From the 11th to the 15th of November, the city of Rome will host the 20th World Energy Congress, organized by the World Energy Council and dedicated to the planning of the future global energy market, still focused on fossil energy resources, on the renewed nuclear energy program and on maximizing economic profit while neglecting renewable energy resources, energy efficiency, peace, health, environment.

A triennial appointment hosted for the first time in Italy that returns to Europe after 15 years and sees the massive participation of all the energy multinationals and of the large state-run companies, of the governments and of economic-banking system.

Energy matters have never before as now appeared in all their graveness. The era of fossil fuels, that has determined the present structure of world economy and society, is displaying all of it’s limits and disasters: dwindling resources and wars for their supply, social injustice, pollution caused by the subsequent combustion processes and ever more evident dramatic climate changes, determine a situation that has become unsustainable.

Further aggravating the situation, due to scarcity of petroleum and gas, the use of coal is more frequently imposed, with it’s polluting and climate altering load. A coal anything but “clean”, since levels of pollutants (oxides and particulate matter) remain elevated; and the technologies, praised for the reduction of carbon dioxide, are still in an experimental phase, without having resolved elevated energy and economic costs as well as environmental and worker safety issues.

In Rome will be meeting those who have the responsibility of the present situation: representatives of governments and energy multinationals from 94 countries, among which, beginning with the USA, that have, with their policies, promoted the strategy of “permanent war” and the terrible wars which are shedding blood in the Middle East and the countries of Central Asia and Africa.

Today, the energy issue, with it’s tragic implications that oppress the world, can be confronted with intelligence and success. Even science, the kind which is not dependent from the powerful and financial speculators, is able to point the way to the conservation of energy and furnishing the necessary for the life of everyone.

The “power” built on petroleum, other fossil fuels and nuclear, has assured itself the control of the World with the justification of guaranteeing well-being and “democracy”. Never like before this appears to be false: the imbalance between populations; the terrible consequences on the climate damaging everyone; the upset of territories where the dominance is perpetuated with the imposition of mega structures, power plants and incinerators ever more invasive and falsely less polluting.

To all this is added the absurd proposal of who would like to construct new nuclear power plants, without realizing the disasters that they cause (recently even in Japan), all the worse if confronted with the scarce quantities of energy supplied on a global level, almost always acting as a “fig leaf” to cover military intentions that are concealed behind such proposals.

Among the same renewable energies, the contribution of bio fuels in certain cases interesting must be treated with great caution as to not bind agricultural products to fossil fuels for motor vehicle use, with dramatic consequences on food prices.

We propose a strong mobilization in the same days of the summit, a meeting of populations and new knowledge, to say what can really be done to save living beings from the catastrophe towards which “they” are taking us.

On this occasion again it’s correct to reason on the path for “Another Word Possible”, very dear to the movements that in the past years have mobilized against wars, global and local injustice, to support that what until now was used to destroy be used to create wealth.

This appeal is aimed to all those that feel the duty and the right to discuss and identify this path. The knowledge and practice of those that have suffered the consequences of the present energy model need to meet.

Our aim is also to all those political and social forces that don’t accept the present economic consumerism system and it’s false truths based on the dictatorship of GDP and the centrality of monetary policies.

The economic cost of the great infrastructures and great waste are to be cut, to be assigned to another model that has at it’s core the slogan: “Environment and the participation for Another Economy”, with great benefits for all the inhabitants of the world, for the world of labour and devastated territories.

Our objective wishes to be, as indicated in the World Contract for Energy, one that guarantees another world energy model that furnishes to everyone equally the necessary energy to lead a dignified life, beginning with reducing consumption in the north of the world, without destroying forests to produce fuel or deport populations to build large dams.

Reduction and savings, efficient systems, the means to obtain energy from non polluting renewable sources and available practically everywhere like the sun, the wind, the tides, etc. are the roads to follow. It’s a priority to divulge good practices that favour local use and biological, reuse and recycle, and a mobility which privileges mass and individual transportation with low or zero environmental impact.

The real obstacles to all this happening come exactly from those who will be meeting in Rome from the 11th to the 15th of November to decide the volumes of energy production in function of their profit and to renew the rite that confirms their power.

Let’s mobilize to affirm another model.



Rome, 31st of July 2007

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