'A modern day journey through the wild western Balkans'

Friday, March 09, 2007

Bosanska budalastina

So tell me, who’s crazy here – the entire world, or the entity governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina? The EU members have just agreed on the most important environmental document ever signed by the European Union – to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by the year 2020. This binding target signed by European Union leaders agrees to use renewable energies, such as wind and solar power – an idea that both governments here and their big energy lobbies have laughed at.

Tony Blair stated this agreement was a major step in putting the EU in a leadership position on climate change. Bosnia and Herzegovina, it seems, wants to be the new leader in producing the highest possible amounts of carbon gas whilst all our neighbours go in the exact opposite direction. He also confirmed that all 27 nations agreed to a target on the use of bio-fuels – another idea that neither this government nor its powerful energy know much about.

This is further proof of Bosnia’s misguided energy policy. We have based our plans on research and technology of the early 1980’s, without paying much attention at all to what ALL of global experts keep saying: hydroelectric dams create vast amounts of carbon gases and very much contribute to global warming! This fact has fallen on deaf ears here. So why would our government want to add to the global climate problem? Why would they want to endanger the future of our children with their old-school plans? I can think of no other answer other than greed, incompetence, selfishness. Someone is going to get a nice piece of pie and doesn’t give a rat’s ass if that means adding to the world’s climate problems – or just on a small scale, seriously effecting the micro-climates that have given us some of Europe’s cleanest drinking water and richest bio-diversity.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the new commitment to renewable energies would ‘inject a new quality into the energy and climate policy of the European Union.’ So why has Europe decided to turn its head to the out-of-date and destructive energy policies it once promoted? Simply because the moral and economic obligation to do so is so overwhelmingly convincing that no government who claimed to truly represent its people could do otherwise. The European Union has not made this decision, however, purely based on moral obligations. It understands well the severe economic costs of environmental clean-up and the possibility of irreversible damage if we continue to destroy the environment at the current pace. Simply put – the money made now from a hydroelectric dam (that will feed the pockets of our corrupt political elite) will cost more in the long run due to erosion, loss of bio-diversity, contamination of clean drinking water, public health consequences and the dramatic costs of carbon gases being emitted into our atmosphere.

This milestone agreement will be ‘the most ambitious package ever agreed by any institution or any group of countries in the world on energy, security, and climate protection,’ according to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, still struggling to implement and justify its 25 year old energy ‘plan’, will no doubt continue on its path of blind destruction. The only question is, will the people and the European Union continue to allow it?