The Common Ground Partnership www.CommonGround2008.com invites you to submit your digital art entries – with an environmental theme - to be considered for publication in the 2008 Common Ground Collection. Merging new media, art and philanthropy, Common Ground focuses attention on – and raises money for - environmental projects worldwide. There will be prizes, an awards gala, an international touring exhibition, and more. Common Ground will be accepting entries from around the world, and will premier selected pieces at an exhibition in Beijing to coincide with the 2008 Olympics.
Thanks for Diana at Common Ground for the post.
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This morning, the bookies were offering odds of 16-1 that Gordon Brown would be wearing a green tie. Had you taken them on, you would have lost your money. In the aftermath of Mr Brown’s 11th budget speech at 12.30pm today, Ben Nickell from GreenSteps takes a quick look at the green measures outlined. We’ll let you decide if you think Mr Brown has turned green.
The concrete measures announced included the following points:
1) There will be no stamp duty for ‘zero carbon’ homes up to £500,000 in value up to the year 2012. (However, what constitutes a ‘zero carbon’ home in the eyes of the treasury is a contentious point.)
2) Grants of £300 - £4000 will be available for pensioners to insulate their homes and install central heating.
3) There will be a 50% increase in the grants available for microgeneration technology.
4) Landfill tax per tonne will increase by £8 a year to 2011.
5) The most polluting cars will pay £300 a year in excise duty, rising to £400 in 2008.
The least polluting cars will pay only £35 not the current £50.
6) £50m will be given to a 10 country initiative to save the African rainforest.
In addition to this, the chancellor mentioned some further initiatives:
1) OFGEM has been instructed to look at simplifying the process by which homes with microgeneration technology can sell electricity back to the grid.
2) The Government has been working with banks and lenders to develop mortgages for immediate capital investment in energy saving measures
3) Mr Brown said he had written to EU finance ministers to ask for a cut in VAT on eco-friendly products from 17.5% to 5%
4) The bio-fuels target is for all fuel to contain 5% bio-fuel mix by 2010 and 10% by 2020
Leader of the Tory party, David Cameron, was quick to point out that the current government has presided over an increase in CO2 emissions since 1997 and that green taxes as a proportion of income are lower now than when they came into power.
So, do you think Mr Brown is Mr Green?
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I’ve seen it on the telly, read it in the papers, avoided blogging about it for the longest time, but no more. You will be subjected to politics right here at EcoStreet, right now, in this blog post. The race for the green vote is on. Who do you trust?
David Cameron’s Tory Party has made a bold move by planning a new set of “environmental taxes” on air travel, something that Gordon Brown thinks is foolish and a move that he would not dare to follow even if he wanted to. The government have made some big green moves though, with the publication of the Climate Change Bill, obliging the UK to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. The opposition says the cut’s not high enough, and doesn’t include aviation and shipping. And let’s not forget that as a member of the EU we have also pledged to lower emissions by 20% by 2020.
The Daily Telegraph accuses the Tories of gesture politics:
The most depressing aspect of the affair is its tokenism. British air travel accounts for less than 0.1 per cent of global CO2 emissions. True, the fact that we can’t do everything doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything. And, in this age of gesture politics, the Tory proposal makes tactical sense.
But think of how much more practically we could help the environment than with this act of symbolism. We expect such behaviour from the Left. For eco-idealists, the whole attraction of the Kyoto process is that it signals a declaration of intent, even if its effect is negligible.
But Tories are meant to be hard-headed pragmatists. They can surely do better than this.
But The Independent says that they are being pragmatic, and that in view of the threat that is facing our planet the state should be adopting a “more activist approach”:
At the heart of the problem is the fact that the Government is still playing politics with climate change. The basis exists for a cross-party consensus to bring in the necessary tough measures. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats both lobbied hard for annual emissions targets to be included in this Bill. The Government refused and, wrongly, chose instead five-yearly targets. Both opposition parties are in favour of increasing the price of flying. This is a golden opportunity for the Government to act in a bold and visionary way, but instead they missed an opportunity in a benevolent political climate.
Hamish McRae believes that taxation will provide the results, while Alan Simpson MP prefers a more direct approach.
Who do you think is right?
My gut reaction would be to say legislate, make it illegal to leave your TV on standby, as comic MATT at The Daily Telegraph has already explored (see above), but would that just put people’s hackles up. Tax them to hell and gone and they’ll still be pissed off. And whose actually saying that the “green taxes” go to helping the planet, or are they going to just be swallowed up by the coffers of tax coming from everywhere else and being spent on roads, etc.
Education, that’s the key. Once we’re all sufficiently versed in the truth about global warming (not that tosh that we’ve been subjected to by Channel 4’s The Great Global Warming Swindle), we won’t mind “green taxes” and there will be ways of avoiding paying more by living more sustainable lives. And investment, by the state, in projects that will make it easier for us all to cut our emissions, like forgetting about all this nuclear nonsense and putting the money into renewables. But I wonder, what do you think?
Comic by MATT/The Daily Telegraph.
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