Google has launched the UK Carbon Footprint Project to help people in the UK to calculate, track and compare our carbon footprints with others living in the UK in 3 steps. Step 1: When you decide to get started calculating… Read More »Google’s latest green offering: the UK Carbon Footprint Project
The amazing REM’s new song Until the Day is Done accompanies the trailer of CNN’s new documentary Planet in Peril. Watch the full documentary on CNN International on Wednesday 24th & Thursday 25th October at 13.00 & 19.00 GMT. “There’s… Read More »Until the Day is Done/Planet in Peril
This is a guest post by Pete Roche, editor of the No2nuclearpower website.
The UK Government’s consultation on the Future of Nuclear Power – forced on to it by a successful legal action brought by Greenpeace – ended on Wednesday 10th October. By coincidence, Wednesday was also the 50th anniversary of Britain’s worst nuclear accident when the reactor core at Windscale caught fire sending a plume of radioactive material across the country. Five decades ago secrecy and cover-ups did nothing to reassure those with growing doubts about the risks of nuclear technology. Today, the closed consultation has carried on the tradition of wilfully misleading the public.
Britain’s leading environmental groups withdrew from the consultation prior to 8th September when a series of consultation workshops, organised by Opinion Leader Research (OLR), were held in eight cities around the UK with 1,100 member of the public who were asked to assess the case for and against nuclear power and then take a vote. The environment groups said the government had failed to fairly reflect the arguments presented at the meetings, and was distorting the evidence. Independently, 20 senior academics agreed that participants were misled.
An inconvenient truth about nuclear – that it can only make a small contribution to reducing the UK’s overall CO2 emissions – was not mentioned. The information given to the public was biased and incomplete. The Government’s intention was clear – provide very limited, biased information in order to lead the participants to a predetermined conclusion. Greenpeace has made a formal complaint to the Market Research Standards Council about the conduct by Opinion Leader Research.
Read More »UK’s nuclear consultation sham
A satirical look at how climate change is affecting the mating habits of the birds and bees of the British countryside.
You may recall a post here a while ago about a group in Sweden who call themselves The Indians of the Concrete Jungle. Their campaign involves deflating tyres on 4-wheel drive vehicles and is spreading across Sweden like wildfire, stirring up a national debate and bringing out the worst in 4×4 drivers.
Here is a message from The Indians of the Concrete Jungle to the rest of the world:
Everyone knows it: action on climate change is a matter of utter urgency. Nonetheless, carbon emissions continue to accelerate, powered by the uncontrollable machines of the world economy. One eminent sign of this rush to disaster is the trend of SUVs, clogging the streets in our Western cities, emitting up to three times more carbon than cars of average size on the market. SUVs have become a symbol of the irrational destruction of the most basic conditions of life. Attached to no human need whatsoever – only to the conspicuous consumption of an affluent class, feeling the ”need” to flaunt monster vehicles – they constitute perhaps the most insane source of unnecessary carbon emissions. Everyone should know it: if we can’t deal with SUVs swiftly, we can’t deal with any other emissions either. And nothing less than our survival is at stake.
Armed with this analysis, and with mung beans or grains of gravel, a group called The Indians of the Concrete Jungle has struck against hundreds of SUVs in Sweden in recent months. The first action occured in the poshest part of innercity Stockholm in June. Tyres on 60 SUVs in Östermalm were deflated. A weblog was posted on the internet, and since then, the campaign for disarmament of SUVs in Sweden has spread like wildfire. To this date, approximately 1000 SUVs have been temporarily disarmed in at least nine Swedish cities, including the three largest (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö) as well as several smaller cities; new tribes are popping up by the week. The Indians of the Concrete Jungle have appeared in virtually every major media outlet in the country – from a prime time debate on national television, to a very sympathetic report in the company of Indians in action published in the biggest morning newspaper, to an op-ed piece in the biggest evening paper and countless news reports in local media. Thus, in a matter of months, the issue of unnecessary carbon emissions in general and SUVs in particular have risen to the top of the agenda in Sweden – something that never happened before – and ownership of the vehicle has become all the less convenient.
Read More »Tyres on over 1000 SUVs deflated in Sweden
Our government supports the building of new nuclear power stations across the UK as a means of securing a future energy supply. But instead of “bridging the power gap” between fossil fuels and renewables, this means we’ll be creating tens… Read More »36 ways to stop nuclear power
“The youth of this country have been working hard for change. We’ve read the writing on the wall and will not let our leaders fail us on addressing global warming. And what have we already done about it? A hell… Read More »Power Shift 2007: the first ever youth global warming summit
Climate change is at the top of Europe’s political agenda but not everyone is happy about that. The world’s biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, is working hard to block internationally agreed policies designed to combat climate change. Take a look how… Read More »The Exxon Files: climate change is hot, but Exxon is not cool with that
When Jeremy Walters’ interview with leading weather scientist Sir John Houghton created some interest at Digg.com, I was surprised to read the comments left by, and the sheer quantity of, Diggers who are convinced that as far as global warming… Read More »Diggers think global warming is nothing to worry about