power to where it is needed.
I would work through the EU to encourage the countries along the southern Mediterranean to build Solar and Wind based power plants and the high transmission power lines needed to bring that power to the EU. (Across the Gibraltar Strait?)
With oil going bye-bye as an energy source the world is going to have to replace those terrawatts of energy with something. That something is, most likely - given our current stage of technology, electricity. The EU needs to be building these renewable plants as fast as they can in order to ease the transition from oil to electricity as well as to use oil (while it is 'cheap') as the energy source to build the plants.
Along with that do or push for:
WorldChanging: Someone Invent a Better City Ranking!
one of the barriers to sustainability is the idea -- common throughout the developed world -- that we need to do something to protect the environment, and therefore anything we do is pretty much a step in the right direction. But of course, we don't need to merely do something, we need to do enough; and we don't just need to do anything, we need to do the right things.
one of the barriers to sustainability is the idea -- common throughout the developed world -- that we need to do something to protect the environment, and therefore anything we do is pretty much a step in the right direction.
But of course, we don't need to merely do something, we need to do enough; and we don't just need to do anything, we need to do the right things.
Policy is, I think, often made in that kind of way: there is a problem conceptualised in a narrow frame, some solution to the problem comes up, its benefits for various kinds of groups and purposes (climate change targets, farmer wages, popular opinion) become apparent, its negatives (not enough land, food prices) are not appropriately weighed, and presto, you get a Biofuels Directive with absurd targets.
We really need better governance.
