Skip to content
Home > Archives for EcoStreet Moderator > Page 2

EcoStreet Moderator

Is Tony gambling with our future?

Ben Nickell of GreenSteps asks whether Tony Blair is gambling with our future.

—

As blizzards sweep across parts of North America, leading US politicians are meeting legislators from the EU, China, Japan and India to try and break the deadlock in the international climate change debate. The meeting is an attempt to agree proposals for a new world deal on climate change for the forthcoming G8 summit.

Back in 2004, in a speech on climate change to celebrate the 10th anniversary of HRH the Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment programme, Tony Blair said:

“The emission of greenhouse gases….is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long term. And by long term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence…There is no doubt that the time to act is now.”

So he seems to understand the scale of the problem. Tony Blair now faces the challenge of brokering a deal which the US will agree to and yet which is meaningful in the face of growing urgency.

Read More »Is Tony gambling with our future?

Saving energy with your PC

pc keyboard.jpgHow many of us are aware of the inbuilt power saving features on our PCs? And how many of us use them? EcoStreet forum member Solomon does, and he can tell us how to do it too.

—

Your PC has several built in power modes, each of which will turn off the PC/monitor/hard drives etc at various times. You can set up a power scheme (or several) of your own, or customise existing ones to suit your own needs. All Windows operating systems since Windows 95 have these power schemes, that you can use to save energy and money. This article is aimed at Windows XP users, but other versions of Windows should be very similar.

To begin setting them up, first decide how you use your PC. There’s little point setting up a power scheme that will annoy you because it turns your monitor off constantly, but there’s also little point setting up a scheme that waits for 4 hours before turning it off. Remember that these schemes are not set in stone, and they are so easy to edit, so that it pays to experiment a bit.

You will find the Power Schemes in the Control Panel. This is accessible from the Start Menu, or Windows Explorer. In there, look for the icon titled “Power Options”. Please note that this can sometimes be found under “Performance and Maintenance”.

When this is open, you will see a Window with 4 tabs – “Power Schemes”, “Advanced”, “Hibernate” and “UPS”.

Power schemes is selected automatically.

You will see a drop-down box with the option “Home/Office Desk”. Several other options are available, including “Minimal Power Management”, “Presentation”, “Max Battery”, etc. Each option is a suggested power scheme for each type of usage – a laptop user would select “Max Battery”, for example. If you select a different scheme, you’ll see the settings change. If you wish, you can select one of these schemes that suits you, click apply, then OK, and your PC will use the new settings.

However, most of the default Windows settings are rather tame, so you can set the timings yourself.

Read More »Saving energy with your PC

High profile experts debate climate change

High profile experts debate climate change, posted by Ben Nickell, GreenSteps Ltd.

Billed as ‘Climate change and the environment – your questions answered’, Ben Nickell, GreenSteps Ltd’s Managing Director, was eager to discover how a debate could live up to such an ambitious title.

A lively debate on climate change took place at the Royal Geographical Society on Thursday 30th November; featuring Professor David Bellamy OBE, Greg Barker MP (Shadow Environment Minister), Peter Mather (UK CEO of BP), Professor Mark Maslin and BBC Newsnight’s ‘ethical man’ Justin Rowlatt. I attended the event to find out how the panel of experts tackled the types of questions posed by an informed and inquisitive audience.

Whilst an evening such as this was only ever going to scratch the surface of the subject matter, a number of valuable conclusions appeared to be reached. These can be summed up as follows: Yes, climate change is a serious physical and economic issue for the UK; yes, the weight of scientific evidence indicates that climate change is happening now; yes, we should all be doing something about it and we can each make a difference; no, it is not a fruitless exercise to reduce our own CO2 emissions in the light of the industrialisation of China and India; no, raising green taxes is not the best incentive to persuade people to ‘go green’; yes, the UK has an opportunity to lead the way in green technology and eco-living; and whether you agree or disagree about the extent of global warming and climate change, the positive impacts of adopting a ‘greener’ lifestyle are beneficial to individuals, communities and nations and are therefore worth adopting anyway. Read on to discover how and why these conclusions were reached.

Read More »High profile experts debate climate change