Big Picture : Science and Media often concentrate on one tiny element of a problem, ignoring the radioactive elephant in the room.
The British political system is currently reeling from a scandal so far-reaching and so widely-spread that it seems hard to know what shape it will take in the future.
Government Ministers and their opposite numbers in the other Parties are being thrown from their ranks, and even their “safe seats”, back home in their Constituencies.
Everywhere I’ve gone for the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken Nick Stern with me. Or rather, his bright blue book with the “World Class” title “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet”.
Two members of the unelected camera of the United Kingdom have recently accused Greenpeace of being hijacked by political views on globalisation (“Green movement ‘hijacked’ by politics”, The Guardian, 13th May 2009) :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/13/green-movement-hijacked-politics
I remember the second time I saw this graph. It was shown to me by that enthusiastic young guy Guy Shrubsole, who waved a printed copy under my nose and asked me if I’d seen it and knew what it meant. I had and I did :-
https://climatechange.cbi.org.uk/uploaded/climatereport2007mckinseyapp.pdf
To answer Climate Change we must have strategies for new Low Carbon Energy investment.
The technologies we need to deploy are those that are already proven, and can be installed in the fastest possible time. What we can DO, and DO NOW.
This is DO-Tech, NOW-Tech : and it effectively rules out new rounds of Nuclear Energy, which is slow-to-grid. It also rules out the almost entirely hypothetical Carbon Capture and Storage.
I’m starting to read Nicholas Stern’s new book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.” No hint of megalomania, grandstanding or grandiosity, there, then.
Although December 2009 is more than six months away, in reality the World has seven weeks of further negotiations before the main details of a Global Climate Treaty must be agreed for delivery at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP) in December 2009 in Copenhagen Denmark.
Last week’s announcement by the UK Government for up to 4 “demonstration” projects for Carbon Capture and Storage [CCS] at new coal-fired electricity generation plants raises some serious questions.
Not least amongst that basket of tricky and serious questions : is CCS being used to justify the use of coal fuel, when less Carbon-intensive fuels are available ?
The green “trade show” UK Aware was held at the exhibition centre Olympia 2, West London, England on 17th April.
I was talking with the lady from Good Energy. First of all we discussed their proposal to offer a dual fuel tariff, and the fact that there is still no green gas available to domestic customers.
I’m feeling a little “Carbon-resigned” tonight.
Nobody in the British Government has a handle on national Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and the announcement of up to four Carbon Capture and Storage “demonstration” projects doesn’t inspire me with confidence.
[ UPDATED : Someone kindly pointed out a typographical error. The correct expression is “Business as Usual”. My excuse : late night dyslexia. Thanks, o diligent reader. Keep up the good work. ]
The Old Lecture Theatre in the Old Building at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) tonight was filled with noise, as people, packed to the rafters, exchanged hot air like it was the End of the World.
And so it was, or will be. The End of the World, I mean, unless we sort out Climate Change. Nick Stern made that quite clear.
I can imagine the shared advertising now : a cartoon of a large tanker, shaped like a floating Coke bottle, with the caption “We funnel your fizz”.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been just the wisp or filament of an idea for so long; and never really taken on a bodily form. It’s still ectoplasmic, in the worst of ways. Despite the various attempts around the world to drag it kicking and screaming into a corporeal existence.
For those of you who missed it, Al Gore’s Climate Project hit the hallowed halls of Cambridge, England, in March 2007 :-
https://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/gore
It was a whirlwind love affair, and I recall hearing about a couple of the more fringe people who attended the training. They were wowed.
Debating about Carbon policy outside the Bank of England this rainy London afternoon, was, I thought, rather appropriate.
My opponent was weaving the great Al Gore, James Hansen, ExxonMobil line, “so…why don’t we just have a flat Carbon Tax ?”
It seems that the not-so-secret Security Services and Police so-called Intelligence have been listening in at Climate Camp national gatherings and spin-off direct action groups (colour me un-surprised) :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/13/nottingham-police-raid-environmental-campaigners
In my family, the children were always warned, “Don’t eat the blackberries growing near the road on your walk to school.” What they didn’t tell us, and we didn’t properly know until recently, was that the air pollution was much more dangerous to us than lead deposits in the dust on wayside foraging.
Good Friday. The start of the special Christian weekend when we remember brutal, inhuman torture and a completely unnecessary death.
With the emergence of the social movement around Climate Change and Energy policy, it was to be expected that campaigners and protesters would come up against the ruling systems of the day.
The green figleaf is well and truly fluttering off into the windy landscape for Royal Dutch Shell. They’re an oil and gas company, with some petrochemistry on the side, and to prove it, they announced on 17th March 2009 that they were pulling their last tiny percentage points out of Renewables :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/26/fred-pearce-greenwash-shell-exxon
“Greenwash: Shell betrays ‘new energy future’ promises”
Why is the Government in the United Kingdom so poor on Climate Change and Energy ?
Why have they signed the Climate Change Act without a clue as to how to implement it, and are delaying any obvious low-cost actions, kicking it all into the long grass ?
Down at the G20 Climate Camp today, I had the opportunity to meet up with people I know from Climate Change work all over the UK and beyond.
Don’t be tempted to dismiss the Campers as sensationalism-seeking wildcats : we’re talking about a collection of some of the finest Science, Policy and Society minds there are, with a bit of the Press mixed in for good voyeuristic effect.
1st Apriil 2009
SPACE 1
2pm : Trading our way into Trouble – How carbon trading hasn’t worked so far, why it’s not going to work and the problems it’s causing in the Global South (CarbonTradeWatch).
3pm : Plenary (all together session) – “Their solutions / our solutions” – with starting contributions on “their solutions” and an open discussion on “our solutions”.
STOP PRESS : Just received a text “Big Brother is turning off CCTV for the day. Don’t forget to bring your own. Please forward this text.” What can go on when nobody is watching ?
I’ve just been at one of several G20 Climate Camp convergence spaces this evening to get the full briefing.
I expected Police presence on the door, and yes, once again they were illegally photographing people coming and going from a public meeting.
I had the opportunity to do some serious observation of various public figures on Thursday 26th March 2009 at the Tenalps Energy and Environment 2009 Conference at Church House in Westminster.
Dr Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre was particularly impressive. He is a beautiful man, and humourous and people-centred, and has a fantastic ability to understand the Big Picture as regards Climate Change and Energy policy.
Calling all dudes. Calling all honeys. Come and hand out London’s brightest and brashest free newspaper, and give the paid ones a seeing to in the process.
Dudes, remember the glory days of old, handing out trillions of arch and angry political leafletry stamped with cardinal colour logos and smeared with carbon black ?
Bring back those golden, sunny hours of innocent street flirting and lung-gurgling puffs of the harshest baccy, calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new ideological heartbeat ?