Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2010

The award for worst lobbying interventions in Brussels in 2010 is now open for vote again. This year the awards deals especially with lobbying which prevented forewardlooking climate policies and employed the financial crisis in favour of corporate interest.
The 'Worst EU Lobbying Awards' are organized annually by CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory), Friends of the Earth Europe, Lobby Control and Spinwatch.

"[U]nderhand tactics, combined with the strength of big business, have allowed corporate lobbyists to continue for-profit lobbying at the expense of more climate- and consumer-friendly regulation; putting profits before people and the planet.


If these damaging and dirty lobbying tactics worry you, then fear not, help is at hand, and you can be part of the solution. This year’s Worst EU Lobbying Awards is here, with a twofold focus – climate and finance. And, with the help of Lobby-Cleaner, and your vote, we can clean up the lobbying scene in Brussels, discourage controversial lobbying practices by publicly exposing the worst offenders, and discredit the big business lobby among EU decision-making circles." [source and image credit]
See the nominees here and vote!

This year the award features comic heroes which personalize the grassroots movement in a superhero-style. Lobby-Cleaner "the Worst EU Lobbying Awards’ anti-heroine, roams the corridors of power cleaning lobbies, and cleaning lobbying. She is here to clean up the mess created by corporate lobbyists in Brussels." [source and image credits]

Study: Big Oil Goes to College.

A new study by Jennifer Washburn at the Center for American Progress investigates recent inflictions between big oil companies and universities in the US.

The report asks:

"Why are highly profitable oil and other large corporations increasingly turning to U.S. universities to perform their commercial research and development instead of conducting this work in-house? Why, in turn, are U.S. universities opening their doors to Big Oil? And when they do, how well are U.S. universities balancing the needs of their commercial sponsors with their own academic missions and public-interest obligations, given their heavy reliance on government research funding and other forms of taxpayer support?" [source]

And comes up with the following results:

"

The results of this report’s analysis of these 10 large-scale university-industry contracts raise troubling questions about the ability of U.S. universities to adequately safeguard their core academic and public-interest functions when negotiating research contracts with large corporate funders. This report identifies eight major areas where these contracts leave the door open to serious limitations on academic freedom and research independence. Here are just a few brief highlights:

• In nine of the 10 energy-research agreements we analyzed, the university partners failed to retain majority academic control over the central governing body charged with directing the university-industry alliance. Four of the 10 alliances actually give the industry sponsors full governance control.
• Eight of the 10 agreements permit the corporate sponsor or sponsors to fully control both the evaluation and selection of faculty research proposals in each new grant cycle.
• None of the 10 agreements requires faculty research proposals to be evaluated and awarded funding based on independent expert peer review, the traditional method for awarding academic and scientific research grants fairly and impartially based on scientific merit.
• Eight of the 10 alliance agreements fail to specify transparently, in advance, how faculty may apply for alliance funding, and what the specific evaluation and selection criteria will be.
• Nine of the 10 agreements call for no specific management of financial conflicts of interest related to the alliance and its research functions. None of these agreements, for example, specifies that committee members charged with evaluating and selecting faculty research proposals must be impartial, and may not award corporate funding to themselves. (See summary of main findings for details, pages 52-59, and the Appendices beginning on page 75.)" [source]

You can download the full report here, or read more about it on the homepage of the Center for American Progress.

From a European perspective this report is a valid argument to be careful with letting private business into funding public universities. Only real academic freedom and non-steered research can come up with very important innovations for a benign development of future societies.

Motivated by Disaster

The deepwater horizon rig explosion and following oil spill can be stated to be the greatest environmental disaster in recent years.
Interestingly enough this spill created very strong bottom-up movements to cover the impact of the oil spill by grassroots mapping , crowdsource mapping or by providing an oil spill crisis map.

As terrible as the visual material of the oil spill may be. There are as well images, such as the ones below, which transport both, information about the state of the disaster, and, a certain abstract aesthetic. The imaginary below was aquired by gonzoearth with the means of kite-mapping and represent a strong symbol of how networks of individuals can empower themselves to control government and corporations in their promise of mitigating environmental damage.



I've been following press independent coverage and want to provide some important sources of information.

TEDxOilSpill. Comprehensive, in-depth information in TED-talk-style.
I was especially touched by Carl Safina's talk:



NY-Times: Paul Krugman on what didn't prevent the spill.


We can't allow oursleves to forget or underestimate the magnitude of this environmental desaster as caused by our contemporary societal-industrial-political system. Namely unregulated corporations and our energy system being trapped in a fossil pathway will have to be adressed to successfully prevent such disasters in future.



It should say 'we' in the center of the above figure, as ultimately we are the ones who buy gas at the pump every day driving our single-cars, using electricity and petrochemical disposable products. It's time for some new paradigms. Sustainable futures are plentiful.

Electric Mobility in Austria

The Tesla Roadster is the sexy icon of electric mobility.

What is going on in terms of electric mobility in Austria and the CENTROPE region? Several aspects are of interest: initiatives for social integration of e-mobility, technological as well as scientific advances regarding e-mobility, and, policy as well as economic concepts for the advancement and integration of e-mobility .

'Regarding e-mobility, The Mobility House considers first and foremost a modification of human mobility patterns in urban agglomerations as indispensable. The majority of the driven distances are short and can even at this point in time, be easily covered with e-vehicles. As a consecutive step The Mobility House envisions the merging of urban agglomerations and regions as a chance of applying e-mobility supra-regionally.'
from: http://www.mobilityhouse.at/en/electric-mobility/vision.html

'The future belongs to mobility with electric vehicles.' Walther-werke offer a complete kit for charging car and smart grid.

See a video about the future of energy supply in smart grids on the Siemens homepage. A smart grid will be able to balance temporary fluctiations in the availability of renewable energy supply. Smart grids will be an important future infrastructure to allow a diverse and renewable energy generation to power our society in a clean way.

Mobility is more if you are moving with less, like a scooter or a bike, due to lower entropy factors. e-scooters or e-bikes for long distances or rainy and lazy days.

Yet, I still don't see so many e-scooters on the street in vienna.
So get your supplies for example at: scooterman.at webshop

btw., in china e-scooters sales are soaring.



And e-bikes in Vienna:
As resident of vienna you can get 30% (max of 300€) back from the cities subsidy. 'Antragsformular für mein Elektrofahrrad'

Image showing Viennas city counselor Ulli Sima on a tesla-like electric bike. :)

E-mobility in Graz: The Magna 'BionX' is frequently represented in Austria. Magnas BionX motor is a future bestseller of this company.
photo: Stadt Graz / Foto Fischer

Nonwithstanding, walking and biking - mechanical forms of mobility (m-mobility) - are still the most efficient in keeping our environments alive.

LiJiang, Yunnan, China

österreich wählt sich an die wand / austria voted itself against a wall

this sunday this vote put politics further right. especially ridiculous was the voting behaviour of young austrians, which voted disporportionally often for populist right wing parties such as FPÖ [branding itself lately as 'the social homeland party' (quite an ugly analogy)] or BZÖ. may they not earn what they have sown!

fanzone vienna

i love austria! i love uefa! i love carlsberg! i love puma! i love christl! i love FANS!