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.

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?

Green weekend

This year's Newcastle Green Festival takes place tomorrow and Sunday at Leazes Park in Newcastle Upon Tyne. The free festival's Saturday event is a great day out for the family, whilst Sunday is aimed more at the adults (although not exclusively) with great live music (powered by chip fat!) and beer tents.

Greens now the opposition!

Nope, not in South Tyneside, where the results were very disappointing, but in Norwich. Well done!

Nuclearsaurus rex

If there was any evidence that Sir David King is fast losing his credibility as a scientist and becoming a corporate whore, it's his assertion that greens are "keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century". This is the kind of bollocks you would expect from loony right wingers.

His new book "The Hot Topic" seems to be aimed at the market that is warm to Bjorn Lomborg's pseudo denial philosophy, one in which the solutions are purely a matter of technology, and ignores the kind of societal changes that are needed.

King is a dinosaur, where his rosy 1950s vision of technology and consumption being the only recourse to tackle climate change.

But don't take it from me. PunkScience puts it much more succinctly.