At our best, we humans, when faced with crisis, we club together and act collectively. We invent new shared ways of doing, being and providing for ourselves. We pay attention to the needs of others. We give. We receive. We share. We eat together.
Category: Climate Change
Climate Change
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 ?
It’s proving to be a bad year for Greenhouse Gas control and Polar Ice integrity.
Despite the drop in production of the Developed Economies, due to the downturn/recession, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere carried on rising :-
Creating a genuine and effective Carbon price differential will be awkward, perhaps impossible. Carbon Taxes will stop working after a few years, and Carbon Caps are already strongly resisted.
As for Carbon Trading, the incentive to cheat, the “leakage”, will mean that most exchanges will be measured in “hot air” – virtual Carbon emissions.
Ed Miliband wants a Climate Change social movement, and it is going to appear in force, but it won’t look the way he wants or expects.
In the interview article below notice that Ed Miliband is going to publish a Climate Change manifesto shortly, outlining the UK negotiating position for the December United Nations Climate Talks.
That means that the UK negotiating position for Copenhagen in December has already been decided.
What follows is part of an e-mail exchange frenzy that has been sparked by the UK Government’s decision to announce plans to invest in up to four Carbon Capture and Storage “demonstration” plants.
I couldn’t believe it : the New Scientist magazine in my hands didn’t have a car advertisement on the back cover, on the inside cover, or opposite the editorial !
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.
Towards the end of the Torah of Moses, in the last chapters of the book of Deuteronomy, we get a hymn to the Law of God, a kind of musical rendition of the Ten Commandments (see Deuteronomy 27 and compare to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5).
The notion that the industrialised countries were somehow responsible for the awful drought which desiccated the Horn of Africa in 1984/1985, through Global Warming pollution, has been dealt a blow, and some support, all in the same week, from the same research paper, but through different media channels.
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”.
The Thane of Fife had a little meeting this week that reminded me somewhat of “The Scottish Play” in its treachery, and faith in the Nuclear Power Ghost to absolve Carbon stains, rather than the harsh inevitability of true Energy Conservation grit.
Glowing Gordon Brown and E.On-atomic-bright Ed Miliband travelled to the seat of the Scottish Government from the seat of the English Government, seemingly to push the Nuclear button.
Steven Chu is a grown up. He has an education, he doesn’t have a mental health problem, he’s not a member of a fringe environmental campaigning group and he doesn’t have anyone pointing any weapons at him.
But he admits in public that he finds Climate Change “very, very scary”.
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.
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Glass Dome USA
Hands up, all of you who’ve seen The Simpsons Movie ?
[ I can hear choral singing in the background and see white clouds on a blue, blue sky; but it’s not the title sequence for the “propaganda” film “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. ]
I had a very brief exchange with Dr Alan Knight of the Sustainable Development Commission today at the UK Aware 09 “Ideas for Greener Living” exhibition today at Olympia 2 in London.
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.
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One Dead Man
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”
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Shell’s Day in Court
I’ve just been to a very nice little shindig with refreshments at the offices of Amnesty International in London.
We were treated to speeches and wine and Nigerian poetry and rap. And there was dancing.
What was it all for then ? And what does it have to do with Climate Change ?