Issue 1 - Online VersionAugust 14th, 2011

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011 -

Editorial

2 Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011

Lucky holder of this magazine,

Welcome to Friedrichshafen !

After a long journey you have finally arrived and are proudly holding the media team’s first issue.Now, you may ask yourself why there is a session’s paper at this event. It is true that we, EYPers, are not known for being environmental friendly. Think about the post-its, flipcharts, sheets and plastic cups. We are indeed producing a huge amount of waste at every session. This is probably why you are now asking yourself if having “Green Piece” in your hands is not controversial. Our answer is “NO”. EYP wouldn’t be EYP without a media team. A group of young and talented people came from all over Europe and set the pace. “Green Piece” will be following you until Friday and maybe even further. So will the journalists. Through this session, they will be the ones spying on you, laughing with you and writing about you.

I like considering EYP as an interrail, you have a set program and specific cities you want to visit. However, through out this inter-rail, you might meet certain people. People you would never have dreamt to meet. And those will take you to another destination than your initial plan. As soon as you are back at home you will start chatting with them, updating one another. Soon you will notice that those people are becoming vital to you and you can’t spend a week without talking to them. The legitimate run will be to set a date for another interrail, but this time you shall travel together.EYP is pretty much the same. At every ses-sion you meet people. You may not bound with everyone, but if you take a close enough look, you will find the gem. All this is happening at an extreme speed. EYP is young, EYP is fast, EYP is unique. Make sure to enjoy it and don’t be shy. Being awkward is a way of communication and you will soon see that communicating is the key.

Enough said Teambuilding is ahead. Have fun, make sure to smile, treat the organisers with respect and behave when your chairs are around.

Enjoy the moment.Alex Narayanin

- Editor -

CONTENT This Magazine was brought to you by

2. Editorial

3. Content

4. Grand Old Change

5. The Lakeside Paradise

6. Stop Lying !

8. Building a Global Brain

9. Who are you ?

10. Keyword Adaptation

11. About Music

12. The Climate Change Struggle

14. Old but still Young?

15. Because of the People

3Issue 1

Special thank to our guest authors Zahra and Niall.

4 Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 2011

The Grand Old Party. Deregulation, less govern-ment interference, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lin-coln and tax cuts. The US Republicans are known for many things and for the majority of those things it is the political party I love to hate. Maybe it’s because when it comes to economics I’m a Keynesian, or maybe it’s because when it comes to religion I’m uncommitted. Perhaps mostly it’s because when it comes to life I’m a liberal. So sue me.

The other day I was reading the LA Times and came across an editorial piece titled “GOP vs. Mother Nature”. The content of said piece was mainly that the Republican Party has proposed to deregulate environmental policy and they’re using the economy as an excuse for that. The GOP feels that legislation restricting off shore drilling for example is harmful for the economy. I’m not going to argue that it’s not harmful for the big multinatio-nal oil companies who funnily enough happen to donate huge amounts of money to the Republican Party but I doubt it’s what is causing the US eco-nomy to sink like the Titanic.

The thing with environmental policy is that it is ra-rely priority. It gets sacrificed and pushed to the back of our minds ever so often. Environmental policy becomes the side salad of your meal, it’s good for you, but you aren’t always in the mood for it. For some politicians it’s not a priority for the unfortunate reason that they don’t believe in its existence, for others because they think it’s more important to spend money on health care and education than on climate change. However, as

Al Gore pointed out, it isn’t about one or the other any more. It’s all or nothing. Either you make cli-mate change a priority and spend that money or then you don’t.

It’s not something you can spend your time on when you have a break from your normal life, or when you have some spare money in the budget that needs to be spent. The problem is not the governments’ environmental policies that increase the taxes on your personal carbon dioxide emis-sions from driving a car everywhere. The pro-blem is our society that is built on unsustainable grounds. We think our economy can just keep on growing and we can earn more money and spend more on products. The planet will be fine and we won’t have to pay higher costs for the un-ecologi-cal energy we use to heat up our houses.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. Making the change to a sustainable, environmentally frien-dly society isn’t something that’ll just happen in between going to work and the gym. We are all going to have to give up things that right now add to the short term comfort of our lives. It might even as the GOP has suggested temporarily harm our economy but in the long run it would build a much more sustainable economy and this is where the GOP and myself crucially disagree.

At the end of the day you can’t want change and at the same time expect that nothing in your life will change. I think it’s time to start giving from our own rather than from our extra.

Grand Old ChangeBy Saga Eriksson

First of all, let’s turn back in time for a moment: this city was born in the old 1811 and it was named for King Frederick I of Württemberg who appre-ciated the city as a free port and transshipment point for the Kingdom’s Swiss trade. During World War II, Friedrichshafen served the Nazis as a resort for workers, but in 1944 a bomb attack destroyed most of the old town center. Following the War, the city was part of the French-occupation zone, before its incorporation into the Western Germany.

Nowadays, due to its central situation on the nor-therly shores of Lake Constance, Friedrichshafen is an ideal starting point for all sorts of excursions and day trips, but the Lake Constance region is not only a scenic area, it’s also noted for its strong economy and innovative strength, and it is a lea-ding economic region in Europe.

The geographical position was highly advanta-geous for the development of the city, since it is allocated in the middle of the border triangle between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Lake Constance, “The Bodensee”, measuring 64 km in length and 12 km at it widest point, is the third largest lake in Central Europe.

If you are wondering where you’ll spend your com-mittee work time, let me give you some general information: Zeppelin University is one of the few waterfront universities in Germany and the only one with an entire campus on the beach. The uni-versity has the name of Graf Zeppelin, who was a manager of the 19th century and for this reason is a real role model for the university.

The Lakeside Paradise

5Issue 1

By Monica Mantovani

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A Populous poll of 1,000 people in the UK revealed that every fourth person did not believe that climate change was taking place. This is despite numerous, rather rigorous, studies from the foremost autho-rities on the issue which demons-trate that climate change is a fact that we must face. It is clear from numerous scientific studies that global temperatures are rising and are doing so at an ever increasing rate.

We, I have to refer to the other 75% who are here in Friedrichsha-fen to offer solutions to a problem

we know we must address, dis-miss the “sceptics”, the “deniers” as “loonies”, “crazies”, “cranks”. We consider them enemies of science, of progress. Their view flies in the face of reason and the conclusions of scientific research, a form of research that is, in many ways, the pinnacle of human rea-son.

However, I think we are wrong to do so.

A much more telling poll was re-cently conducted by the Gallup polling agency reveals that a stag-

gering 48% of Americans believe that claims regarding climate changed by the scientific commu-nity are “generally exaggerated”. They are not necessarily wrong.

Al Gore came to global promi-nence, or more precisely regained global prominence, in his efforts to spread the message of the ills of climate change chiefly through his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. This film helped shape a growing consensus behind the validity of the threat posed by global war-ming, bringing to light the evidence of countless scientists.

Stop Lying !By Eoin O’Driscoll

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

““

The real inconvenient truth that we need to realise is that this consen-sus is largely based on lies, falsifi-cations, exaggerations and pseu-do science.People don’t like being duped. They hate being lied to. Yet, in their arrogance, this is what the people that we label the “scientific” com-munity have been doing. We were lied to about the rate that tempe-ratures are rising through nume-rous IPCC reports. We were lied to about the number of freak wea-ther incidents afflicting us such as Webster et al. Science Magazine,

2005. We were shown graphs skewed to fit the propaganda exer-cise : Mr Gore’s infamous ”hockey stick” graph.

The public would be too stupid to react quick enough to the facts as they were, or so these “experts” said. They needed to be sold a fabrication to react with the neces-sary rapidity.And how we are all now paying for the arrogance of these indivi-duals. The old adage goes “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. Once lied to once by the “scientific” communi-

ty, the words of scientists are now taken with a pinch of salt. Now, when consensus is required more than ever to combat the real pro-blems of climate change, it is wea-kening. Skepticism is on the rise.

We need to have faith in humani-ty. The truth is shocking enough. No more lies. No more exaggera-tion, just the plain, honest-to-God, truth. That is the only way public trust can once again be forged into the consensus necessary to save the pale blue planet. Let’s just hope it happens before it is too late.

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Global ecology is now collapsing and will soon burst because of global warming. Humanity’s eco-nomic outputs has been over-valued relative to the ecologically mediated resources incautiously raised for their production. How can we explain, «Global warming»? With a few words we can say it is rising temperatures, which encourage the use of cold or snowy weather as disconfir-ming evidence. The words «cli-mate change» put the emphasis on the transformation of weather patterns. Additionally, we can say that the words «global war-ming» connote human causation and culpability somewhat more than «climate change».

Most governments in the world are making efforts to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, even though fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of en-ergy production and agriculture must produce more and more food. Governments are also looking for ways to remove the

excess carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere, but the amounts are so huge that this may not be practical.

But what can we do now? We as inhabitants, not as chiefs of nations. What do we have to do?It’s too easy to begin by just saying the future of our planet’s climate is unknown, because our impact on this phenomenon is quite big, even if many of the world’s leading experts do not support the hypothesis that we are causing, and so can stop, climate change. In the wake of «Climategate» and attacks on policy makers, the public is more confused than ever about what to think, parti-cularly when it comes to talk of uncertainty in climate science.The public needs to understand that scientific uncertainty is not the same thing as ignorance, but rather it is a discipline for quantifying what is unknown. At the same time climate scientists

need to do a better job of com-municating uncertainty to the public and responding to criti-cism from outsiders.

So, what will our children and grandchildren think when they look back at this period?It would be better to not let them know that people don’t think about the future, their future, our future that we have to build to-gether. In this world of so much hurt, pain and illness, it is outra-geous to cling to an industrial consumer way of living that des-troys ecology, people and all that is good and necessary to simply live. Because it’s not good that nobody seems to understand that we have cannot wait for others to heal ourselves or our relationship to Earth. We have to start now and work harder, doing what our conscience tells us is necessary, and taking full responsibility for doing so.

Building a Global BrainBy Monica Mantovani

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Climate Change is something that concerns all of us equally, but ne-vertheless splits our society like no other issue. When it’s about climate change there are several factions to be observed in our society.

First of all there are those people who are trying to warn everyone else of the big climate catastrophe and are often the ones being ac-cused of exaggerating to the ex-treme. But those are only a few as most of the people know hardly anything about climate change and therefore continue living their life as usual and doing nothing to solve the problems of global warming. Another big group is formed by those who think that all the infor-mation climate researchers publish in the media are all false and there-fore they just deny that they are the

ones causing global warming. Finally there is this tiny group of people which always remembers to turn the lights off, takes the bus to reach destination and general-ly tries to resign some of the little things in life to make their contribu-tion to saving the planet.

In Lake Constance you, delegates will not only be developing the best strategies to tackle climate change but also answer the ‘how’ to spread it to the word and reach people, be-cause saving the planet is not so-mething the heads of governments can do but something we all need to tackle together. That’s why it is our aim to encourage more people turning the lights off and taking the bus because little things can make the difference to prevent the planet from heating up any further.

Who are you ?By Timm Brünjes

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Regarding our modern so-ciety there are so many luxury articles we could easily dis-pose of, however, only very few people seem to be willing to lower their living standard to the benefit of nature and against climate change.If this mentality does not change drastically within this decade, the fight against cli-mate change seems like an already lost case. We already know what effects this chan-ging climate has and will further bring: Natural catastrophes, draughts and rising sea level; just to name a few.

Those phenomena will bring drastic changes to many people’s lives. Big cities in coast re-gions might have ma-jor problems due to the rising sea level; more natural catas-trophes would destroy land and homes. Consequently many people living in such areas will have to build up a new life or find a new home. Adapting to and coping with new living conditions will thus be a big issue in the future.

This sounds scary at first, but there are numerous examples of human beings who found their own personal niche and adapted perfectly to a rather unusual environment.A good example for one of those is a little tribe in the Paci-

fic Ocean. Their settlement is near the coast of Indonesia, however, not on an Island or at the shore but in the water itself. Their houses are built on stilts and are made out of wood and straw; to visit neigh-bors and friends they use little boats or simply swim. They live on what the ocean has to offer: fish, seafood and seaweed. Not very surprisingly, their fish hunters are exceptionally good swimmers, for example they can hold their breath for up to four minutes and hunt directly on the sea floor; 20 meters be-low the surface of the ocean.

Along with this rather exotic example there are people living in unison with Mother Nature right in the middle of Europe. In the Mountains of Switzerland, Germany and Austria there are various little huts in the most isolated places, inhabited often by cattle drovers. They have their own vegetable gardens, make their own bread and lead a life that we would probably call “simple”.

I believe for our future we will have to take those kind of people as an example who still know what our nature has to offer and how unnecessary luxury actually is for a fulfilled life.

Keyword AdaptationBy Nicole Goetz

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You have now been given a brief insight of what our famous musicians think about climate change. Whether it is written literally in the text or has to be read between the lines, they have ideas about how to tackle climate change. Miley Cyrus wants us to work together, Beyoncé stresses the importance of recycling and Jack Johnson calls for environmental friendly transportations to be used. Which song will you be singing?

About Music

Miley Cyrus - Wake up AmericaWake up America makes it clear that Miley is concerned about the well being of our planet. A big problem that Miley points out is the lack of attention mentioned to Planet Earth. Miley mentions that we need to take care of our planet. To act against climate change, Miley suggests that everyone needs to take actions since we are all to-gether in this fight and that we need to take care of our home. Several times she says “Wake up America, we’re all in this together and eve-rything you do matters in some way”. Every action matters and we need to work together in order to fight climate change.

Beyoncé Knowles - Best thing I never hadEven though this song lacks the exact phrasing about what needs to be done about climate change, we can easily see what she wants to address. “What goes around comes back around” is obviously a message about recycling. In the song, Beyoncé sings about a boy she used to love. She never expresses the reason why she stopped loving him so let us assume that it is because he stopped recycling. “There was a time when you did everything right” - recycling could possibly back this up.

Jack Johnson - Traffic in the skyThe song is a mishmash of Jack’s view on transport, on life and on his frustration. “Shadows of the planes on the pavement, it’s enough to make me cry”, expresses Jack’s opinion about transport. He is evidently against non-environmental friendly means of travelling.

Climate change is a fiercely discussed topic in the media, amongst decision makers and probably at your dinner table. Let’s find out what famous artists, people we look up to and see as idols, have to say about it. In the following, you will find analysis of three different and famous songs. Using the lyrics and the titles, we will find the climate change message and try to convey what the artists really think and want to do about climate change.

By Noura Berrouba

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Once upon a time there were two animals - Polar Bear and Penguin - two great minds with two dif-ferent beliefs. Polar Bear didn’t like the way animals treated the whole planet and blamed all of the other kinds of animal for destroying the planet. On the contrary, Penguin denied that animals might have such irreversible impact. Simply, they lived in a different pole and they were poles apart.

Nevertheless, they became friends and enjoyed debating the latest

issues and disagreeing with each other. Unfortunately, they were the only two involved and well infor-med. They only shared the out-comes of their meeting with their fellow penguins and polar bears, but failed to explain important facts to other animals. Especially hippos and elephants felt left out. They knew they were in no sense inferior creatures just because of their place of residence, but no one would listen to them.

Both of our protagonists had many

followers, but only from their own species. Sympathy of masses changed according to the current conditions. Generally, the animals - naturally lazy - welcomed the op-portunity to ignore or at least doubt weather changes. However, after certain petrol disasters and further scientific revelations, Polar Bear seemed to be convincing more animals. Even some penguins joi-ned his team of supporters.

Nevertheless, The way from an idea to realisation of it proved to

The Climate Change Struggle

By Veronika Drzková

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 201112

be extremely long. Animals were used to their comfortable lives and now they should restrict them-selves? “Well, rather not...” they said. Polar Bear had to work very hard to convince them to live more responsibly. Moreover, Penguin with his stubborn persuasion was fighting against him. Polar Bear felt exhausted and realised how little he had achieved so far. He fell into despair, grief and pity.

By disputing over climate issues, Polar Bear and Penguin comple-

tely forgot about the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Pig Napoleon came to power. Not literary as he was far over his reign and found out that “four legs good, two legs bad” is actually true. On the other hand, he found another way to lead a better life. He started a petrol business and he didn’t care about climate change at all. Acci-dents such as Exxon Valdez in 1989 or British Petroleum in 2010 could not make him lose his ba-lance. He was a billionaire.

He gained such power that both Polar Bear and Penguin had to serve him in the end. Also, in Newspeak 2.0, all the words grouping themselves around the concept of global warming sim-ply ceased to exist. Pig Napoleon was the real winner of the “climate change struggle”.

Moral: Know your real enemies.

13Issue 1

Green Piece - Official Magazine of Lake Constance 201114

It’s funny how EYP age is so ridiculously out of tune with real age. To be three years old in your EYP life is the equivalent of being about 40 years of age, while your session president, in spite of his apparent youth, is a comfortable old-age pensio-ner. It feels like only yesterday when I sat in GA at the Leinster Regional Conference 2008 as a dele-gate, and yet now when I’m introduced to new alumni in EYP Ireland, I’m officially referred to as “old”, or at least older than most of the others.

In light of this horrible monstrosity of a tradition, what would possibly possess a young, fit and healthy 19 year old to keep coming back to an or-ganisation which derides him for his non-existent arthritis?

I believe in EYP and the power that this project has to influence the lives of young people across our continent. At my first International EYP event, I remember having one of the most touching and moving conversations I’ve ever had with a dele-gate from Georgia who described to me the hor-rible circumstances in which his family found itself

after the Russian invasion in 2008. His father had died and his mother was now struggling in abject poverty to put her son through university in Tbilisi. And yet in spite of this, his response was that the only solution was not more violence, but dialogue, communication and co-operation; techniques which he had learned, honed and appreciated by his time with EYP. Similarly when at a session as journalist, I was writing an article on the Cypriot divide, and I remember speaking to a Greek who told me how she always disliked the Turks for what “they were doing to Cyprus”. After her ses-sion however, she told me she was really growing to like Turkey; “They just have so many hot guys, what’s not to like?”

That’s what it’s all about really. Europe has to be more than a common market and a common cur-rency; it’s also about common values, friendship and love in all its many manifestations ! I have no problem in saying that many of my best friends are EYPers and so when you look at it in this light, the question isn’t “Why do you keep coming back” but “Why wouldn’t you keep coming back”?

By Niall Murphy - TRAN Chair

Old but still Young?

15Issue 1

At my very first session a couple of years ago, I remember asking the chair of my committee why he kept doing EYP. He told me that there were a lot of reasons, but there was one that stood out: the people. The people you meet, and the ones you become friends with. By that time, I found that hard to believe. Why would you travel all over Europe just to see other people? I must say, back then I was very much into debating and politics. That was why I participated in EYP, together with the debating club of my school.

Years later, I can only say that I now understand what he meant, and moreover, that I agree. What

matters to me most is the people that are in EYP. They are like me, they are interested in many things, engaged, and they do not fail to make me smile each and every time I am at a session. You too, at this session or at another, will meet people that will become a part of your life and that you will make a part of your life. I hope you do, at least I have and I am very happy to have these people in my life.

That is, essentially, why I am here, too. I am loo-king forward to meeting you, talking to you and hopefully facilitating in what should be a great ses-sion in which you can make many new friends!

Because of the PeopleBy Zahra Runderkamp - ITRE Chair

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