Climate Change
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 ?
I can’t see global panic taking hold. Well, I never expected mass hysteria actually, but I would have thought that news of accelerating Antarctic meltdown would have brought out the doom-mongering commentators in droves. But I don’t see much sign of that.
A question repeatedly occurs to me. “Why are the cigarette manufacturers still in business ?”, I ask myself, when I look at how much effort, money and time goes into helping smokers become non-smokers.
This week has seen a flurry of “Yes, We Can” news articles about the Carbon Capture and Storage technology, or CCS.
“Solution to the carbon problem could be under the ground : Hope for the fight against climate change as study finds greenhouse gas can be buried without fear of leaking : By Steve Connor, Science Editor : Thursday, 2 April 2009 : Carbon dioxide captured from the chimneys of power stations could be safely buried underground for thousands of years without the risk of the greenhouse gas seeping into the atmosphere, a study has found.”
Climate Change Denialists, or Sceptics (Skeptics) as they like to call themselves, will not be liking this piece of research one single teensy-eensy-weensy bit.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16892-natural-mechanism-for-medieval-warming-discovered.html
The Times newspaper confuses the present with the future in an otherwise useful article today :-
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6025056.ece
I got on the train yesterday evening with a very gentle fellow, who was reading a free newspaper intently.
I noticed he was carrying a camera with quite a large lens, so I said to him, “You can’t believe anything you read in the papers”, trying this gambit to get him to spill about what he was doing.
He gave a non-commital response, and we didn’t strike up.
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”.
I’m getting reports of people with an outline plan to take a skinny dip in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.
Apparently, to raise the profile of Carbon Trading, they’re going to paint themselves with some kind of black paint, or black marker pen, and splash about shouting something like “Carbon Trading doesn’t wash !”
The London Press today have been thumbscrewing public opinion down against the G20 demonstrations – with fear-laden messaging and nasty tagging of protestors as “violent”.
I’ve overheard several conversations today between various casually dressed office workers moaning about tomorrow’s happenings.
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.
Jonathan Leake, writing in the Sunday Times on 29th March 2009 betrays a certain ignorance, and casual disregard for sound European Renewables policy :-
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5992864.ece
“Consumers beware the costly spin of wind turbines”
The “protest community” have a very stark choice about options for non-violent direct action and other forms of demonstration this week. Either you do something to entertain and amuse people, or you do something to annoy.
At a stretch you might even manage to do both, but for the most part it is an either-or situation. Do you hold a street party in fancy dress, or do you try to blockade something, lock on and shut it down ?
Do you publish a newspaper pulling apart current Economic, Energy and Climate policy ? Or do you set up a tent outside the London Climate Exchange and refuse to leave ?
At first glance the two news articles seem to be about completely different subjects, but I can assure you they are both about Climate Migration.
The Observer, in a two page spread, complete with photographs of schoolchildren, outlines that Britain’s population is set to rise, as drought sets in, in different places of the World, and the heat picks up.
Britain, because of its historical global interference during its Empire days, will be assumed to be responsible for accepting a wide range of Climate Refugees.
Some of us will be arrested. Some of us can’t afford to be arrested. But all of us are committed to some kind of direct action on 1st April, Fossil Fools Day 2009.
We are going to shake things up.
We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our children, our neighbours, the dirt-poor drought-ridden farmers in the Global South. Even the wretched polar bears.
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.
Fundamentally, I believe in tolerance. But since I’m tolerant, I’m not going to preach it. However since I’m a fundamentalist about tolerance, I’m not going to tolerate anyone preaching fundamentalism.
It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to understand the tension implicit in those last sentences. And yet Christian Anarchists live with this complex, tortuous position every day, while remaining really well-balanced, considering.
It seems that everyone is going to turn the lights out for Earth Hour tomorrow 28th March 2009 at 8.30pm. Even Las Vegas :-
https://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_12004849
Will you join us ?
https://www.earthhour.org
https://www.blackoutbritain.org.uk
We want to see your darkness, and the Earth living in Climate peace and harmony. It starts with a collective effort, no matter how token, because we need to act together, all of us, to sort this mess out.
Lord Ron Oxburgh, formerly non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell, now honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, today labelled the clean coal technology as an “Elastoplast” – a temporary, transient technology to use in the Energy system until Energy has all been de-Carbonised.
Speaking at the Tenalps Energy and Environment 2009 Conference in Westminster, he derided the 20th Century as profligate in the use of cheap Carbon Energy, oil, coal and natural gas. He said that in the field of Energy, optimisation has been to anything other than fuel use – in other words – the relative cost has always been the driving factor.
LONDON 22:30 – The Man on the Clapham Omnibus reacted strongly to a chickpea curry he ate at lunchtime today. At hand to assist with his sufferings was a comfortably recognisable news sheet.
But all was not as it seemed. This publication was no ordinary newspaper, oh no. This was from a print run far, far away, way into the future, in fact. From 2020, in fact.
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 ?
It was a tale of intrigue, passion and suspicion, that ended with a slap in the face for journalism today.
The architects of Reclaim the Sheets were young. They were frisky. And they were disgruntled.
STOP PRESS: News from the future
This week, we’re printing a special publication, urging journalists
and big business to put people first. With 2020 hindsight, we’ll show
how action today made the future possible.
Without radical change, the world will soon be a hostile environment,
unleashing weather of mass destruction on our Age of Stupid. So what’s
stopping us? In simple terms: the economy, stupid.
Ouch ! I can feel the pain from the stinging reviews, even from this safe distance !
The film “The Age of Stupid” has free-minded, liberal, tolerant film reviewers and social commentators reaching for their ice picks.
Apparently, the film is a “hecture”, a hectoring lecture, according to The Observer :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/21/the-age-of-stupid-review
And David Cox pulls out all his nauseating stops by damning it a “conceit” in The Guardian :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/mar/23/the-age-of-stupid