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Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects. The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by internation competition and recalcitrance.

The Danish Electricity Saving Trust’s 2008 Purchasing Guidelines are now available in English.

The method is to specify user requirements before electrically powered products appear in the shopping baskets of the municipalities.

he Trust recommends that all public sector institutions and private companies follow the Guidelines when purchasing products. Public sector institutions will thus automatically fulfil the requirements laid down in the voluntary agreement and the government’s circular. Purchasers will also be saving their organisations very large sums of money,

There is no reason to wait until 2016 for the EuP eco-design requirements to phase out the modestly efficient C class halogen “look-alikes” that are expected to replace today’s clear incandescent lamps. These should be replaced by more efficient B Class lamps sooner than 2016, the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy claims, based on a new report commissioned by the organisation.