From the mouths of babes

Sixteen years ago this impassioned plea was made at the Rio Earth Summit. Judging by the G20, the leaders still aren't listening.

Speaking of local-ish MPs

It's been awhile since I've been actively involved with Friends of the Earth, but I still get mail.

Friends of the Earth have run several campaigns, where constituents fill out postcards to send to their local MP on eco issues from the Climate Change Bill to the Marine Bill, to a call for a moratorium on biofuels. It can be hard work for the FOE volunteers to encourage people to get sign up but they do, in all weathers. So far it's proved a successful campaign technique.

Unfortunately, not all MPs are that interested in their constituents' concerns. Step forward Hexham's Tory MP Peter Atkinson. After several such campaigns 'Postcard Pete' wrote to Friends of the Earth asking them to stick their postcards where the ballot box don't shine, and instead has asked FOE to send Atkinson's constituents a letter he has drafted.

The letter, instead of directly addressing the concerns of the campaign just spews standard Tory greenwash.

Such arrogance is breathtaking.

It's difficult to imagine clearer evidence for the often heard accusation that many politicos only care about your opinion at election time.

Then I suppose since he's leaving the job at the end of this term, why should he care what his constituents think?

Speaking of local MPs

As I said in the previous post, there's been little support for Jim Cousin's EDM. Perhaps it will come.

However, whilst others are trying to save Tyne & Wear's public transport, Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn has been busy sniffing out information for accidents on the A1. It's no secret that Hepburn is one of the cheerleaders for dualling the A1 in Northumberland, and his enquiry through Parliamentary questions over accidents and deaths on the A1 looks like a continuation of his campaign of sucking up to the Journal.

Normally, his Parliamentary questions precede one of his regular Gazette propaganda pieces so don't be surprised if one on A1 dualling turns up soon.

Hepburn dimissed the government's own studies as "multi-modal rubbish", so it looks some like barrel scraping is going on to build a case.

Looking at the figures he's been given, it looks like there's nothing for Hepburn to use to justify dualling the A1 in safety terms, unless he takes a creative view to interpreting them. The figures given broadly support the European Road Assessment Program's (EuroRAP) assessment of the A1 as low to medium risk. The A1 doesn't even appear on the last 2006 report of Britain's most dangerous roads.

Here is a quick picture of the Parliamentary road safety stats:

The long term accident trend is downwards, but what I would find disconcerting is the proportionately higher number of deaths to accidents in Northumberland compared to Tyne & Wear, although this may have something to do with emergency services response times and distances to hospitals in rural areas. If an argument was to be had here it would be for an expansion and public funding of the Great North Air Ambulance Service, instead of it having to rely on charitable donations. That I would support.

But on terms of dualling the A1, nothing much here to see.

Poopy power

Whilst our local councils are trying to get 'value' from our waste stream, Treehugger has reported on this research for the National Grid which proposes harnessing sewage, animal and food wastes to produce biogas.

Biogas is nothing new. I've got a book from the 1970's by self sufficiency guru John Seymour where he described a design for a home anaerobic digester to produce your own biogas, and he tells of farmers using such simple designs since the Second World War. As well as producing the gas, the digesters also leave solid and semi-solid materials which can be used as fertiliser.

Much of our natural gas comes from foreign lands so such an initiative would be ideal to reduce our reliance on gas imports; a win in political, sustainability and economic terms.

Given the billions budgeted for ID cards, foreign wars and nuclear weapons, not to mention the welfare payments given to the feckless banking and car industries, £10bn seems like a small price to pay and with a tangible return.

Nineteen

For a government with a working majority of 63, winning tonight's vote, on the Tories' motion that the government should rethink the Heathrow plans, by only 19 votes is a thin margin indeed, and is another illustration how far out of touch with people this government is - and how close to BAA. Yet again, this Labour government has no doubt whored itself out to the sectarian fuckwits in the Democratic Unionists to win a close vote.

This isn't helped by some Labour MPs who claimed to be against the third runway but stayed away from the vote to avoid being seen supporting a Tory motion. Where's your principles you fucking cowardly hypocrites?

Whilst the Tories will claim a kind of moral victory, there are still some in Cameron's ranks who support the third runway.

Oh, and Geoff Hoon is a complete tool.

Dystopian present

Helicopter searchlights scanning the area. Armed shock troops intimidating citizens. Arresting innocents. Taking their possessions. Accusing them of uncommitted crimes. Inciting violence. Using dodgy laws to bludgeon peaceful protest.

Well, the police in Kent are certainly making a name for themselves. Welcome to Airstrip One in the 21st Century.

100 months to fix the planet

It's not alarmism, but a call to action, reeking with something the mainstream parties lack: an ideological desire for change for the better.

Green gold

The algal biofuels story sounds too good to be true, so it probably is.

I have an alarm in my head which goes off whenever I hear the phrase "carbon neutral". My right eyebrow involuntarily raises in a Spock-like fashion and I look for the catch. The term itself sits uncomfortably with me, along with 'carbon offset'. Anyhow, the concept goes like this: when the fuel is burned it releases only the amount of CO2 the biological fuel source absorbed during growth. So far so green. The cynical devil on my shoulder argues that under the same rules fossil fuels could be classified as carbon neutral as they only emit the amount of CO2 that was sequestered millions of years ago by dead vegetation.

To be truly carbon neutral, the process of growing, gathering, processing and transportation should not result in a net increase in emissions. That means that before the fuel gets to the tank in your car each step in the process must either be powered by renewable energy and/or more carbon neutral energy sources.

In an economic culture where growth rules, successful carbon neutral fuels would ensure that we become a victim of that success. The algae fuel would be subject to usual market forces (assuming we avoid daft minimum biofuel use rules like the EU is trying to push), so as demand raises, so will production. Whilst the algae sucks up CO2, when it burns it will put it back. There is no growth, but there also is no net reduction in emissions. The most that can be hoped for is that the rate of CO2 emissions growth may be reduced.

Whilst such initiatives may sound impressive, they don't meet the key challenge - we need to reduce our carbon emissions. Even if every car in the world could sustainably run on biofuels, we would still need to make drastic cuts in the carbon budget if we want a hope of staving off runaway climate change.

With this post I'm afraid I'm calling shenanigans somewhat on many greens who see a future in algal biofuels and a way of weaning our economy off fossil fuel. Don't get me wrong, I can see a limited opportunity for such a product, but only one which fits into a diverse energy source model, with the focus on net reductions in CO2 rather than mere neutrality.

So I'm not so cynical that I can't see the investment possibilities, and I'd much prefer to see more investment in such initiatives than drilling for more oil, but a lot of people will get rich on what is essentially a status quo technology, a 'less worse' solution.

To see these biofuels as some great rescue from growing emissions could be dangerous wishful thinking.

Burning money

Hot on the heels of Eddie Mac's silly statement on waste is the announcement that Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland councils have been successful in their bid for £73.5m cash to fund their waste strategy.

I say 'their waste strategy', because the consultation was manipulated to favour incineration, and the councils' Waste Partnership doesn't want us oiks to know the details of what's really going on behind the scenes. Meetings are held in camera and Freedom of Information requests hit the bureaucratic buffers.

Expect the council and it's mouthpiece Fiona Brown to crow over the funding announcement. Similarly, expect the council and DEFRA to keep their yaps shut about DEFRA’s assessment of the Expression of Interest (the bid document referred to DEFRA) being kept from public view.

The councils don't want it released under the excuse of commercial confidentiality (for the councils that is, not private companies) and DEFRA is only too happy to oblige.

MacRubbish

Over on planet EddieMac, the councillor believes that rubbish incinerators produce "absolutely no emissions". That's quite a claim. The Hebburn councillor and cabinet member for U Turns And Sucking Up To Tesco must have missed the bits in the council's own reports that clearly say that incinerators produce shit loads of nasty stuff.

Watt for watt, incinerators produce about three times more CO2 than a gas-fired power station, spew nasty cancer causing dioxins in airborne particulates over the surrounding area and leaves a waste slag at the end of the process that's so toxic that its got to go to specialist landfill sites.

Minor pollution is monitored by local authorities, but major pollution emissions is within the remit of the Environment Agency. Domestic waste incinerators have to operate under the Integrated Pollution and Prevent Control (IPPC) system, which is evaluated and monitored by the Environment Agency. That means the EA certainly thinks that incinerators have a major emissions problem and they should keep an eye on them.

You would have thought a cabinet member would be clued up enough to know about that before talking shite.

If his reported statement is true, Eddie and Labour seriously suck donkey balls on this issue, and clearly shouldn't be let anywhere near anything as dangerous as a decision, never mind an unquestioning and pliant print media. He's a liability.

Let's hope he makes another u-turn.

Carbon campaign

A 10 minute film by Ecologist Films documenting how the government and its corporate whoremasters use propaganda, dirty tricks and rallies a police force with carte blanche powers against climate change protestors. The chilling use of anti terrorism laws by the police, and made up ones to stop people filming their actions suggest that the government is using the police in a secret war against protest.

In August there will be a demonstration at Kingsnorth power station in Kent against the plans to allow a new coal fired station. It will be interesting to see how the government, police and a willing right wing media will spin it.

Swindled

George Monbiot says it all.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, like Against Nature, had a huge impact, persuading many people that man-made climate change is not taking place. I attended a presentation by a pollster from Ipsos Mori who showed that there had been a decline last year in the number of people who believed that global warming was a real phenomenon — primarily, she said, as a result of Durkin's film.

Sound familiar?

The forests of Easter Island

A timely piece from George Monbiot, on the fishermen fighting for their own extinction. Despite their technology, the last of the hunter gatherers of our society are dying out, an industry eating itself, gorging on rapacious fishing. This is a failure to live sustainably, and a visible manifestation in our time of what happens when ecological and resource limits are ignored.

We've seen the impact of this kind of behaviour already destroy the Grand Banks cod fishing.

There is no shortage of solutions: protect spawning grounds from fishing, create reserves, stop beam and reef net trawling and even perhaps paying fisherman not to fish to allow fishing grounds and stocks to recover.

And say goodbye to cheap fish.

Voting away democracy

Another step towards a Britain not in the hands of it's citizens, but in the hands of big money. It's a return to feudalism in all but name.  

Whilst the government justifies the gutting of the planning laws on the basis of planning for climate change, the new system will not recognise climate change, the environment or people.  It will, however, recognise what's good for the CBI and its chums.

This move has put planning firmly into the hands of a free market economic fundamentalism that subordinates our society to the demands of big business. Gordon Brown has managed to smash our right to speak out against developments, and turn into another one of his pet pfi projects. Privatising democracy.

And who did this?

The very fuckers we voted for.

Want to stop a nuclear power station on your doorstep? An incinerator next to your kids' school? What about your house being demolished for that new motorway?

Now citizen, there's fuck all you can do about it, and you can thank your MP for that.

Clerical error?

Usually I radge against the clergy when they put their foot in it. In this case, my initial radge-o-meter was turned down to 'mildly irritated' by the furore that the comments of Gordon Mursell, the Bishop of Stafford, has caused. True, the comments don't really help things, with tenuous comparisons of our society's relative inaction over global heating with Austrian nutter Josef Fritzl, but Mursell has unintentionally highlighted the barely rational belief structures of climate change denial.

Whilst those in denial over climate change either choose not to follow the science or cherry-pick their sources, it seems that many have taken his comments very much to heart as a personal attack on their denial ideology. The Bish's language and his position as a cleric confirms the tin-foil hat delusions of many deniers who like to portray climate change as some kind of new age religion, some even going so far as to proudly proclaim themselves as 'heretics'. The comments on the Telegraph thread are clear evidence of this group-think.

Perhaps using such language makes for some fiery pulpit bashing, but using monster á la mode Fritzl just seems like Mursell's trying too hard to stimulate debate. Well, it worked, but I don't think Mursell expected such a Pavlovian response.

If any comparison of deniers or those opposed to action is to be made, the most valid is to the supporters of appeasement before the Second World War. They didn't want to believe the evidence before their eyes, and weren't stirred into action until the bombs started falling.

We have faced similar challenges. Acid rain, ozone layer depletion and particulate emissions. We came up with solutions to them all through agreement and policy, despite opposition. We can do it again, although with climate change, it needs to be a response on a much bigger scale.

Back to the war analogy. Since tackling climate change now needs a war footing response, I wonder if our children and grand children will ask us in the future "What did you do in the war against climate change?"

The dirty truth

I was thinking about coal a while back, sparked by an article in the Shields Gazette (one of several over the last year) where local geologist Paul Younger was trying to sex up coal energy extraction. I never posted my blog on it, but was reminded about it today when I read George Mobiot's article. So here it is...

In carbon emissions terms, energy from coal is about as bad as you can get. It's dirty and kicks up a lot of other nasty things you wouldn't want your kids to breathe. Environmentally, extracting it is mostly disastrous. Despite efficiency improvements, even the new proposed coal energy plants will spew more CO2 than their predecessors.

I admit that I used to be warm to the concept of replacing 'King Coal' with 'Clean Coal', the latter being the burning of coal using a technological fix to extract the CO2 from the coal, either before or during burning, and bury the CO2 in exhausted oil or coal seams.

Commonly known as 'carbon capture and storage', it promises an opportunity for the UK to use it's hundreds of years worth of coal resources without a carbon hit. It seemed like a sensible way to bridge any coming 'energy gap' whilst renewable energy technologies matured, and guarantee a level of national energy security that gas or nuclear can't provide. A true energy magic bullet.

I've changed my mind. Carbon capture is industry-government groupthink bollocks.

Sequestration technology is still very much in it's infancy, and unproven as a mass commercial solution. Viable large scale capture technology may not be about for decades, and probably too late to have any benign effect on emissions. In May last year Alistair Darling conceded that commercial carbon capture technologies “might never become available”. Even if such technology does become available, there is no guarantee that such storage will be safe and wouldn't just place an unfair burden of responsibility on future generations. In these terms, carbon capture and storage fits a similar risk and sustainability space as nuclear power.

Essentially, the process will require digging up the carbon, burning it to release energy and create CO2, and then capture the CO2 and bury the carbon again - whilst ensuring that the capture and storage process uses considerably less energy than you produced from the burning.

Another more immediate problem with carbon capture is that government and energy companies will throw shit loads of money into research. Money which could be used to develop renewable power.

Instead of creating an environment to encourage the growth in renewable infrastructure that we need, through tools such as carbon price controls to make renewable energy more attractive, our government is hell-bent on coal extraction and burning.

In my past preference for capture, I had assumed that any coal dug up would be used in British power stations. However, in the cold cash reality of a globalised market the coal would go to the highest bidder - wherever they may be in the world. The economic powerhouse that China is becoming could buy all the coal it could afford, pushing up coal prices which would no doubt impact on domestic UK energy supply. We can already see China's hunger for uranium accelerating uranium prices. So much for the energy security argument.

Meanwhile the British countryside is scarred with opencast mines.

The carbon locked the rocks has already been captured and stored. It seems that the best way to reduce fossil fuel emissions is by leaving the fossil fuels in the ground in the first place.

The way to go forward is zero carbon. Large scale investment in any fossil based generation is a waste and a danger.

How independent is independent?

A great post from punkscience, discussing the sinister use of allegedly 'independent' organisations to propagate the opinions of whoever is paying the cheque. This technique isn't limited to corporate 'think-tanks' or 'independent analysts' - the state isn't afraid to use a bit of the old 'independent' subterfuge to mislead the public too.

It reminded me of how our local education bodies on Tyneside were marshalled to produce a teaching resource website called 'xingthetyne' to promote the second Tyne Tunnel project. The creators of the website, South Tyneside and North Tyneside Education Business Partnerships, (along with the education departments of North and South Tyneside prostituting themselves to the cause) claimed it was to encourage student participation in democracy and citizenship. But all of the information on the website came exclusively from the tunnel sponsors, and naturally represented their views. Despite the objections to the tunnel, none of the opposition viewpoints were represented in the material.

One question was 'Why do we need a second tunnel?', instead of analysing if there was a 'need' for a new tunnel. A clear case of teaching children what to think instead of how to think. I wonder if the genius who wrote this beauty is now spending their time compiling consultation questionnaires for South Tyneside Council.

What was meant to be an independent educational resource was little more than a marketing tool to sell roads to kids and perpetuate the 'car is king' culture, and received some enthusiastic support from Labour leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

The 'xingthetyne' site now seems to have disappeared into the internet ether, apparently no longer needed now the mission to get permission to build the tunnel has been successful.

I'm now expecting the local waste partnership to sponsor a new educational resource "How incinerators are great and getting cancer from the shit they spew out isn't too bad actually."

How many deaths is a flight worth?

Yet again, George Monbiot produces a thought-provoking analysis. Today he discussed the freaky way in which economics is used to justify behaviours we wouldn't, as normally morally concious beings, objectively consider as good.

Economics, as envisaged by it's father Adam Smith, should be used as a tool to make existence better for humanity. But instead of a tool, it's used as a weapon, and in the case of Heathrow cited by Monbiot used to hammer through developments which may not just directly damage a minority, but contribute to the erosion of the general well-being of us all.

The 'economic benefits' argument is often used to justify anything from the second Tyne Tunnel to a new runway at Heathrow. There are similarities. Both projects promise (doubtful) 'economic benefits'. Both projects are driven by a Labour government for the benefit of a minority. But both projects also promise significant environmental degradation, and guide us towards a future we should be carefully edging away from - rather than running for the cliff edge at full tilt.

Projected economic benefits are often wholly subjective and dependant on a wide range of wildly optimistic scenarios and unmeasurable factors. But now the economic benefit argument is being twisted further in a sick accounting - a deadly ledger to tot up the value put upon lives of the poor in other countries.

Some (who sometimes falsely call themselves libertarians) cry that this is our 'right'. We pay for the 'right' to consume with our economic success and superiority, blind or uncaring that it comes at a price that is often paid by others. Those rights are allegedly inalienable - irrespective of the damage done to others. Anything that challenges those perceived rights, like laws, taxes or regulations, are derided as interventionist, dictatorial or that lazy old cliché, 'nanny state'. This is mistaking true human rights for an excuse to do whatever the hell we want; free from society, government and civil responsibility and displacing any kernel of guilt with the excuse that "it's my right".

Like a disease, this behaviour has it's own defence mechanisms - even daring to suggest that these attitudes form a core of the anti-social behaviour which haunts our society attracts contemptuous charges of being sanctimonious.

Decisions based upon economic factors will always have a place; after all, economics is still just a tool. But we should all worry when lives are measured in pounds and dollars and our rights in reckless behaviour.

In an ideal world the true rights of everyone - rich and poor - would be balanced through democracy and expressed with the currency of human rights. The need for this balance is acute and will become more so with the effects of a heating planet. Unfortunately in the feudal corporate/consumer system we currently inhabit the shallow 'rights' enjoyed by the affluent will be paid with the lives of the poor.

News from Sunderland

From South Tyneside Friends of the Earth, and with the kind permission of Dan Alliband of BAN Waste, a report on another council revolt, but this time in Sunderland - and how the opposition left the meeting in disgust at the Labour council's undemocratic ploy to keep the Waste Strategy secret:

"About 30 people were on the public gallery at Sunderland Civic on Wednesday evening of 30th January when the council proposed to eject public and press to allow councillors to look at the ‘Business Case’ for the Joint Waste Management Partnership."

Note - despite several Freedom of Information requests, the Business Case has been withheld from the public.

"Sunderland council's argument was based on the argument that it was in the public’s interest as council tax payers to not disclose budget figures for whatever they were planning, because the private bidders would then know what to bid up to. The independents and conservatives put up a case against this to support ‘freedom of information’ and that it was not in the public’s interest for the discussion to be private. Why should people be denied access to all other information about the plans (e.g. locations and treatments etc).

"There was a vote – and 22 voted against the public being ejected, and 47 voted for, at this point the 22 councillors walked out (the council make up is 57 LAB, 1 LIB, 4 Independents and 13 TORY – so this I think this included all independents & Tories and possibly the Lib, and odd Lab back-bencher!?).

"While the Labour councillors jibed how undemocratic it was that the Tories not wanting to discuss the item while they voted so solidly against Freedom of Information was laughable!

"The mayor adjourned the meeting for 5 minutes while the public were asked to leave, but a handful stayed, including FOE members, and the police were called. The mayor and his labour chums returned to the chamber and declared that the agenda item would have to be deferred to next month.

"The remaining members of the public then left by a side exit to avoid the police who had seemingly arrived at the main reception!"

Fire on waste mountain

Last year Councillor Michael Clare, Lead Member Environment, Housing and Transport on South Tyneside Council, declared that no waste incinerator would be built in South Tyneside.

In today's Sunderland Echo, we have a bit of a revelation:

"Secret documents seen by the Echo reveal officials are looking into burning the city's rubbish, along with Gateshead's and South Tyneside's, to create energy in the way power stations generate electricity by burning coal and gas."

Otherwise known as incineration. But not to worry South Tynesiders, Coun Clare is there to protect us. Or perhaps not.

Fiona Brown, project director for the Waste Management Partnership, said:

"... a number of possible sites for the waste treatment facility have been identified in all three council areas, but the partnership could not reveal the locations for "commercial reasons" in case the land had to be bought."

All three council areas.

To be honest we don't really know what's going on. The three councils involved have buttoned up the waste strategy under the cloak of commercial confidentiality. Several Freedom of Information requests have been rejected. Not to protect the commercial interests of the companies involved - but to protect the three councils.

Sunderland council is debating the strategy tomorrow, and council papers issued in advance suggest that the public may be asked to leave the public gallery during the debate.

Local democracy in action.