Lots of Challenges no Solutions | Brussels Blog

Lots of Challenges no Solutions

posted by on 8th Jun 2011
8th,Jun

There is no shortage of Solutions in Brussels. These are not of course, of the kind that you flush down drains. I refer instead to the ones that have replaced what in the Dark Ages used to be described as “goods and services”. A few examples will make the point.

My local supermarket, sensing a certain cultural ennui surrounding the term “fastfood” has grabbed the zeitgeist and now offers “Instant Food Solutions”. Not far behind is the local patissier who offers as a panacea for all those bad farinaceous moments “Bread and Pastry Solutions”. Then there is the deeply ambiguous announcement recently spotted on a local white-van “Cleaning Solutions”. This cannot of course refer to the pink stuff that cleans windows because that would be “Cleaning Solutions Solutions” .(Its simple when you get the hang of it). However, the prize for inane branding solutions goes to the local car-hire firm who proudly announce that they “rent solutions”. I might ring them up and ask for an elegant new proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem or perhaps the answer to that old perennial, The Meaning Of Life. Just for the week-end of course, I only want a temporary solution.

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Wisdom lost in knowledge

posted by on 10th May 2011
10th,May

In lines from the first of his “Choruses from “The Rock” “ T.S.Eliot posed two rhetorical questions,

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Written eight decades ago these lines still ring true. In fact, they are probably more true of today than they were of Eliot’s time. We swim in an ever widening sea of information. Access to the internet and to the never-sleeping media provides us with an inexhausitble supply of what we perceive to be facts. We collect facts obssessively. Our work is monitored by “indicators” our ideals become benchmarks and our acheivements “deliveries”. The English language has taken on the stilted and impoverished vocabulary of pseudo-fact certainty which is peddled by the middle-managers and HR drones of business. Judgement and wisdom are out of the window. Facts are in.

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The price of Brent Crude

posted by on 22nd Mar 2011
22nd,Mar

Recently, the price of Brent Crude Oil has touched $115 a barrel and it is continuing to rise. As a consequence, we have been entertained on a more or less daily basis with dire warnings issued by the great and the good, as to the negative effect that rising oil prices will have on the “global economic recovery”. Frankly, given that all of the major economic recessions that have occurred since 1973 have been preceded by a spike in the price of oil, this is not an insight that goes beyond the cerebral capacity of Homer Simpson. It is however, within the comfortable, conventional narrative, that is, that once a few local problems have been sorted out it will be back to business as usual. So, rather than question the robustness of an economic system based on a finite resource, someone has to be held to account. Who is to blame? There are a number of candidates.

First and foremost there is of course, the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. He fits the bill as pantomime villain rather well. He a dictator with the usual credentials, vast wealth, a taste for torture, badly-dyed hair and, a nice touch, a wardrobe that appears to have been co-ordinated by Widow Twankey. He also has the ultimate bonkers-tyrant accolade of being on chummy terms with our former Prime Minister, Mr. Blair.

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Japan and nuclear power

posted by on 16th Mar 2011
16th,Mar

Perhaps I speak only for myself when I say that the sight of suffering borne with fortitude tends to elicit the greatest of sympathetic responses. To observe the Japanese people quietly surveying the wastelands of what once were their towns-homes, friends, neighbours, parents, children swept away in minutes- is heart-rending. Theirs is the kind of stoicism that at one time was commonly attributed to the British people. That of course, was before we were offered counsellors to persuade us from any form of grief and lawyers who could mitigate the pain by means of money. The Japanese seem to be managing without the assistance of either.

The real question however, is whether in future, they will be able to manage without the assistance of nuclear power. Japan has no great natural hydrocarbon resources, no coal, gas or oil. It is therefore, dependent on imported oil, coal and natural gas to meet the needs of its large population and its powerful industries. The development of the nuclear industry was considered an essential step towards establishing energy security. So, does this dream lie in tatters?

The nuclear industry in Japan has a long history of unsafe practices, disinformation and outright mendacity. The Japanese people have a long history of trust in their leaders and forebearance from protest. It is therefore, perfectly conceivable that the industry will ensure its survival by constructing the following case.

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Egypt

posted by on 3rd Mar 2011
3rd,Mar

Amidst the jubilation that has accompanied the departure of the late Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, there is a nagging and awkward caveat. That is, how his successors will be able to address the deep-seated problems that afflict the Egyptian economy. Recently a growing number of commentators have raised this question. From it there arises an unpleasant spectre. If the Egyptian revolution fails to fulfill the expectations of the people, they might in retrospect view the Mubarak era as a golden age. If this proves to be the case then, undignified though his departure was, it might well prove to have been opportune. Perhaps, he got out while the going was good.

My interest is this. The subject matter of the Brussels Blog is climate change and resource depletion. At root these are the problems which face Egypt. Both are of course, problematic for the world but in Egypt it is possible to see the complex interrelationship between them and the way in which, together, they have an impact upon the economic and political order. The situation in Egypt is interesting for what it augurs. For those of us fortunate enough to live in a more affluent society the immediate future may not be so grim. Our time will come.

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Peak Oil Benefits

posted by on 13th Jan 2011
13th,Jan

In my youth, I remember regularly seeing a an elderly, rather grim, man parading the streets around Leicester Square decked-out with sandwich-board and placard urging the pleasure-seeking, cinema-bound crowds to eat less protein and thereby to avoid the perils of lust. Needless to say he was English and one suspects, a troubled man. His name as I have since discovered, was Stanley Green and his reputation lives on. He was the classic sandwich board man; long may his ilk flourish.

Doubtless, since the beginning of time, men have paraded in sandwich-boards advertising to anyone who might care to listen and many who might not, that protein incited lust or more frequently, that the end of the world was nigh. As for the message of the former and the predictions of the latter, that they have been deluded can be demonstrated by reference to two simple facts. We are still here, and so too is the world. We have not given up either on lust or survival. However, as far as the end-of-the-world-is-nigh merchants are concerned such a simple analysis misses an essential point; often they were right. The world is defined by the limits of our consciousness, not the boundaries of global geography. Fortunately, lust (graced by the name passion), and aided no doubt by proteins, has enabled the world that lies outside individual personal boundaries to flourish.

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Cheap transport

posted by on 4th Dec 2010
4th,Dec

Let’s start with the fact that the motorcycle manufacturer Honda, has recently announced that it intends marketing a new, small motorcycle in India and China. It will cost less than the local equivalent of $600. Add to that the fact that Tata in India has developed a motorcar, the Nano, that sells for less than $2500 and the picture becomes clear. Cheap transport fuelled by petrol is a booming industry in the developing world. Whereas in Europe the affluent classes are, for the sake of their and the planet’s health, getting on their bikes, the emergent middle class of India and China are getting off their bikes and onto or into cheap petrol driven transport.


The British Prime Minister, David Cameron was, famously, photographed riding to the Houses of Parliament on a pushbike. We have yet to see a photo of the Chinese Premier cycling to work. In Europe, to ride a bicycle is to establish your “green”credentials. In China, India or indeed any other part of the developing world it is a mark of poverty that is to be given up as soon as circumstances permit. The poor of Africa and the Far East do not ride bicycles for the sake of their health nor to save the environment. They do so because they haven’t been able to buy motorised transport- yet.


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Energy and St Kilda

posted by on 26th Sep 2010
26th,Sep

A small but rather sad event was commemorated in August of this year. Eighty years ago, the inhabitants of the St Kilda group of islands were, with their agreement, repatriated to the mainland of Britain.

For those who are unfamiliar with the furthest reaches of the British Isles, I should explain that S t Kilda is in fact, the most remote part of Britain. It is a group of Islands a hundred miles off the north-west coast of Scotland and is distinguished by the dramatic beauty of its scenery and its vertiginous cliffs, the highest in Britain. Home to copious numbers of sea birds, wild sheep and a unique breed of giant mice it once sustained a small human population that had lived there since time immemorial.

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Israel and oil

posted by on 14th Sep 2010
14th,Sep

In Napoleon’s day, an army marched on its stomach. Now, the fuel that drives the armed forces is not food but oil. In war, human and animal energy has largely been replaced by the power of hydrocarbons. As an example, in 2006 the U.S. military used 320,000 barrels of oil a day. It is little wonder given this fact that, of late, it has been the military in the U.S. and Germany who have been sounding the warning bell over “Peak Oil”. It is little surprise too that when, in 2009, the British Government held secret talks about the impact of Peak Oil, the Ministry of Defence was a prominent attendee.


The interest shown by the military in oil depletion reflects three facts. First, a diminution in the supply of oil adversely affects their ability to function. Second, as the oil diminishes wars will be fought to secure its supply. Third, the effect of an uncontrolled and rapid rise in the cost of oil would be economic turmoil and civil unrest. The military might therefore, have to step in to maintain public order.


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Whoopee for Greenland

posted by on 2nd Sep 2010
2nd,Sep

There is a lot excitement at the moment about the fact that Greenland seems to be in the money, or, to be more precise, in the oil. Exploratory wells around this vast land mass which is largely occupied by nothing suggest that the 60,000 human inhabitants will soon be the beneficiaries of untold oil wealth. Recent discoveries indicate the presence of a field containing, wait for it, 20 billion barrels. Now that really is something. It’s enough to power the world for about eight months. End of excitement. To be fair, the U.S. Government Geological Survey has assessed the total reserves at 90 billion barrels but at the moment there seems to be precious little sign of such riches being turned up.

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