Image Credit : Baby Creative
Over the last couple of years, almost everything I have been involved with, the E.On Energy supply company has sought to get its big coal-dust grubby hands on. It seems. The latest twist in this saga involves the Claverton Energy Research Group.
https://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-19-chamber-plays-the-fool-in-yes-men-hoax
https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a3IaPOkIataY
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/19/chamber-of-commerce-hoax_n_326069.html
https://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1939867120091019
This will probably get taken down eventually :-
https://www.oneclimate.net/2009/10/19/us-chamber-of-commerce-announces-free-enterprise-climate-policy/
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20091019/tpl-environment-us-chamber-climate-legis-02bfc7e.html
Image Credit : Bankside Press
The big problem with re-tooling for the new Low Carbon world is not so much about changing Energy consumption behaviour, although that plays a part.
It’s not even really Energy supply behaviour, although that is probably more significant.
No, the key to the door to the greener future is investment behaviour.
Tears Before Bedtime
The UK Government’s latest infommercial on Climate Change is appallingly bad. It has been aired on television for millions of unsuspecting soap opera addicts.
Sometimes you can learn a snippet of useful information from television. It’s rare, and fleeting, but can have impact.
The other night on terror-vision, I watched the sumptuous Fahrenheit 451, a film made in 1966 by Francois Truffaut, based on the science fiction book by Ray Bradbury. I forget which channel it was on. Who cares ? All television is the same in the end.
So I’m in the hospital emergency room with a very aged relative with a dodgy ticker, and I’m doing what I can to offer some shred of comfort, stroking head, clasping hand, chatting about this and that.
And I’m looking at the digital monitor, displaying readings from various intensive care technology. And I watch as the arrhythmia, the irregular beating of the heart, clearly shows itself if you stop to look at the display for long enough.
A report into the waterless conditions in the South Eastern United States of America concludes that Climate Change is not the predominant factor.
Phew ! We can all breathe a sigh of relief !
After a week of parry and counter-riposte, it is time to shout “en garde” to the editors at the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
In a peaceful way. Without swords.
After my careers in engineering and information technology, I went back to university today, to train for my third career, in sustainable development.
Like most of the other people enrolling on the course, I want a green job, and I’m prepared to study for it.
The only future for the economy is in clean energy and saved energy, Renewables and Conservation, and I want to be in there, doing something productive and practical.
In answer to one of my many raging, almost apoplectic, detractors, I have written this.
Since I believe that sceptics can be people, too, I’m going to respond to you, even though I think you’re being unfactual, and I feel you’re being unreasonable.
Some of the science that needs to be presented is the psychology of denial.
People who deny the science of Global Warming do so because they don’t want their life, wealth and freedom to be interfered with.
They feel they deserve liberty. But anybody who lives in any kind of community, especially in an urban environment, is not free at all, and never can be.
The British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has admitted at the Labour Party Conference that there are low commitment levels to dealing with the causes of Global Warming :-
When I was asked to review a chunk of the 2008 Climate Safety report from the Public Interest Research Centre, I was less than positive about the social movement building outlined in the recommendations for “mobilisation” of the public (see below).
Tim Holmes, one of the people involved in the Climate Safety report, has started a new web log critiquing the very same issues :-
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/greenwashing-government/
Many Christians continue to perpetuate narratives that are at odds with the Bible, in my humble opinion.
Three in particular annoy me : that the Kingdom of God is only to be reached after death; that God is in second-to-second control of our every robot-slave move; and that God is far away from us in Heaven.
As they say in detective novels, “nothing could be further from the truth”, and there are billions of people of different kinds of faith that can attest to the very opposite of those three unhelpful pieces of theology.
Whenever I am in the Westminster area of London, I try to make time to go and sit awhile with Brian Haw at his Peace Camp opposite the Houses of Parliament.
The juxtaposition of ragged ad hoc unspun protest shrine facing the ornate Gothic seat of power carries an enormous significance, not only for me, but thousands of activists and tourists and peaceloving citizens.
Brian must be the most photographed and sought-after person in London. He is an icon, alongside Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.
An Irritating Truth
by Jo Abbess
17 September 2009
Essay to answer the question : ‘Which technical solutions offer the best potential for decreasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions over the next 50 years?’ based on the key text, Chapter 4, entitled “Energy Supply” of the mitigation volume of the Working Group III (WG3) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) published in 2007.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter4.pdf
My, my, what a splendidly entertaining and lively Planning Committee meeting was held at the Walthamstow Town Hall yesterday evening.
The juggernaut of Tesco met the clamouring masses of the people of Hale End and Highams Park head on, and it wasn’t a walkover.
So, what do you think would be appropriate Community Service orders for the 29 men and women who held up the coal train to Drax “the Destroyer” power station in June 2008 ?
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/04/drax-protesters-sentence
Should they be sentenced to build a straw bale, lime and mud community centre in Liverpool ? Should they be required to host Permaculture seminars in inner London ? Should they be asked to take part in leafletting and campaigning for the 10:10 campaign ?
Sometimes a plan is just so wrong that it has to be resisted.
Tesco want to build a rather large retail store in my very local area, implanting a supermarket that looks more than twice the size of any other building here, and shoehorning in over 200 “residential units” to boot.
It may be legal, and it may even pass some of the planning guidelines and strategies, but it’s clearly a resource grab – trying to put as many profit-generating assets as possible into a limited space.
Whenever you hear government ministers or public figures telling the people that technology will save us, remember this : the word “technology” is synonymous with the word “business”.
“Technology” is Big Engineering, and this is what is done by large companies and corporations. Large organisations that make profit by selling manufactured products and Energy always have a surplus set aside for their communications budgets, and that includes persuading government people that their business is invaluable and needs promoting.
My August Bank Holiday weekend camp of choice was Greenbelt this year, as I had been invited to contribute to a workshop on campaign activism entitled “Hatching a plot” :-
London’s great : there’s so much to do. Or rather, so much to buy.
Talking About a Revolution : Tracy Chapman
When are the intellectual and political ranks going to stop trying to apply universal guilt ? The real question to ask is not, “how are we going to get average emissions down ?” You can’t treat all the people in the United Kingdom as one blurred lump. Around 20% of consumers are conscious. Another 20% to 30% are going to be hit directly by any measure designed to put an environmental tax on Carbon, and will have no choice about responding.
Climate Change worldwide is affecting the poorest first and hardest – an expression used by everyone from Nicholas Stern through to Christian Aid. But it’s a stratification of impact that isn’t just global. The poorest in the industrialised countries are suffering hardship too : people who cannot get their homes renovated after floods, people who have to apply for Fuel Poverty assistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unNZDByYHzw : The Power of Persuasion
https://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/clear_and_resonant_marketing/
“Not Converts, But Consorts”
Despite what the psychologists evidence and the psychotherapists cogitate, there’s no getting through to some people, and I really think we just ought to accept that, stop with the guilt trip and the navel-gazing and admit it : the people with leadership authority have got to start telling people that things will change, whether they come along with it or not.
Everybody knows that there’s no secret to persuasion, no “how to win friends and influence people” magic techniques : you just need to have enough money to guarantee yourself the widest possible audience and the dominant narrative, and your product gets all the sales it needs, and overrides “what if” critique. TV was made for it. The Hollywood film industry is its highest and finest embodiment.
Pipped to the news post by other events of global import, social action on Climate Change got completely wiped off the map today.
The necessary Media footage of violence featuring the Police, intended to diffuse tension built up by the BBC and others over the week, was nicely provided by football hooligans, saving anyone having to trump up some charge about the Climate Campers.
What would you do if you met a Climate Camper face to face ? And how could you be sure ? Would they have dreadlocks ? A facepainted clown face, raggedy, dirty clothes ? Would they be shouting ?
More to the point, would they be getting in your face ? Or in your way ? Would they be threatening or violent or extremely negative ? Or would they offer you a cup of tea and a nice wholemeal organic flapjack ?