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The Blue Green Alliance between labour unions and environmental organisations wants to create jobs in the United States' environmental sector and has become part of the Washington scene.

While the US government is being internationally lambasted for its lame climate policies, researchers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists go beyond politics to find, on their own account, openings for green energies.

We have almost used up our emissions budget. Should we continue to emit at the current rate, our budget will be used up within ten years. Thus, we have to ask ourselves: Is continuous growth the right approach? Can we afford more economic growth? Is our present economic system able to increase and sustain wealth on a worldwide scale? The Böll.Thema essay by Claudia Kemfert tries to give answers to these questions. 

In 2050, three billion more people will inhabit the earth, while at the same time a large section of humanity will need greater access to energy in order to escape poverty. Eventually, we will have to become “CO2 negative” by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and channelling it back underground.

The coalition treaty between Christian Democrats and Liberals provides that subsidies for the extraction of coal will continue until 2018. Additional subsidies for new coal-fired power plants will come from the implementation of EU rules on CCS and from income generated by emissions trading. Thus, the current German government is promoting an increase in coal-fired power plants, a policy that undermines climate protection. The idea seems to be to greenwash coal by means of CCS.

Opinions about the future of the Desertec project on the African continent.

With giant strides humanity is approaching a population level of ten billion. Fossil fuels have been almost fully exploited. According to Gerhard Knies, initiator and chairman of the supervisory board of Desertec, Desertec’s approach seems to be the best solution to face these problems.

Concepts of decentralised energy production such as Lichtblick and the centralised approach of the Desertec consortium to produce solar energy in the desert do not have to clash.

Anthony Giddens, author of The Third Way, in conversation with Ralf Fücks about the politics of climate change, the reshaping of our civilisation, the relationship between utopianism and realism, climate policy beyond left and right, and the role of the state.

Although various studies have focused on climate change impacts and adaptation opportunities in Africa, few have focused on the household level and in particular on gender differentiated impacts of climate change. This study, commissioned by Heinrich Böll Stiftung, provides an analysis and summary of the findings of eight case studies carried out in four southern African countries. Furthermore, the study aims to identify various policies, programmes and activities that could address these issues.

In February, one day before the end of the Afghan parliament’s winter break President Karzai passed a presidential decree that limited the role of the international community in the upcoming elections to being a sponsor and also brought a number of other changes to the electoral process. Now the representatives of the people defied his blunt attempt to change the rules of political participation without any consultation.

Diversity, Unity, and Fragmentation are three terms that have been dominating the Palestinian political discourse since the emergence of the Palestinian National Movement in the twentieth century. The internal Palestinian division since June 2007 has given more intensity to the discussion about Diversity, Unity, and Fragmentation.

While the international community has over the last decade converged around a two-state vision, it has neither worked convincingly to implement this vision nor to prevent or stop processes that have the potential of making a two-state settlement impossible.

There is and there cannot be any democracy or the development of a democratic system under occupation. It follows, therefore, that in our discussion today we can only pose the question about the amount of freedom needed to end occupation and build a free society and, perhaps eventually, achieve the “dream” of a democratic state in Palestine.

The conference "European Energy Policy - Energy Security, Climate Protection, Innovation" in March 2010 was a place for experts from politics, science, and society. It offered an exceptional forum on the best and fastest way to achieve a sustainable energy future for Europe.

Are you interested in blogging from a high-profile international conference “The Great Transformation – Greening the Economy”, from 28-29 May 2010 on climate change and the economy, and take a look behind the scenes? For this event we are offering three blogger scholarships!

Die Büros Brüssel, Washington und Prag bilden zusammen The Climate Network.The Climate Network- Transatlantic Solutions for a Low Carbon Economy is the new program of HBS' offices in Brussels, Prague and Washington, DC.

Prof. Lawrence Lessig spoke at the Heinrich Böll Foundation's "Spielstand Spezial" event on Copyright Wars. Enjoyment and Discomfort in a Digital Culture.

What is and where is Palestine? One of the questions of the complex and compacted issues that are sometimes pushed to the margins in any discussion of Palestinian democracy.

Nicolas Pelham concludes, that an end to western, Palestinian and Israeli isolation of Gaza and an improvement in Gaza’s lot generally, is likely to empower groups with external connections, and impede rather than accelerate Gaza’s Islamisation. By contrast, the alternative - of maintaining the closure - is likely to hasten the application of Sharia norms.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict was born at the end of last century as a result of "incompatible national aspirations" between the indigenous population of Palestine (the Palestinians) and the Zionist movement over the land of Palestine.

The struggle for Palestine first emerged as a significant issue in the neighboring Arab countries and the wider Arab world in the second half of the 1930s, largely as a consequence of the 1936-1939 Palestinian Arab revolt against the Zionist project and British colonial rule which protected and fostered it.

Refugees under occupation - nowhere else in the world are these three words combined to describe the living reality of nearly two million people. But for Palestine refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory, these words have for more than 40 years captured the essence of a doubly deprived existence caught in a political im-passe, denied basic human rights, and largely removed from the international agenda.

We have passed the 60-year mark since the Palestinian nakba, yet the question of Palestine refugees remains unsolved. More than 4.7 million registered refugees continue to live in conditions collectively characterised by uncertainty, injustice and insecurity.

From a sheer climate protection perspective, various experts claim that the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference has been a failure. Two months after the Copenhagen climate summit, this paper sheds some light on the different regional and national evaluations of the conference and analyzes how perceptions on the outcome of the conference vary between key countries and regions.

Since it is time to reconsider and redefine the regulation and flow of international agricultural trade against the backdrop of severe global crises (such as the climate, food and economic crises) the conference seeks to bring together expertise to address these issues.