Introduction from May 2007

The Earth Day and May vacations in Slovenia are over. It is time to have a look if our activities had any effects on people's behaviour.

Have we behaved correctly for our trips in the mountains. How much of petrol have we used for the vacations? How much of carbon dioxide have we produced just for fun? Have we found any peaceful and unspoiled place where we could still fill up our human batteries?

We have spent some time to explore the web and we found some pages and videos on the net, that show some facts that could have serious impact on our lives in the future. We show you the list and we do propose to have a look and some reflections about the sources:

• Arctic Ice Retreating More Quickly Than Computer Models Project from the National Center for Atmospheric Research
• The peak of production of oil has been reached or will be reached in just a couple of years – the world demand for oil still grows. Source: film The Oil Crash and page Energy bulletin
• Neither oil companies, neither car producers, neither big countries do react to increased demand. Some car producers are even prepared to take away and destroy all electric cars, so that people might not even think that transport without oil is possible. Source: Who killed the electric car? Wikipedia

Considering all facts above, the veto on retreat of American army from Iraq by the American president is not at all a surprise. The fact that Japanese car industry has taken the lead from the American industry is understandable - they have taken the lead also by hybrid cars.

It is evident that the climate change will affect everybody even the isolated mountain kingdom of Bhutan that has done more to protect its environment than almost any other country. Some of Bhutan's glaciers are believed to be retreating at 20 to 30 metres a year. Lakes from melted glaciers might be emptied into the valley below if an ice wall breaks too fast. The kingdom of Butan fears from such accidents and damage from the global climate changes although they are not responsible for that. Source: Bhutan to pay for others' climate sins: Reuters Alertnet 04.05.2007

Some behaviour in Slovenia is not sensible either. The public transport (except air traffic) is in decline, number of newly registered cars is in increase, so that the number of cars per 100 inhabitants in Slovenia is similar to the richer countries in Europe. Source: Statistical office of Slovenia - transport

The initiative to stop the light pollution has arisen some interest of public and delay of decision in the government on (by our opinion) unsuitable proposition.

It will be very interesting to observe if this initiative had any effect on the behaviour of the decision makers. Non-decision or delay of the government decision would mean further waste of energy in space. The decision for the unsuitable proposition would only show the policy of Potemkin village – accepting a so called restriction that does not restrict anything.

Some optimism gives us a new European directive on environmental responsibility of companies. So far only three European countries have implemented that directive in national legal systems. It would be nice if Slovenia was in the lead somewhere.

See more pages from Mountain Wilderness Slovenia (MWS)

• Actual
• New on MWS site
• English index of MWS site

See more about other Mountain Wilderness societies in the world on Mountain Wilderness in the world