Living Life and LOAFing It – Green Christians ask churches to “Use your LOAF !” on sourcing sustainable food

In the run up to Easter, Christian Ecology Link is asking supporters to think and act on how they source food for their church communities, with the aim of reducing the impact of unsustainable agriculture on their local area, and the wider world.

The key LOAF principles are that food should where possible be sourced Locally, grown and reared Organically, be Animal-friendly and Fairly traded.

There is an action letter that can be downloaded from the website, urging church leaders to adopt the LOAF principles at community facilities.

CEL’s Web Editor Judith Allinson said, “We hope that our members and friends will take the opportunity to join in sending a letter to their church leaders asking that their community LOAF during Lent, and then carry on LOAFing throughout the following year.”

Green Christians are being encouraged to order free copies of the new LOAF leaflet to distribute during Fair Trade Fortnight, which runs from 27th February to 11th March 2012, by sending an e-mail to : jill-publications@christian-ecology.org.uk

The new all-colour leaflet can also be downloaded from : http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/use-your-loaf.pdf or http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/loafUseYourLoaf.pdf

CEL members and friends are being asked to submit LOAF-themed recipes which will be uploaded to the new website : http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/archives/category/food/recipes

CEL’s Secretary, Barbara Echlin said, “Start the LOAF ball rolling in your own church by serving pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and make them with local free range eggs, organic milk and Fair Trade sugar. Ample food for all !”

Guidance for LOAF campaigners includes the suggestion to send the campaign letter to local church leaders and regional church administrators; and asking cathedrals, conference centres, educational venues and large churches with a refectory or cafe to take part.

CEL’s Information and Analysis Officer, Jo Abbess said “Good food is holy food – and good food comes from well-treated plants, animals and workers too. It’s not enough to choose organic over intensively-farmed – we need to choose co-operative food growers over convenience store profits.”

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. The LOAF principles were developed several years ago by Christian Ecology Link, and the new all-colour leaflet has been produced to accompany the launch of a letter-writing campaign – asking leaders and managers of all Christian venues to “Use their LOAF !”

2. LOAF stands for : Locally produced, Organically grown, Animal friendly, Fairly traded.

3. The full text of the LOAF letter is below. Members and supporters are asked to modify it as they wish, or print it as it is from the website.

Dear

As a supporter of Christian Ecology Link (CEL), I feel that many present aspects of food production imperil the wellbeing of Creation. This is why I am writing to tell you about CEL’s food campaign – LOAF – and to ask you to consider following these guidelines.

CEL is asking churches, cathedrals, districts, diocese offices, and Christian holiday, retreat and conference centres, schools and colleges to try to source food which is :-

* Locally produced

Supporting local and national farmers and producers strengthens local economies and communities, and lowers carbon emissions. We need to combat the nonsensical policy of importing food which could be, and indeed is, grown and produced here only for export.

* Organically grown

Subsidised industrialisation of agriculture leads to severe biodiversity losses, to soil depletion, water pollution and agrochemical resistance. Organic farming is key to the recovery of interdependent ecosystems. Supporting organic production is also central to the struggle against GM biotechnology, which poses threats to other crops (via cross-pollination) and biodiversity.

* Animal friendly

UK animal welfare standards are higher than many countries. But shops still sell produce from hens caged, beak-trimmed and bred for unnaturally fast growth rates; pigs confined to barren sheds, teeth clipped and tails docked, many pregnant sows in farrowing crates; turkeys in dark, dirty sheds where they develop lameness and burns. The wellbeing of animals is entrusted to us. Will you consider sourcing only free-range eggs and free-range, organic or outdoor reared meat ? Also, a shift to a much higher proportion of vegetarian/vegan cooking is also vital as meat and dairy production requires far more land and water and is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.

* Fairly traded

In a world where trade justice seems to recede and trade policies assist large producers rather than small producers, a commitment to serve only Fairtrade tea and coffee, for example, would signal support for the one certification guaranteeing minimum remuneration and community investment.

I feel that we are called to renew, heal and restore God’s creation: an immense commission only to be realised by infinitesimal everyday acts – in His grace.

Please find enclosed CEL’s new LOAF leaflet. More may be downloaded free from : http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/resources/loaf

I look forward to your response.

Yours

Carbon Detox 2012 : Shed Unwanted Pounds With Our Unique Formulation

George Marshall, well-known sustainable living guru, will be asking us to challenge ourselves, our routines and bad habits, and make a 2012 all-year resolution to shed the excess carbon from our lives.

On 21st January 2012 at a convenient central London location, he will ask us to take action to get control of our personal energy, and add vitality to our lives with new aims and goals.

Speaking from the experience gained from his decades of research and practice in the field, and giving tips and tricks from his bestseller “Carbon Detox“, George will be guiding us expertly through the carbon counting maze.

One of our leaner life activities group said : “Cutting down has been hard work, but has become much more fun now I am involved in my local group. I am looking forward to meeting my buddies on Saturday.”

Tony Emerson, the coordinator for the ecocell 2 programme said : “In three years our household has managed to halve the amount of greenhouse gases we produce – by topping up loft insulation, converting to double glazing, installing a wood stove and learning how to best use it, new heavier curtains, wall insulation, changing to a green electricity supplier, continued monitoring of timings and temperature of the central heating – and of course taking part in the ecocell 2 programme. However we still have further to go and I am looking forward to hear what George Marshall has to say. One way we are encouraging people in ecocell 2 is to have a buddy system, whereby people pair up, or group up, by phone, so that people with similar houses can support each other.”

To register for this free, all day event, including a selection of facilitated workshops and to receive your take-home worksheet pack, please email Tony at ecocell@christian-ecology.org.uk

For photographs of the day’s events, and feedback from the workshops, please contact Jo on 0845 45 98 46 0

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

a. Climate change activist and author George Marshall will be addressing green Christians during an all-day conference on Saturday 21st January 2012 in Central London.

b. The Christian Ecology Link ecocell project team will facilitate workshops on “living the truly sustainable life” at the Magdalen Centre, St Mary’s Church, Eversholt Street near Euston train station between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm [1]

c. George Marshall, author of the easy-to-read book “Carbon Detox : Your step-by-step guide to getting real about climate change” will be offering his fact-packed and lighthearted insights into action on climate change, drawn from his experience of over a decade of community and policy work. [2]

d. The event will be suitable for anybody already taking part in the ecocell project, or anybody interested in starting. The workshops on the day will be pitched at several levels.

e. The ecocell-1 workshop group will look at the introductory programme to help your family or church group take their first steps to reducing their impact on the environment. [3]

f. The ecocell-2 workshop will look at the more in-depth project, to provide mutual support for those who want to reduce their carbon emissions to sustainable levels within five years. [4]

REFERENCES

[1] The Magdalen Centre, St Mary’s Church, Eversholt Street, London NW1 1BN is located about 7 minutes’ walk north of Euston train station.

[2] http://www.carbondetox.org/

[3] http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/ecocell
http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/ecocell/ecocell-1

[4] http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/ecocell
http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/ecocell/ecocell-2
http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/ecocell/ecocell2-materials

[5] http://www.greenchristian.org.uk/archives/1537
http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/ecocell-day-21-jan-2012.htm

CONTACT

For details of Christian Ecology Link, please phone Jo on 0845 45 98 46 0 or email info@christian-ecology.org.uk

I have been working with an ecocell small study and action group in North London – each member of whom has an interesting story to tell of their own eco-pilgrimage.

What I found was that in order to make progress I needed to measure more things and be more organised. I also needed to acquire more equipment.

The daily electricity and gas consumption I was personally responsible for at home dropped fairly significantly (approximate figures) :-

	Natural Gas use per day (Btu)	Electricity use per day (kWh)
January 2011	5.00	3.00
February 2011	4.21	2.94
March 2011	3.65	3.15
April 2011	1.93	3.11
May 2011	1.69	2.98
June 2011	1.60	2.95
July 2011	1.42	2.84
August 2011	1.26	2.82
September 2011	1.14	2.81
October 2011	1.04	2.76
November 2011	1.07	2.84
December 2011	1.18	2.83

Based on the average of the monthly daily averages, I should have consumed 766 Btu (8,094 kWh) of Natural Gas over the whole year, and 1,065 kWh of electricity for 2011. However, due to dropping demand, I actually used only 433 Btu (4,572 kWh) of Natural Gas and 1,034 kWh of electricity.

This compares to Ofgem’s analysis of medium household consumption figures of 16,500 kWh of Natural Gas and 3,300 kWh of electricity.

This puts my consumption at 28% of the medium in Natural Gas and 31% in electricity. It’s going to be hard to reduce both of these figures.

I came up with a number of personal solutions for reducing space heating in 2011, which enabled the use of Natural Gas to drop.

I had already come up with a number of changes in power consumption in 2010, which explains why the electricity use did not drop so fast or so far in 2011.

However, I’m still working on cutting my domestic power consumption.

One of those ways is trying to adopt a more vegetarian diet. You see, when you eat vegan or virtually vegan, you don’t need so much refrigeration. Frequently over the last year the only things in the fridge have been milk, spread, yoghurt and green vegetables (plus a couple of half-used jars of pesto or mayonnaise, the regulation bottle of lemon juice and a jar of Marmite). The freezer has been off for months.

So I thought to myself, after checking the power consumption of the fridge – does the house need a smaller fridge ? I mean, the large fridge is useful when there are guests or someone throws a party, but it’s not fully used all the time. I could keep the green vegetables in the coldest, unheated room of the house, and buy fresh more regularly. What if I get hold of a mini fridge to use on a day-to-day basis ? And so, into my life has come the Mobicool W35.

Technically, it’s not a refrigerator – it’s a “cooler box”. A thermolectric one. And despite the E energy rating on the packaging – at 290 kWh a year, it will have less than half the power consumption of the Big Fridge. Plus, since I don’t need to run it all the time, I can cut power use further by only having it on 18 hours a day (or less, as dictated by the weather), controlled by a timer.

The next adaptations to my energy use will entail significant expense. Here are some options :-

a. Upgrading the windows
b. Installing a biomass burner (and optionally a boiler)
c. Cladding the external walls

I will need to save up to replace the windows completely, so I am looking for intermediate solutions.

For the biomass option, I have found a tree surgeon in North East London with whom a win-win arrangement could be developed – with me offering to take unseasoned wood from the loads of sawn waste that otherwise would cost money to dispose of.

In the meantime, I need to address draughtproofing. The sudden cold spell has shown me that there are still opportunities in this regard.

I received a wonderful gift over Christmas – bamboo socks.

The gift of socks is a massive present cliche – often a “faux pas”.

Describing a gift of foot socks as a “faux pas” is highly amusing, because that expression is French for “false step(s)”.

It was extremely well thought out – inspiring, Zeitgeistian, educational, novel and fun – it even came in a bright orange pouch.

In Summer, by chance I was at an event where I heard the outlines and some conclusions of Lucy Siegle’s research into clothing fabrics.

Essentially, cotton is under threat worldwide – if you buy anything made from cotton, you should perhaps consider it an investment and hold onto it as long as you can. It could become quite irreplaceable.

There are solutions, even in a climate changed world – bamboo and hemp being two avenues for sourcing sustainable clothing fibres.

Fabric made from bamboo is soft and comforting, and in this particular case, quite, quite funky.

I have the obvious criticism of the use of retail – that we cannot expect to green up our lives purely through shopping – because consumerism is part of the climate change and energy crisis.

But I think that something functional like organic and recycled clothing can come into the category of truly green spending – after all, we do need to replace our clothes from time to time.

To cap it all, the socks had green stripes !

So top marks to my clever friend for cracking a superb seasonal joke and demonstrating the future of fabrics at the same time.

Raising a toast to a Sustainable 2012.

They think I’m an environmentalist, a bit radical, a bit confrontational.

So for a fun wintertime gift they bought me this lovely cloth tote(m) bag for grocery shopping.

I think I might have failed to communicate myself clearly enough.

Although I try to be frugal and efficient in my way of life, recycling is not my central agenda.

I studied physics, but I don’t have a laboratory. The things that I believe need to be developed are technologies in the field of clean, green energy. I am an engineer without a workshop – although my home is now a power station.

Recycling is important, but reducing the use of resource materials is far more important.

Recycling is important, but energy waste is far more important. Digging things out of the ground and burning them in order to keep civilisation moving is the ultimate misuse of natural resources.

Recycling is important, but so are international relations, especially around the sourcing of commodities such as fossil fuels, rare metals, timber and freshwater.

The world needs to work together – to make friends, not invent enemies – even more so when those so-called opponents sit on vital energy resources.

May you have a year that is greener and has more peace.

This state of affairs is disgraceful, and allows mendacious narratives to persist in the mainstream media.

The key problem is not the cost to energy bill payers from direct subsidies such as the solar photovoltaic feed in tariff. The contribution from this is minor. The largest effect on energy bills is likely to come from two sources – the Energy Company Obligation and the plans for Carbon Pricing and other measures in the Electricity Market Reform.

The Energy Company Obligation, or ECO, is essentially a bailout for the big energy supply companies. They are being told to make sure that their customers can buy not only energy, but energy conservation services. These companies will end up selling less energy overall, and may suffer profit penalties. They have demanded compensation for this loss of earnings. After all, they have shareholders, and pension funds who are shareholders, and nobody should be deprived of their dividends, should they ? So the energy companies will be permitted to charge their customers extra to fund the ECO

“The ECO is in effect a levy on everybody’s energy bills. There is an amount collected by energy suppliers and then used to fund energy efficiency programmes. Current programmes such as Warm Front are being wound down and will be replaced by Green Deal Finance and the new ECO. The Government’s intention is that ECO should be used to supplement Green Deal Finance to pay for energy efficiency improvements in hard to treat properties (e.g. where there is no cavity wall insulation) and/or for those in fuel poverty.”

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/consultation/green-deal/3607-green-deal-energy-company-ob-cons.pdf
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/what%20we%20do/supporting%20consumers/green_deal/1732-extra-help-where-it-is-needed-a-new-energy-compan.pdf
http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/files/2010/12/Green-Deal-ECO-v1.pdf
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2127605/treasury-confirms-gbp200m-introductory-green-deal-offer

The second major factor in rising energy bills in future will come from carbon pricing and other energy market manipulation. There have been a number of measures considered in the Electricity Market Reform, but the key contenders include a “carbon floor price” (making sure that carbon charges have a minimum price below which they cannot fall), “contracts for difference” (where electricity sale contracts would be written to guarantee supply companies a fixed profit) and “capacity payments” (where power stations will be paid to remain on standby as backup to low carbon alternatives). A carbon price would benefit nuclear power generators, as nuclear power is considered low carbon. It won’t create an incentive to build new nuclear power stations, however, whereas the promise of guaranteed profits from the “contracts for difference” arrangement could persuade EdF and other nuclear power construction companies to invest.

The Electricity Market Reform and the Energy Company Obligation, considered in addition to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, could cost each household energy bill payer something of the order of £170.00 per year :-

This is far, far larger than the feed-in tariff budget.

Personally, I think carbon pricing is a dangerous waste of time, and will not and cannot displace carbon dioxide emissions. There are always carbon-intensive industries and companies who will make the case for special treatment and avoid paying. And the end consumers will always shoulder the added cost burden. After all, we can’t have the profits and share price of our major energy companies dented, can we ?

Much education needs to take place – the debating chamber of the British Parliament is only one place. We also need to get proper energy reporting from the mainstream media. It’s wrong to continue to blame solar panels and wind farms for future energy bill price rises.

I have received a number of e-mails from people highly concerned about the sudden change of the tariff, scheduled for a cut-off date of 12th December 2011, about which the Minister was very firm. I’m only going to include a representative couple here, and I hope others publish more. Greg Barker seems to think that by cutting the feed in tariff, that magically the cost of solar power systems will reduce as he assumes that solar companies are greedy and charging according to the size of the tariff. But as with most industries, the cost of labour is the largest element of any solar power installation and the management of solar power businesses. The net result of chopping the feed in tariff in two so suddenly is simply going to result in redundancies, as will become obvious in the next couple of weeks.

31st October 2011
“A further perspective on FITs”

Dear Friends, Suppliers and (former) Competitors,

I am XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, the Founder and CEO of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, a company set up 18 months ago to focus on developing solar projects in the UK. I wanted to share some personal thoughts and my preliminary reflections on the latest government announcement on solar PV. These are my thoughts and do not necessarily reflect the views of XXXXXXXX’s investors.

We have all have gone through our financial models by now and have realised that the proposed cuts and restrictions will probably wipe out the bulk of the UK solar industry by the 12th December. Clearly the Coalition Government has not thought through the full implications of their proposed cuts:

Impact on jobs. There are an estimated 25,000 jobs in the solar PV industry. The proposed cuts make most solar PV in the UK completely uneconomic. As a result, most of those 25,000 jobs will be gone. Most, people in the sector will be told that they will be made redundant this week or next, if they have not already been told. I have already warned all of my employees that they should be preparing for the worst. Impact on government finances. This is one of the more ironic situations. 25,000 extra people could be on the dole next month, resulting in a jump in the amount of money that taxpayers will have to fork out. To keep the maths simple: lets assume £300 per person per month = £7.5 m per month for six months = £45m for unemployment insurance. In the meantime, if you assume that 25,000 all earn £35,000 per year that equates to about £15,000 of NIS and tax revenue to the government: £375 million per year of tax revenue that will now lost. This excludes VAT payments on equipment and corporate tax revenues to the government. This also excludes all multiplier effects of other jobs being created as a result of those people having jobs.

Impact of investor confidence in the UK. One of my investors was a European solar company operating in the Mediterranean area. One of their reasons for investing in XXXXXXXXXXXX was that they felt that the UK was a safe country to invest in. A place where you could have confidence in the government’s pronouncements, unlike Spain and Italy, where they had seen issues. The latest Coalition Government proposal changes all of the rules and not just the goalposts, but the actual location of the lines and the pitch itself. Investors take country risk seriously when looking at a place to invest. High risk countries require higher IRRs than low risk countries to offset that risk. The UK has now become a high risk country for renewables, which will make the deployment of renewables here more expensive than previously. Impact of technology investment. If you are an investor looking at new renewable technologies one of the primary questions is “what is your route to market?” If you are a solar PV technology company, the UK has suddenly become a far less appealing place to be located. Once your technology is ready, what assurance do you have that the rules will remain in place when you are ready to deploy. You don’t. Impact on balance of trade and national security.

North Sea oil and gas is in decline. We are importing increasing amounts from abroad, frequently from countries that are hostile to the UK and its values. This is bad for our balance of trade. It is bad for national security. The wars that we have waged in Iran, Afghanistan and Libya would not have been fought had we not needed those energy supplies from abroad. It is reasonable to say that the entire cost of those wars, in lives and treasure, would not have been spent had we not been reliant on foreign oil and gas. Hundreds of billions of pounds wasted, that had they been invested in solar, wind, wave and biomass energy in the UK would have been able to provide the entire UK with indigenous, safe, clean energy for decades to come.

Impact on entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur is hard. It is hard on your family. It is stressful and it is risky. Many of you on this email list are entrepreneurs, like me. We thrive on new challenges and are creative when backed into a corner. But we are not cats. We do not have nine lives. Your wallets and families can only manage a few hits before there comes a point at which they cry out “Enough is enough! Go get a real job!” And just like that, the businesses and thousands of jobs that could have been created by those entrepreneurs don’t happen.

Impact on their re election prospects. Need I say more? MPs are a renewable resource too.

So how do we bring the Coalition Government to its senses? They claim that this is a “consultation document” but that seems an aspirational statement. They do not appear to be a government wants to listen. They are frightened that a change will be seen as a U-Turn. Frightened that that would make them look foolish.

It should not. If they genuinely listen and see the devastating impact of their proposal they should pull back. We should applaud them for that. We need to be loud and visible and support all of the grass roots campaigns that have been kicked off over the past 48 hours. Sign the petitions, join the marches.

With enough noise and frantic waving even the deaf and blind may hear and see us, those who are drowning.

Good luck to you all.

Re: Solar PV FIT review
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:40:17 +0100

I am at the UK solar power event – perhaps now the last hurrah for an industry currently employing 30,000 people in the UK. The view is that the government no longer wants a pv industry having been captured by big energy. So 50% cuts to all fits from Dec 8th. No time to plan, no time to construct projects already ordered, no time even to make planned redundancies.

Many people walking around here seeing all their lifetime personal investments going up in smoke. Instead of paying for renewable energy the country will now be paying a much higher level of unemployment benefits.

Detecting that I was speaking with a native French-speaker, I slipped into my rather unpracticed second language to explain that I could not countenance working with the militaries, because I disagree with their strategy of repeated aggression.

Whoops, there goes another great opportunity to make a huge pile of cash, contracting for warmongers ! Sometimes you just have to kiss a career goodbye. IT consultancy has many ethical pitfalls. Time to reinvent myself.

I’ve been “back to school” for the second university degree, and now I’m supposed to submit myself to the “third degree” – go out and get me a job. The paucity of available positions due to the poor economic climate notwithstanding, the possibility of ending up in an unsuitable role fills me with dread. One of these days I might try to write about my experiences of having to endure several kinds of abuse whilst engaged in paid employment : suffice it to say, workplace inhumanity can be unbearable, some people don’t know what ethical behaviour means, and Human Resources departments always take sides, especially with vindictive, manipulative, micro-managers. I know what it’s like to be powerless.

I’m an open, honest, well-meaning person, and I’m quite sociable, unless I’m trying to focus on something complicated, when I need to be left alone. I like informality and equality, enjoy being able to offer pragmatic solutions, good advice and insight; am capable of managing difficult situations and negotiating progress in a spirit of co-operation. I can work under some stress, as long as it isn’t every day, or in a hostile environment; and I can do good research and detailed work, for example in computer systems programming. I can work with a wide variety of people, as long as they’re minded to be constructive. I like to train people to do the best they can, and do better than before, and I like to build teams that are mutually supportive. Simple is good. Direct is best. I try to create efficiency, I can facilitate business process, manage change and I’m always trying to work myself out of a job.

Unfortunately, there are some people out there who do not understand me, who somehow see me as a threat, and who actively campaign against my aims and methods, sometimes by attempting to isolate me. It slowly dawns on me – a look here, a word there, a conversation I’m not party to. I get the sensation of alienation. I can look in a person’s face and see the antipathy. I don’t know why, but I know what. People can be cruel and ruthless. You cannot expect easy co-operation, especially in a hierarchy, where my competencies always seem to challenge the power base. I really don’t want to put myself through that again. I shouldn’t have to undergo torture in order to earn a living. Rejection, I can handle – what I fear is dejection.

“What you need to do”, says my relative, “is take a job for another ten years or so. A good solid career. You should take a role in the field you have studied.” I reply with, “The trouble is, I now know enough about a great number of organisations I couldn’t possibly bring myself to work for.” My assessment, of course, puts me in the category of judgmental, and makes me fairly unemployable. I’m pretty certain that even those organisations who have a similar approach to mine wouldn’t want to work with me.

Another relative suggests I need to do something practical, says that I can’t spend all my life thinking. There’s only so many roles for thinkers. There’s only so much space for intellectual inquiry. Yes, that’s true. We’ve had enough thinking. The economists told us to price carbon. Everybody else is resisting a price on carbon. High carbon emitters continually lobby against being penalised. It will never work. The economists told us to trade carbon. That has been spectacularly unsuccessful in a number of ways, including the failure to create verifiable, sustainable carbon credits; and the fraud and theft of carbon credits.

The economists told us to price pollution, to make the polluters pay. And the polluters end up passing the costs along the value chain to the end consumers. They don’t stop polluting, they just make their consumers forfeit.

The technologists from the oil and gas industry told us to do things like Carbon Capture and Storage, and other geoengineering. Watch how the number of carbon capture projects grows ! The pace is slower than a drugged snail’s. Why ? Entropy, man. It’s always going to be cheaper to prevent carbon emissions in the first place than re-capture the carbon from the air. And the price of re-capture can be expected to be stellar – it’s all in the chemistry. The only thing that got captured was your intelligence. You were captured by the idea and it failed you.

The policymakers keep blaming the consumer, and telling us all we will enjoy lowering our energy use. The citizens are fighting back, by paying no attention at all to the messaging of restraint; and campaigning against high energy prices.

Nope, I can’t make a career working for an environmental organisation, as life would be defined completely by negatives : antagonism is not an attitude I can keep up. Environmentalists keep making unreasonable, unfeasible demands. They demand change, but don’t offer a pathway to a positive future. It seems that, for the most part, environmentalists can achieve nothing of note. I’m inclined to think that those who control the purse strings control the changes that have to be made – the insurers, the investors, the highly capitalised companies.

But I don’t want to work for a multinational, transnational corporation. Their prime directive is to make a profit to satisfy the demands of their shareholders. They don’t care about carbon unless it is to take care of their bottom line. I could never work for a fossil fuel oil and gas company, even if they have an “alternative energy” section, because they are outright compromised, and are carrying huge carbon liabilities. I’m not sure if there are any ethical finance or banking outfits that I could fit into. I don’t know if there are any renewable energy technology corporations that would be prepared to hire me.

I am an awkward one. Don’t hire me. You’ll only want to fire me. Don’t give me any money to perform a function – there’s nothing I can achieve if people aren’t prepared to work with me. Am I playing hard to get ? Giving the wrong impression ? Once again, I have to strike out on my own. I rather get the idea I will need to create my own job. What is worthwhile doing ?

I’ve been studying the management of climate change, a sort of hybrid discipline between business management studies and climate change policy – taking in climate change science and developments in energy. We’ve learned about carbon management, carbon pricing in all its forms, and the rocky seas of energy policy. We’ve heard that technology and innovation can solve the problem. We’ve heard that renewable energy can save the day. We’ve been exposed to the diversity of proposals for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the institutions, organisations and government departments that are tasked with handling climate change.

There are things that need to be done : the full weight of the world’s production capability and purchasing power needs to be directed towards sustainable and renewable energy, energy conservation, universal building insulation, joined up systems of low carbon transportation, low carbon agriculture, low carbon economic development… All new investment should be directed towards creating low carbon energy assets, energy efficiency and energy conservation.

There are ways to make things happen. You do something yourself. You ask somebody else to do it. You pay somebody to perform a function. You create obligations, and a system of accountability. If you’re the Governor of Texas and you’re desperate for rainfall to break the long, hot drought, you beseech the heavens for divine intervention. You wait for the passage of time and the unfolding of events to whisper the suggestion of change…

And then there’s the power of influence. It’s a constant surprise – the genuinely influential don’t realise how hard it is for others to emulate their role. There are in fact very few people who can influence for the better.

I don’t want to have influence. I don’t want to be famous for bending minds. I don’t want to be admired for being seductively convincing. What I offer is the truth as I see it – flat and un-adorned. However, honesty is not lucrative; and pragmatism doesn’t sell. People don’t seem to like straight talking or plain speaking.

I don’t have influence, but I don’t want influence. I don’t want to be someone that other people revere and follow. I don’t want to be a leader. I just want to put the facts and figures and methods out there for others to recognise – to witness to inevitable changes, and our changing responsibilities and accountabilities.

I don’t have power. I don’t want power. I am without artifice. I don’t want to be a sales person or be forced to fabricate with public relations. I’m not trying to prove anything – I’m just trying to show it.

People say I should take employment in order to pursue my goals and aims. I don’t know if there is any form of employment, currently, that would allow me to pursue my goals and aims. I cannot think of any role that anyone would want filled that would grant me the kind of authority I would need to pursue my goals and aims. And anyway, I don’t want to offer a service of labour to a paternalistic organisation in exchange for some kind of accredited authority; permission to get done what needs to be done.

I cannot do anything about the appallingly bad media coverage of climate change science, the crisis in energy and policy. There are not enough hours in the day to effectively counter their poorly-constructed and often unfactual narratives. I don’t have the energy to go against all this stupidity and propaganda. The channels of mass communication lack the necessary staff with the skillsets to relate the full scale of climate change to their communities of audiences. I disagree with almost all economists and many of the industrial corporations about how to handle climate change. I cannot completely align myself with any single political party or grouping – the Members of Parliament and many civil servants struggle with science and technology. They are mostly non-scientists, non-engineers.

I often find myself considering a company or an organisation and thinking, “I can’t work for these people. They’ll have me doing something useless”, or “I can’t work with these people. Their pitch is all blather. Their intellectual framework is tilted, on weak foundations, and liable to fracture.” I cannot live a lie. I cannot live with a lie.

I have adopted a position of powerlessness, but it is problematic. My communication skills are constrained by my repudiation of power.

I cannot produce anything much by communicating, as I don’t want you to believe without evidence and knowledge, and I don’t need you to agree with me just because I say something. You will probably dismiss my thoughts on the basis of my position, and I can’t make the message stick; but then, in a democracy of thought, I shouldn’t force you to accept anything I say.

I don’t want to convert you, recruit you, make you change your mind. But somebody has to say these things – give us all the opportunity to reflect and maybe come to our senses.

What should be said. What has to happen.

All I can do is keep saying what needs to be said and keep saying what has to happen, what will happen; whilst critiquing all the confusion, distortion and disinformation. That’s all I can do. I’m not very successful at communicating these things, but it’s still all I can do. All I can do is not enough. But it’s all I can do.

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Disappointingly, this has come from John Craven, whose accuracy is renowned.

However, on this occasion, he has allowed a blooper meme to consolidate in the public mind.

[ Countryfile, BBC One, 16 October 2011, 18:25. Part way through recording, starting at approximately 20 minutes 32 seconds. ]

[ Ellie Harrison ] Earlier in the programme we were looking at the expected huge rise in wind power across the UK. But in the race to create more of our energy this way, who will win and who is set to lose out ? Here’s John again.

[ John Craven ] Earlier, I discovered how the plan to put wind power at the heart of our future energy supply is creating a building boom in wind farms, both on land and out at sea. With billions being poured into wind power, and with it being at the centre of the Government’s strategy on renewables, the future seems certain. So who will the losers and winners be in this wind revolution ? The most obvious winner is the environment as less fossil fuels are burnt. But who else benefits ? Well, another clear winner is big business. Companies building the wind farms get a generous price for the electricity they produce. [...]

[ John Craven ] Electricity is bought from producers at an average price of 5 pence per kilowatt hour. But wind farms get bonuses. For offshore wind that’s around 9 pence extra per kilowatt hour, guaranteed for 20 years. And when you’re talking about nearly 3 million of these units every day, that figure soon adds up. [...]

[ John Craven ] Even if a lot of the big business profit goes abroad, at least some much-needed jobs will be created here in the UK. But while a handful people might benefit from new employment, critics say it’s the majority of us, already feeling the pinch, who’ll pay a high price for embracing wind. So what’s your prediction then about how much fuel bills are going to rise for everyone because of green power ?

[ Tony Lodge ] Well, fuel bills up until 2030 could well double. The Government acknowledges there will be an increase. It claims there will then be a decrease, but for every 1% increase in fuel bills, 44,000 households slide into fuel poverty, which is a social crisis.

[ John Craven ] Supporters of wind farms say that although we do pay a green premium in our electricity bills, those figures are vastly exaggerated. Just how much we’ll really end up paying seems uncertain. [...]

[ End ]

The reason why this is so disheartening is that it avoids mentioning the wide variety of forces affecting power prices, and instead, appears to lay all the blame at the door of the UK’s sustainable energy policy.

Why are household energy bills so high ?

Well, for one thing, the price of Natural Gas has not been stable – and much of our electricity is generated by burning Natural Gas for heat to turn turbines :-

And then, the Great British oil and gas industry is in decline as the North Sea reserves suffer irreversible depletion of their fields, and the country as a whole has become a net Natural Gas importer, which will obviously have something to do with prices for both heating and electricity at home :-

The Government appears to blame the consumers for not shopping around in a “competitive” marketplace, but evidence of “cartel” activity from the energy suppliers in hiking up the prices means that people cannot win this game :-

Here’s a recent Parliamentary briefing :-

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN03995

Anybody commenting on energy prices on British television and radio should pay attention to the diverse sources of pressure on household bills. To blame green policies for energy price rises is essentially a deceit, and stokes the fire under the “small state” arguments for removing Government incentives for green energy investment.

In terms of public debate, only the Carbon Brief appear to be on the platform contradicting this irrational line of reasoning. They want the Daily Mail to review their stance, and they’ve got evidence from the energy regulator, Ofgem, to back them up :-

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/10/green-policies-not-to-blame-for-rising-energy-bills,-says-ofgem