Source [Polish]
"At the end of 1970s the beaches of Baltic "

http://www.environet.eu/pub/pubwis/rura/g.htm
"The total number of chemical weapons captured by Allied Forces was never revealed [...] The inventory for the Potsdam conference specifies ca. 70,000 tonnes of active substance in millions of ammunition units" the article says, that the western allies dumped their stocks of chemical weapons in concrete-filled ship hulls at the depth of 500m, near the coast of Norway. Soviets dumped the discarded ammunition without any protection preferrably near Bornholm or Gotland, or if the ship crew deemed necessary - at any place in Baltic.
Corroded ammunition has already poisoned Pucka Bay near Gdansk in 1970s (see the pictures). The fishing is not allowed there to this day.

As to your second argument, the disputes are normal and happen constantly. The last conflict undermining the reliability of Ukraine as transit country had a peculiar timing. That was my point.

Paraphrasing: why should we allow ourselvses to be taken hostage and used as bargaining chips in Third Reich and Great Britain fights?

Depends, how you define european interest. For me, this is foremost avoiding energy dependence on single supplying country, especially one known for using economical (Finland), energy (Ukraine) blackmail or straight military force against neighbouring states (Georgia) recently.

Environmental risk is doubtless greater for underwater pipe because of the difficulty of fixing leaks and chances of hitting sunken chemical weapon arsenals from WW2.
Interestingly, Ukraine was transferring gas without problems for decades. The problem with Russia happened of course only by coincidence just at the time Nordstream tried to secure financing from EU...

Oh, isn't that a coincidence that the former german cancellor, Gerhard Schroeder at his new job works with russian Gazprom to pull a very expensive and environmentally risky gaspipe under the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany?
The cost of such gaspipe will be a multiple of one running through Belorussia or Ukraine and Poland, but the geopolitical windfall for Putin is priceless. Shouldn't Volkswagen try to help?
The Tzar won't forget a favour. Legends of "Global warming" will be put aside for a moment I guess for this important undertalikg.

As child I used to bath in a river, which by now is so polluted my children cannot do the same.
Most waters of developed countries are polluted. Lakes and rivers die from eutrophisation, sea fish are so full of mercury, the FDA recommended pregnant women to avoid fish meals. The ecosystems are damaged, people poisoned. This at least can be easily verified, but still our governments have chosen to spend money on preventing the climate change, knowing that such changes had always occured in Earth's history, even the short human history. Organisms adapt to climate changes easily, they always did. To mercury and pesticides - perhaps not at all, so far surely not. You will wake up after 10 years more poor, poisoned and witnessing whatever climate change was to occur, because it will do so no matter how many beaurocrats you'll feed to fight it.

"As we all know (unless you've been asleep for years), CO2 is helping to warm our planet, sending us into destruction."

Well, I haven't been alseep and still question this audacious assumption.

For boosting the productivity.
Seriously, Lotus is the curse of many teams I work(ed) with and only a few had guts enough to force management into excluding them from the beast's reach.

Linux stays competing with whom? IBM? What would convince IBM and others to contribute to free software development now that Windows is gone?
In my opinion, Linux should not play the role of an "handy idiot" in hands of Big $ to kill M$, M$ is Linux's guarantee of being supported by Big $, at least to some degree.