Eu

“Okay it’s time to go now - they have started throwing stones.”

The words were calm but it was hard to miss the rising panic in the voice of my Greek host Danai as stones pummelled into the building behind us as we watched the latest episode in the demonstrations that have been rocking Athens for the past month now.

Yesterday the tension was palpable.

Continue reading "The wheels have been Greeced for too long" »

Is your CEO or director on “Out of Office AutoReply” this month? If so, chances are that they are far from the southern hemisphere. August is holiday season in the North and with the long standing link to Australia’s heritage, it’s a good bet that there is a European and probably London stopover on the way. 

Having just returned to Australia via the climate policy desert of the USA, the European climate change landscape couldn’t be in starker contrast. Whilst American media seems destined to miss the BP oil spill as an opportunity to get their citizens to connect the dots between fossil fuel pollution of all types and drive their own leaders to climate action, Europe is a different story.

In the European climate world, business meetings and conferences talk of how to deal with climate change and when, not if? They talk of the risks of extending pollution reduction targets even further, not of avoiding targets at all. Climate deniers are forced into backrooms and dare not raise their heads far for fear of ridicule. A career in UK climate denial is accompanied by US and Australian visa applications because jobs are thin on the ground there.

Continue reading "European climate attitudes can teach us a lot" »