Author: Jo

The European Union Question

Post author By Jo
Post date October 25, 2011
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David Cameron was on one screen, and CBeebies was on another. I was on the treadmill at the gym, interval training, pacing at the same rhythm as the blaring RnB, and reading the teletext translation of the Parliamentary debate.

I smiled at Ed Miliband’s nasally-charged bluster. I rolled my eyes at the interventions from the Conservative dinosaurs.

The Tories are the living example of the Bad Apple Theory, I thought to myself. One bad apple, or in their case, a clutch of Eurosceptics, spoils the crop.

The Conservative Party of the United Kingdom harbours a number of corporatists and the stooge friends of corporatists, and this is their basic argument – deregulate and private companies will be more productive and save the economy from implosion. It’s the same argument that nursed the financial services market that went ahead and created derivatives of risk, and produced toxic credit progeny in abundance and caused the collapse of the banks which caused the current economic doldrums. Great job !

We’ve got the Coalition Government’s Red Tape (Cutting Of) initiative in full-swing, as well as the Eurosceptics. Their argument is – the European Union is a hyperquagmire and over-regulates and stifles business and innovation, so the United Kingdom should secede. What they fail to acknowledge is that European Union legislation and regulation have created excellent conditions for trade, unifying the standards of production across the Common Market, and drawing on skillsets and technologies from across the region, has advanced productivity and standards of living for all.

Hydrocarbon Hegemony Renewable Gas Wind of Fortune

Renewable Gas : Backup Storage

Post author By Jo
Post date October 25, 2011
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To me, the future of renewable gas is clear – the methanation of a combination of carbon-rich and hydrogen-rich gas feedstocks.

Sticklers for detail will be asking “Why go to the bother of upgrading biomass-derived synthesis gas via methanation ? Why waste the energy ? Why not simply burn the BioSNG as it is ?”

My answer is, well, it’s like fast-forwarding hundreds of millions of years.

Instead of the fossil fuel process – where great extinctions of Life on Earth led to the deposition of biomass that got subducted under moving plates of the Earth’s crust and then cooked into useful hydrocarbons – making renewable gas does this in an instant.

It’s the addition of the extra hydrogen – split by electrolysis from water, then combined to the carbon-rich gas by methanation – that raises the energy content of the biologically-sourced gases.

The resulting methane-rich BioSynGas is a much more valuable fuel for electricity generation and, when cleaned of impurities, for use in vehicles and the gas grid network. It is easily stored, and readily available on demand.

It can be used to burn in power stations, to provide backup, as and when required, for variable and intermittent sources of renewable electricity generation, such as wind power.

Hydrocarbon Hegemony Renewable Gas Wind of Fortune

Renewable Gas : Hydrogen Economy

Post author By Jo
Post date October 25, 2011
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Image Credit : Audi e-gas Project

Hydrogen Fuel Cells have their fans and their research projects, and the “Hydrogen Economy” will no doubt have a share in the world’s energy pie, but methane is an altogether more interesting fuel.

Some will dispute this, but methane is easier to store and transport than hydrogen gas, and will play a very important role in balancing electricity supply in networks that have a high proportion of variable and intermittent renewable generation.

After energy conservation (through efficiency and waste reduction) and renewable electricity generation, the use of renewable gas with a high methane content can act as the stabilising third leg of a sustainable energy tripod – raising the upper limit of zero carbon energy possible.

Natural Gas is generally 80% to 85% methane, and many developed countries already have gas networks, gas appliances and power stations that can make use of renewable gas without modification. This is a pragmatic consideration that should not be ignored when choosing future fuels.

Nuclear Nuisance Nuclear Shambles Solar Sunrise Solution City Technofix Technological Fallacy Technological Sideshow

The Nuclear Trolls Are Out Tonight

Post author By Jo
Post date October 24, 2011
5 Comments on The Nuclear Trolls Are Out Tonight

This web log’s Google Analytics hit rate rocketed on Sunday evening.

What on Earth is going on, I thought ?

I normally only get massive web click counts when somebody’s written something critical about me, or I’ve written something that a lot of people disagree with.

Last week, for example, it appears many people frequented https://www.joabbess.com, only to read my not-entirely-supportive comments about the Occupy movement :-

https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/12/occupy-your-mind/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/14/occupy-your-mind-2/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/15/occupy-your-mind-3/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/17/occupy-your-mind-4/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/18/occupy-your-mind-5/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/10/19/occupy-your-mind-6/

So what was with the Sunday evening crowding ? And why so many new visitors (as evidenced in the frequency data) ? It seems the “fourth generation” nuclear power fanatics were out in full flight formation last night, judging by the number of comments I received in relation to old posts :-

https://www.joabbess.com/2011/05/10/george-monbiot-bites-thorium-bait/
https://www.joabbess.com/2011/09/30/george-monbiot-corporate-sell/

So, I’ll say it again, only louder and more clearly : non-nuclear molten salt technology should be used as energy storage in concentrated solar power plants. It’s something that can be done to smooth over renewable energy variability now, efficiently, sustainably. We don’t need to wait four decades or more for working, widely-available Thorium reactors – if they ever get built – for a major non-fossil fuel energy supply. Thorium nuclear power is a red herring, a technological cul-de-sac. We don’t need it and we don’t want it (all of us, apart from the Thorium Trolls, that is).

Advancing Africa Bad Science Bait & Switch Be Prepared Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Army Carbon Capture Carbon Commodities Carbon Taxatious Climate Change Conflict of Interest Corporate Pressure Cost Effective Delay and Deny Demoticratica Direction of Travel Droughtbowl Eating & Drinking Economic Implosion Efficiency is King Emissions Impossible Energy Change Energy Insecurity Evil Opposition Faithful God Feed the World Financiers of the Apocalypse Food Insecurity Foreign Interference Foreign Investment Fossilised Fuels Freak Science Freemarketeering Geogingerneering Global Warming Green Investment Human Nurture Hydrocarbon Hegemony Low Carbon Life Major Shift Mass Propaganda Media Military Invention Money Sings Neverending Disaster No Blood For Oil Non-Science Not In My Name Nudge & Budge Oil Change Peace not War Peak Emissions Peak Energy Peak Oil Petrolheads Policy Warfare Political Nightmare Public Relations Realistic Models Regulatory Ultimatum Science Rules Scientific Fallacy Social Capital Social Change Solution City Stop War Sustainable Deferment Technofix Technological Fallacy Technological Sideshow Technomess The Data The Myth of Innovation The War on Error Unqualified Opinion Unsolicited Advice & Guidance Unutterably Useless Utter Futility Vain Hope Voluntary Behaviour Change Wasted Resource

The Problem of Powerlessness #2

Post author By Jo
Post date October 22, 2011
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On Wednesday, I received a telephone call from an Information Technology recruitment consultancy. They wanted to know if I would be prepared to provide computer systems programming services for NATO.

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.

I explained I was critical of the possibility that the air strikes in Libya were being conducted in order to establish an occupation of North Africa by Western forces, to protect oil and gas interests in the region. The recruitment agent agreed with me that the Americans were the driving force behind NATO, and that they were being too warlike.

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.

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The Problem of Powerlessness

Post author By Jo
Post date October 21, 2011
2 Comments on The Problem of Powerlessness

Yesterday, after months of being hounded, both literally and politically, an elderly statesman in North Africa was cornered, cowering in a concrete drain, and executed.

Somebody, somewhere, in the global authority structure that we have, decided that he had to go, and pursued him through the world’s media channels, and armed his opponents, after arming his regime, provoking a civil war, with inevitable, almost scripted, results.

Cast as a bad person, a mad person, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s views and opinions were made to have no value – he was as much a victim of propaganda as weaponry.

The war hawks, the warmongers, the people who use violence to control us, and call it warfare – they’ve achieved their mission aims once more. They have their Christ. And they have their crucifixion. It’s like the massacre of Osama bin Laden all over again. And overall, the narrative was more cruci-fiction than cruci-fact.

It’s not a War on Terror any more, it’s a War on Tenure. If you’re a national leader, anywhere in the world, who doesn’t do what the global expropriation community want you to do, well, then, you should expect to be drubbed, dissed, dismissed, debunked, ducked, and quite possibly murdered. The so-called West want to continue to have cheap commodities, cheap manufactured goods, low cost minerals and low cost energy, and if you block that agenda, you stand to lose a fight you didn’t start.

Efficiency is King Green Investment Green Power

Occupy your mind #6

Evie, a true East End trooper, asks the whole cafe “Are those campers still there ? The ones in the City ? They say they’re there for all of us. But what have they done about fuel bills ? The gas has just gone up 18% – and the electricity 11%…” She’s having trouble with her joints and she complains about not feeling free to put the heating on at home. “I get cold in the loins”, she says, not sparing her fellow clientele any awkward detail, even euphemistically.

Remarkably it seems that the political equivalent of a tectonic faultline is opening up right there – the price of energy.

Of course, the Conservative component of the Coalition Government of the UK concerns itself with the cost of power and fuel for trade and industry. The Daily Mail stirs the murky river bed : “George Osborne is preparing to offer tax breaks to firms hit by Britain’s ‘absurd’ climate change policies after being warned they threaten to drive business abroad. In a major U-turn, the Chancellor will try to help companies that use large amounts of energy. His move comes amid growing concern that companies and households are being hit heavily by Britain’s commitment to cut carbon emissions faster than other countries […] Mr Osborne’s plans are sure to set him on collision course with his Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues. Last night Whitehall sources told the Mail the Chancellor is working on radical proposals to mitigate the effects on companies that use large amounts of energy, such as cement, aluminium and steel makers. Tax breaks and exemptions from new carbon levies are expected to be included in a mini-Budget due next month […]”

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Occupy your mind #5

Image Credit : npmeijer

It rained last night in London. Cold rain. And the wind was blowing. And the poor little Occupyers were on my mind.

So I cooked up some vegan fare and this morning went down to St Paul’s Cathedral to try and offer nourishment to the be-weathered masses. Most of the placards and signs were gone, minimising the message, but the tent city was still there.

As usual at political protests, I took certain measures to disguise myself, and carried no form of identification.

Signs of the global economic meltdown – the train I wanted to catch was cut short – probably by the theft of metal cabling. It’s wrong to make the transport system grind to a halt – so many people depend on it. But I can understand why people are press-ganged into stealing metals – poverty is on the rise.

It took me ages to reach St Paul’s Cathedral, and I went straight to the kitchen tent to unload lunch, and grab a coffea (tea mixed with coffee) and breakfast mini-croissant.

Economic Implosion Social Capital Social Change

Occupy your mind #4

I think it was seeing a twenty-metre-high Robert Waterman McChesney projected to the audience at the Rebellious Media Conference that persuaded me I was being subjected to intense propaganda. These Americans, I thought, they’re all the same. They all use the same communications techniques, whatever brand of ideology they are pushing. The iconified “talking head” of Professor McChesney, well, yes, he was talking a lot of sense, but the medium is the message, and that medium was a twenty-metre-high idolisation of Bob.

After the opening plenary session of the conference, Noam Chomsky held humble court by the bookstalls, gladhanding people, and generally making nice to lots of unkempt teenagers and twenty-somethings in black tee shirts with nasty slogans on them. And nose rings. I was several circles of adulation beyond the physical contact zone, and beside me was a young mum desperate to put her cute infected infant in Noam’s great grandpa arms and get a photo apperture-nity of a lifetime. “Baby coming through”, I said, using my best crowd control voice-of-authority technique, “baby coming through”.

Noam Chomsky is very, very smart. And yet he still suffers from what I call “cognitive dissociation”. He deconstructed the demands of the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy everywhere movement – he said their feasible demands were too palatable, and their radical demands too inaccessible. But Noam, too, his ideas of a new labour-owned world are a step beyond unworkable. Being a pragmatist, I have recognised that people don’t automatically work well together without some kind of structure that they can slot into. Families, churches, governments – all need definitions of roles and functions, despite the ideal of total democratic freedom.

Bad Science Be Prepared Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Big Society Burning Money Cool Poverty Corporate Pressure Cost Effective Demoticratica Direction of Travel Disturbing Trends Economic Implosion Energy Change Energy Disenfranchisement Energy Insecurity Energy Revival Energy Socialism Fair Balance Foreign Investment Fossilised Fuels Freemarketeering Fuel Poverty Green Investment Green Power Low Carbon Life Major Shift Mass Propaganda Media Money Sings National Energy National Power Nudge & Budge Policy Warfare Political Nightmare Sustainable Deferment Wind of Fortune

BBC : Craven Power Muddle

Post author By Jo
Post date October 17, 2011
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Once again, the BBC has allowed to pass unchallenged the impression that green power policy and renewable energy investment are behind the dramatic rise in British domestic energy prices.

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.

Here’s how Countryfile went yesterday evening :-

[ 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. […]

Energy Change

BBC : Bespoke Inaccuracy Purveyor

Post author By Jo
Post date October 12, 2011
1 Comment on BBC : Bespoke Inaccuracy Purveyor

Image Credit : Emily James

Twitter alerted me to a fascinating piece of documentary produced by one Tony Roe, an “Inside Out Special” that aired on BBC One, Monday 10th October 2011 at 19:30, 7.30pm, but only in the East Midlands region. Called “Power Struggle” it contained released Police footage, and parts of the “Just Do It” film by Emily James.

Apologies to those of you outside the BBC iPlayer territory if you want to view it, because you won’t be allowed to, because you don’t pay a TV Licence in the UK, and the BBC haven’t realised that they could make a lot of juicy revenue by opening the iPlayer up to international pay-per-view. Silly them. But I digress.

I was mildly irritated by the attempts of the narrator to keep “balance” during the early part of the piece, but I felt myself starting to get wound up when I hit the following section at roughly 26 minutes in :-

[Narrator] “Coal power stations are getting too old to carry on. The cost of renewing our power industry with something less environmentally damaging is enormous : 200 billion pounds. That’s the equivalent of building two Channel Tunnels every year for the next 9 years.”

[David Porter, Association of Electricity Producers] “There are very big question marks about whether the industry can actually raise this money. The companies don’t have that sort of money. It’s not there. So they’ve got to go to the financial markets to persuade people that the UK is the right sort of place to in which to make major investments in energy infrastructure. And I ought to say that having protest groups closing down power stations and so on doesn’t always send out the right signalling in that regard.”

[Narrator] “New ways of generating electricity are already happening because of an EU Directive, at a cost added to our fuel bills. Renewables like wind power now produce almost 10% of our electricity and the East Midlands is one of the biggest providers…”

Financiers of the Apocalypse Media Protest & Survive

Noam Chomsky : Rebellious Occupation

Post author By Jo
Post date October 11, 2011
1 Comment on Noam Chomsky : Rebellious Occupation

Rebellious Media Conference
8 – 9 October 2011
“For radical social change movements to succeed, they will need radical media organisations to provide channels for information, insight and internal debate. In turn, for radical media organisations to develop and thrive, they need to be part of movements for radical social change.”

Warning : this material is taken from scribbled long-hand notes, and is not a complete account of what was said. The full account will be available later in DVD format. Meanwhile, follow the #rebelliousmc Twitter hashtag…

Advancing Africa Babykillers Bait & Switch Big Picture Big Society Conflict of Interest Demoticratica Energy Insecurity Evil Opposition Fair Balance Feel Gooder Financiers of the Apocalypse Foreign Interference Foreign Investment Fossilised Fuels Mass Propaganda Media Military Invention Money Sings Near-Natural Disaster Neverending Disaster No Blood For Oil Not In My Name Oil Change Peace not War Petrolheads Policy Warfare Political Nightmare Protest & Survive Public Relations Social Capital Social Change Stop War The Power of Intention The War on Error Western Hedge

War in the Media

Some people may wonder why this YouTube starts halfway through a panel discussion from the Rebellious Media Conference at the weekend.

I certainly did. So I dug deep down in my appallingly scratchy notes and typed up a paraphrase of what Mark Curtis had said – the first speaker on the panel.

Warning – it’s not verbatim – it is interpolated from my illegible handwriting.

“War and the Media” : Panel Discussion : Rebellious Media Conference
8 – 9 October 2011 : Mark Curtis, Greg Philo, John Pilger
[Comments from Mark Curtis roughly reconstructed from jotted notes]

[…Tests the audience’s general knowledge about the world’s longest serving dictators…] It’s “Our Man in Oman”, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said.

We don’t hear much about Oman. Why is that ? Let’s make two assumptions, first, that journalists can read, and second that they are following government sources.

For the UK Government, foreign policy is increasingly about oil. UK has been developing relationships with the Gulf States. There is a policy of deepening support for the most undemocratic states in the region.

Britain continues to project military power. You can see this in a hundred years of UK foreign policy – just read a few speeches.

This is not what we are being told in the media. Was this a war for oil ? Is the Pope a Catholic ?

In the media, the view [expressed] is that Britain is about supporting democracy in the Middle East.

This country has two special relationships. The special relationship with the United States [of America] is about consumerism and investment.

The other special relationship is much less [publicly] known [communicated]. Saudi Arabia since 1973 […]

A problem – Saudi Arabia is funding radical Islam.

And when Cameron […] in Bahrain…I wonder what they were talking about ?

When Britain provides arms, the media reports that it contradicts our policy of promoting democracy – to maintain them in power. We don’t have a policy of upholding democracy. They are our allies. We don’t want them to fall.

Climate Change Media

We Make Radical Media

Becky Hogge, formerly of the Open Rights Group (“Join up and protect your bits”), was asked at the Rebellious Media Conference – how could this conference have been any more rebellious ?

With much gravitas she explained how a public relations firm had made legal threats to prevent the conference calling itself the “Radical Media Conference”.

She explained that she thought it was a little unrebellious to cave in and change the name of the conference to suit an advertising agency, particularly since the words are normal language to describe the alternative press. She then leaned closer to the microphone to pronounce with verve that “We own that term, thank you very much !”

It got me thinking about the ownership of terminology, and also the ownership of concepts, such as “climate change”. Back in the decade of the (cough), climate change was merely scientific terminology, used to describe the changing configurations of climate (surprised ?), as observed by painstaking, lifelong observations of physical phenomena in the natural world.

Media Protest & Survive

I Believe in Security

When I offered to host participants to the Rebellious Media Conference, I knew there was a possibility that I might be providing accommodation for people regarded as “domestic extremists” by our dearly beloved and most accurate police and secret security services. So, since I value the security of political activists as much as the security of society, I took a few unusual measures (for me) to ensure the protection of privacy, keep the actual details covert, and permit narratives of decoy scenarios to unfold without challenging them.

Those involved in direct action are committed pacifists, but you’d never know that from the mainstream media. Direct action requires high levels of engagement, knowledge, commitment and cooperation; and yet these highly evolved people are regarded as pond life by the stenographers of the state. I think that repression of protest is partly based on envy that direct actions are so effective in creating public debate; and the irritation that comes from recognising that the mice always seem to be able to evade the cats.

And as it turns out, the Block the Bridge action was highly effective in raising awareness and allowing voices from inside the National Health Service to enter public media. I believe in security – true social and public security, a liveable climate, access to affordable sustainable energy, the continued security of the health service. The United Kingdom should not follow the United States of America into a failed model for public health provision. The Bridge Blockers enabled that message to come to the media stage. Job well done. People fed. Humble lifted high.

Bait & Switch

Dan Hind : People’s Media

Post author By Jo
Post date October 10, 2011
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Hanging around outside Friends House in Euston, London, after the Rebellious Media Conference yesterday, waiting for somebody I know, proved quite a mixed experience.

However, I did get to have a useful chat with Dan Hind, author, and ex-publisher, about his useful idea for the re-democratisation of media, through the public commissioning of journalism.

If anybody in public life is walking on a narrow, wind-buffeted tightrope, it is he. His work is sometimes shunned by the mainstream media, presumably for having too much clarity and sense, or for being a paradigm shift too risky. And coming to the conference to appeal to activists to organise around his emminently sensible, coherent and practical idea was akin to feeding himself to the rabid critical lions – as he must have known there would be quite a number of utterly insane people in the audience, more bizarre than the believers in the Unification Church, who would have interpreted his work as being in support of their daft causes.

Bait & Switch

Buttonholed by a Believer

I think it was Michael Albert, or maybe Noam Chomsky, who encouraged us, from the plenary platform this afternoon at the Rebellious Media Conference, to work together, to support each others’ causes.

Later, outside, I met one of the reasons why we shouldn’t – a Reinvestigate 911 believer – who harangued me and misinformed me, and didn’t realise what a trap she was in.

Her arguments included the line of reasoning that since the American administration/government didn’t care about how many people they killed in Iraq, that they wouldn’t care about killing a couple of thousand people at home.

Talk about missing the bigger picture ! First off, it was the American military that waged the assault on Iraq, not the government. And second of all, it is not necessary to invent a story of callousness. America’s leaders appear not to care about the lives of millions of their fellow men and women by denying them healthcare, decent incomes, affordable, decent housing, adequate social welfare; but let me declare myself on the side of the sane – the American ruling authorities did not conspire to cause the 9/11 atrocities.

It’s true that the right-wing conservatives in the United States of America have long been campaigning for the end of Big Government, reducing government spending, outsourcing obligations, reducing taxation and cutting regulations. They think this “small state solution” is for the best – for economic growth, for business success, for efficiency in public finances. It is hard for them to admit that the diminished state should bear responsibility for the deficiencies in disaster aid following Hurricane Katrina. It is hard for them to admit that the smaller state was the direct cause of the incompetence in intelligence and decisionmaking that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

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Daniel Yergin : Revisionist Comb-Over

Post author By Jo
Post date October 4, 2011
1 Comment on Daniel Yergin : Revisionist Comb-Over

Image Credit : cache.daylife.com

I don’t have anything against balding people. Anybody can start losing hair, and will most likely feel embarrassed about it and start doing silly things like combing strands over the patch – the classic comb-over : not a sign of vanity, more a sign of vulnerability. It’s a kind of disguise, not admitting to the facts, even as the facts become more and more apparent. The balding person does not accept what is happening, and is seeking to delay the inevitable.

I’ve read the Introduction and Prologue (and a little of Chapter 1) of Daniel Yergin’s new book “The Quest : Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World”. I have found it very hard-going, and I keep having to pause. The reason ? I am far too critical of the writing, and it keeps making me some kind of cross between a tad narked and full-blown irritated.

Big Picture Environmental Howzat Technofix Technological Fallacy

Book Review : The God Species by Mark Lynas

Post author By Jo
Post date October 4, 2011
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[Book Review by Jonathan Essex]

The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans By Mark Lynas, July 2011, Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-0007375226

Mark Lynas’s last book, Six Degrees, helped foster a widespread acceptance that climate change is real and we have to act together to do something about it. In The God Species he sets out how we often underestimate the scale of global environmental issues as we fail to truly appreciate the scale of 6 billion individual impacts on the planet. This book updates the scorecard of human impacts and relocates climate change within a wider set of planetary boundaries, as first set out in the Limits to Growth report produced nearly 40 years ago. Yet 40 years later the sum total of all our visible signs of action don’t even come close to addressing the scale of the problem. Perhaps Lynas, who represented the Maldives at the failed climate talks in Copenhagen [UNFCCC, December 2009], has come to believe that we won’t change our behaviour, we can’t change our economic system (as eloquently set out in Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth) and that there is no political support for a much wider programme of action such as that set out in the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain 2030. So Lynas has only allowed himself to consider what remains: for us to put our faith solely in technology. As I read I had two main questions: will this really save the day and, if so, at what price?

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George Osborne : Quantitative Greasing

Post author By Jo
Post date October 4, 2011
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Image Credit : So Fiyah

On the first day of October, The Times of London newspaper ran an editorial urging investment in Britain’s infrastructure as a way to turn the economy around. Under the heading “Re-engineering the Economy”, they wrote “…What Britain needs now is thus not merely recovery from recession: it is a comprehensive re-engineering of the economy. At the heart of this process should be a more ambitious approach to infrastructure investment and more activism in industrial policy…”

The writer continued, “…Stepping up investment in infrastructure will not only stimulate the economy in the short-term, but will also increase the potential for future growth…” They did not speculate extensively on where the money for investment was to come from, but it was clear that they were supporting the UK Government’s new planning legislation, in which the presumption for development will apparently always take precedence over objections to development. The Times writer did not make a very clear distinction between sustainable and unsustainable development, and considered building a gargantuan new airport in the Thames Estuary as valid a project as new wind power research in Aberdeen.

The Times appears to have understood that Britain’s energy infrastructure needs some concentrated attention : “Renewing Britain’s energy infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges that the country faces but it also presents a huge opportunity.” Part of the Coalition Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government’s Electricity Market Reform seeks to apply state subsidies to low carbon generation, although rewarding power generated from existing nuclear power stations cannot possibly stimulate the new nuclear builds that the Government are keen on.

Be Prepared Big Picture Big Society Climate Change Climate Chaos Climate Damages Conflict of Interest Corporate Pressure Demoticratica Disturbing Trends Eating & Drinking Economic Implosion Energy Disenfranchisement Energy Insecurity Energy Socialism Feed the World Financiers of the Apocalypse Food Insecurity Freemarketeering Fuel Poverty Money Sings National Energy National Power National Socialism Peak Energy Policy Warfare Political Nightmare Regulatory Ultimatum Social Capital Social Change Social Chaos Transport of Delight Unsolicited Advice & Guidance Vote Loser

Ed Miliband : Squeezed Middle

Post author By Jo
Post date October 3, 2011
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Ed Miliband, leader of the British Labour Party, addressed the pre-party conference cameras in uncustomary casual attire, shelving his favourite suit, dazzlingly shiny tie and white shirt, you know, the one with the fat turned-over cuffs.

He sought to assure the nation that his one man mission is to relieve the financial pressure on the hardworking “squeezed middle” – fighting their corner against the profiteering railway companies and the moneygrabbing energy companies.

The little snippet of BBC TV News 24 that I saw cut to the correspondent raising doubts about whether this cost-of-living protection strategy would have any impact on the wider economy – whether measures to control transport fares and energy bills would create economic growth.

What does this little word “growth” mean to the BBC TV reporter, I asked myself. Does he think it means increasing employment, increasing incomes ? And how could employment be increased ? By increasing the “consumption” of goods, energy, water, transportation and knowledge economy services ? And how can this “aggregate demand” consumption be increased, if unemployment remains high and incomes remain stagnant ?

Allowing the utility and transportation companies to raise their prices allows them to remain profitable and build their businesses, presumably creating employment as well as giving a return to investors – those who have their savings in pension funds – where the fund managers invest in energy and transport. Why not allow energy and transport prices to rise ? People can learn to spend more on these valuable services, surely ? Pensioners will have their funds protected, and energy and transport businesses will stay profitable, paying tax into the state.