Time to invest in european renewable energy?

Well that's what the Financial Times seems to mean in this article at least ;-). They mention that the EU has ever increasing energy bills and that the US through their shale gas has found cheap AND "green" source of energy.  I also leave here the link of the manifesto they based their article on, for reference. The US have been lucky to find so much resources but in order to exploit it went against the public opinion (well, the northern part of it at least). EU on the other hand massively vetoed the shale gas because of the frac issue (which, by the way, in Europe with all its laws, is almost irrelevant) and the nuclear lobby felt quite happy about the position. Will that change eventually? Time will tell.

Why ‘Picking Low-Hanging Fruit’ Hurts Efficiency

I just found that very interesting article by Auden Schendler from the ECD website, explaining why the easy fix of energy efficiency is good only in the short term. They explain that the costy energy efficiency programs are in the long term more beneficial for both companies and environment. Click on the picture below:

UK perspective on Carbon Capture and Storage

I have seen this article in the Financial Times which is not usually where you would find it, I thought it could be interesting to share it. It is true that it does only bring numbers, we know already CCS is a huge upfront cost. Now combining with this aricle from BBC, again nothing new but it is interesting to see that general media is endorsing solutions, from the same location.
You can see a selection of more Carbon Dioxide related article I picked up from the net here also.

Extreme politics: populism

Populism is an extreme form of politics. It is a deformation of it's goals. The politician instead of helping the population by doing what is best for a population is trying to remain in power by abiding to please the mass. It is Coubertin  in reverse. It doesn't matter how, it only matters that you win. Tough the notion is now considered old, one must think this is a twisted notion to what all voters would like to see. We strangely become used to the lie and instead of voting for whoever does the best for us, we vote for the least worse.  Example of populisms are flooding the news, I picked up some that triggers dangerous political directions, from freedom of speech to fundamentalism, and dangerously steps into some notions I mentioned in other posts. By the way, that's one of my answers below as I got angry of this politic's speach against an orixa statue exposed on a lake (yeah, I get passionate sometimes :-P)

 "Nem é pela beleza da escultura (que pessoalmente não curto) mais pensam nas palavras dos pagodes baixo astrais denigrindo as mulheres e falando de putaria. Agora para uma pobre escultura de uma musa na água, parecendo a smurfete tomando sol, e um babaca de vereador esta falando de diabo... fala serio seu vereador, toma vergonha nesta cara inculta sua!!"

But as the Brazil city councils election just finished, I saw another huge flood of populism, getting from slightly elaborated to gross and really shameful, depending on how the city is remote and the population's education level. Runner up maior of São Paulo (which, by the way, lost the city to the worker's party after a reign of 25 years!) was seen kissing whoever came around (I dared to come close), seen doing music... whatever would have him on the spotlight but we were yet to hear of his program (which surely runt him out of the competition). Others really play with the local music band (sometimes horridly) and you suddenly see the president of Brazil appearing in places she never went for her own elections (some favelas of Salvador, Bahia). If populism would be a way to show that you are also a good ol' boy and not an aristocrat too far away from your own compatriot I would understand, but too often the effort stops as soon as the elections are over and they all go back to their daily activities. 
Populism could be witnessed also during the elections in USA last weeks, more from Romney than from Obama (from an international point of view). Looking back at that case it appeared Romney suffered a poll backdraft by focusing on pleasing white Americans from the country sides instead of focusing more on more general motives.He also tried populism on different society group and ended up in contradiction (one dialogue for his voters and another one for his sponsors) like the famous 47% comments. I saw less populism in Obama's discourse (I never said there wasn't) and he probably was the least worst to vote for.

Like Wyclef Jean would say, "if I was president", well I would try to elevate the debate and steering up my people rather than down. Education is the key and I would really boost it. From that point everything will follow effortlessly: environment, clean energy, lower poverty and corruption and crimes... you name it! It seems an utopia but only because it is too much of a long term plan and because our politics are focused on short term development plans (populism, securing votes, short term happiness) we hardly see education been favoured. So we have wars, extremism, sexism, corruption (as for this one, it should remain because it is part of Humanity but it should be way less than it is now).