There’s a new bottom-up force for tackling climate change and preparing for Peak Oil. It’s called, the Transition Towns initiative. Starting from the town of Totnes in Devon, over 100 towns, and villages, and even a Forest and a City, have already signed up. They all help one another through the Transition Network, but Transition is about communities on the ground bringing together their existing projects and skills to prepare for life after cheap oil.

World demand for oil is relentlessly climbing, driven by the booming new economies such as China. The people in these countries quite legitimately aspire to the same standard of living as people in the rich West enjoy. But world population is also rising, and will reach at least 9 billion before it possibly stabilises around 2050. Quite literally, the Earth is full. We have already used half the fossil fuel oil available - the planet is not going to be able to meet the growing demands for consumption from its human population.

Of course, burning all this oil is going to wreak havoc on our climate, and the poorest will suffer the most.

Transition is a hugely positive response to these crises. By re-building resiliant, vibrant local communities, we can greatly improve our quality of life without having to increase our consumption - our ’standard of living’ - to do so.

The first Transition City is Bristol. Now a diverse and loose coalition of people in Birmingham want to make a positive start on Transition for their city. If you want to find out more, please contact me - treaclemine [at] intranet [dot] org - Transition is about whole communities working together, and every single individual has something to offer, whether their memories of coping with rationing, their skills at setting up online communications, or their enthusiasm for bringing in future generations.

A draft flyer for this project is now available.

Describing themselves as “Europe’s leading eco-centre”, CAT aim to: “… offer solutions to some of the most serious challenges facing our planet and the human race, such as climate change, pollution and the waste of precious resources. … demonstrate practical ways of addressing these problems. … show that living more sustainably is not only easy to attain but can provide a better quality of life.”

They go on to say, “Averting a massive environmental disaster is not out of our reach, although if we continue to treat the early signs with apathy, it soon will be. We address every aspect of the average lifestyle - the key areas we work in are renewable energy, environmental building, energy efficiency, organic growing and alternative sewage systems.”

CAT has recently expanded their online presence. As well as their main Information Web site, and Green Shop they now have a Discussion Forum site, and are part of the new UK Earth Centre Network site. There are a huge range of ’solutions’ out there - what’s lacking is the will to put them into action across the country and the world. Read, learn and act?

Rivers on every continent are drying out, threatening severe water shortages, according to a new WWF report.

The report, World’s Top Rivers at Risk, released ahead of World Water Day (22 March), lists the top ten rivers that are fast dying as a result of climate change, pollution and dams.

“All the rivers in the report symbolize the current freshwater crisis, which we have been signalling for years,” says WWF Global Freshwater Programme Director Jamie Pittock.

“Poor planning and inadequate protection of natural areas mean we can no longer assume that water will flow forever. Like the climate change crisis, which now has the attention of business and government, we want leaders to take notice of the emergency facing freshwater now not later.”

Continue Reading »

Greenpeace: Car manufacturers are trying to sabotage a new European climate law that would force them to improve the efficiency of their new vehicles. But there’s time to act to make sure that Europe’s cars are cleaner and greener in future.

Last week in Brussels, a behind the scenes tussle was raging that had implications for the future of our planet. The European Environment Commissioner had intended to announce new measures that would force car manufacturers to produce more efficient cars.

European cars, he proposed, would have to reduce the average emissions of their new cars 120g of carbon dioxide per kilometre by 2012. It was a simple and attainable measure that would have an immediate impact on reducing Europe’s spiralling greenhouse gas emissions. Continue Reading »

Reading George Monbiot’s latest book, ‘Heat’, he talk about energy options. When referring to coal and nuclear, he says that given the choice between the ‘mountain top removal’ that’s taking place in the Appalachian’s for coal and nuclear, I’d go nuclear. This is not what I thought he’d say, so I looked into what’s happening in the Appalachian mountains in a little more detail.

So far, over 450 mountains have been removed. Yes, removed. They blow them up bit by bit and dump all the debris into the valleys where the coal is extracted from the rock. The toxic slurry left behind causes massive environmental problems in itself, whilst the rock debris causes river flows to change. Continue Reading »

“Spiralseed and OrganicLea cordially invite you to the launch of ‘EARTH WRITINGS’ by Graham Burnett,

Sat 13 Jan 2007
4pm onwards

The Hornbeam Centre, 458 Hoe Street, Walthamstow London E17
(near the Bakers Arms - 5 minutes walk from Walthamstow Central BR)

This event will be preceded at 2pm by a talk ‘Introduction to Permaculture’ by Mark Warner of ‘Naturewise’ All welcome! Please feel free to pass this message onto anybody who might be interested.

www.spiralseed.co.uk/earthwritings

–
Graham Burnett: Integrated Design for Local Environmental Resources”

From Rolling Stone Magzine…

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That’s a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America’s thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield’s total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company’s slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount. Continue Reading »

Brazil Environmental Authorities Investigating Fish Die-Off in Southern River

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Environmental authorities were investigating what caused some 15 tons of dead fish to wash up in a major river in a southern state Monday.

Andre Milanez, of the Rio Grande do Sul state environmental agency FEPAM said that lack of rainfall was the most likely cause of death but that some kind of industrial accident or illegal runoff had not been ruled out. Continue Reading »

The mainstream news is reporting that the UK Government, through Environment Secretary David Milliband, are considering personal carbon rationing. The BBC story reports “An annual allowance would be allocated, with [a carbon credit] card being swiped on various items such as travel, energy or food. … people who used less than their allowance could sell any surplus to those who wanted more.”

This kind of carbon rationing scheme was set out in detail by Mayer Hillman in his 2004 book How to Save the Planet - he calls carbon rationing ‘a gift horse’ which will improve our quality of life. The Green Party was the first to adopt carbon rationing as official policy (under the title ‘tradable quotas’). But the Green Party has signed up to the Contract and Converge framework - personal carbon quotas are just one possible element in putting C&C into practice.

Do our elected representatives have the political will to bring in effective climate change emissions controls? (Can they acknowledge past mistakes, and give credit where due?)

A ‘carbon offset’ is something you can buy to ‘repay the planet’ for some of your carbon dioxide emissions - like paying for someone to plant trees to balance the petrol burned in your car. Readers of the New Internationalist magazine will already know that ‘carbon offsetting’ is controvertial in some quarters.

Now the mainstream presse is also asking … are “the eco-conscious” simply “paying to ease guilt”? You can read the Associated Press story - or consider “the key question” - “Is your money helping to make something happen that wouldn’t otherwise happen?”