Stop Kingsnorth

I was interested to get an email today from the World Development Movement plugging their Stop Kingsnorth campaign. I expect Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the like to be campaigning against a new generation of coal-fired power stations, but for WDM to make this such a major campaign shows how serious they are about linking climate change to their core issue of tackling the underlying causes of poverty.

As they put it on the Stop Kingsnorth site:

Climate change is the greatest crisis facing humanity. Whilst rich countries are responsible for most of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere it is the poorest, most marginalised communities in the world that will be hit the hardest by climate change.

Kingsnorth power station alone will release more CO2 each year than Ghana. It will not use carbon capture and storage technology, and so will contribute to climate change that is already hitting the world’s poor first and hardest.

They also have a useful map indicating seven more planned coal-burning power stations.

Warning - Young people are getting angry

What's more important UFOs, Chuck Norris or Climate Change?

There's a petition calling on US reporters to ask the questions that really matter here.

Walk It

Following in the footsteps of Transport for London's excellent journeyplanner, which makes pulbic transport so much easier when you are using an unfamiliar route, is WalkIt.com.

They only claim coverage for central London, but I've checked out as far as Archway and got reasonable directions. It recommended the exact route I take to work and while I wouldn't take their suggestion to my old office (I'd take a scenic route to avoid walking along the Holloway Road), it is probably the most direct way and easiest to follow if you don't know the area.

They give estimated journey times depending on your walking speed and as a bonus they calculate how many calories you will burn and tell you how much CO2 you've saved by not using a car or bus.

Count your carbon (and then cut it)

An excellent review of two Carbon Calculation books in today's Guardian by Jeremy Leggett, author of Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis. He looks at Chris Goodall's in-depth calculator How to Live a Low-Carbon Life and Mark Lynas's pocket guide Carbon Counter: Calculate Your Carbon Footprint.

"I could nitpick about what is counted and what is not in these two fine books. But that would be futile. The point is this. If kilograms-of-carbon-saved becomes some kind of measure of wealth and health, then Microsoft's all-embracing carbon-counting software will not be far off. The carbon-aware future is coming. Despite the hills of carbon beans, and the need for fairly complex spreadsheets, it is going to be nothing if not interesting. Goodall and Lynas are the pioneers, and are doing a good job of taking us with them."

Ban the Bulb - Venezuela leads the way.

I've been meaning to post about the Ban the Bulb campaign since reading Leo Hickman's article in the Guardian.

"As bright ideas go, it doesn't seem to get much more obvious than banning the incandescent bulb. The humble tungsten filament bulb has done a grand job lighting up the world for more than a century with little need for a change in design, but with more energy-efficient alternatives now widely available, many are asking why we still cling to this wasteful and outdated technology."

I'm reminded of it by this piece on the Australian GreenLeft site about a campaign in Venezuela which has replaced 45 million incandescent light bulbs.

Why zero carbon homes aren't enough

Another great round up on MSN Money - this time about greening your home and how Labour are failing to use the tax system to promote green action.

Whatever happened to Green Gordon?

Once again the Greens are setting the agenda, with the first-ever carbon-costed budget. Even MSN are critical of Gordon Brown's failure to take serious steps to tackle climate change.

"If you were hoping for a green budget, you might be disappointed. In Gordon Brown’s 11th budget, the cut in the basic rate of income tax was the main event; green taxes were a mere sideshow."

London's Green Fuel Source?

This week the Mayor of London and the Greens on the London Assembly launched the London Climate Change Action Plan, a key component of which is a switch to combined heat and power stations (CHP).

Local CHP plants are far more efficient than centralised power plants supplying a grid, for two main reasons: a) the heat produced when generating electricity is used for domestic or industrial heating rather than being treated as waste (so more of the energy released from the fuel is used) and b) because the electricity is used locally, the huges losses due to transmission over a vast national grid are reduced dramatically.

So even if they are powered by coal, oil or gas, CHP plants are a massive improvement on the current centralised generation system. But we can go one better and today's Guardian carries an excellent article spelling out the benefits of locally produced wood pellets, which are near carbon neutral.

Jenny Jones on the London Climate Change Action Plan

Jenny Jones responds to Ken Livingstone's Climate Change Action Plan for London.

Congestion Charging - 40 years too late

Today's extension of London's Congestion Charge zone has sparked another round of media coverage of the "war on the motorist". But really it's too little, too late. I've recently been reading Harvey Sherlock's excellent Cities Are Good for Us which makes it clear that we've know since the 60s that widespread car ownership in urban areas requires the destruction and rebuilding of city centres to accommodate the car (too expensive and unpopular) or the control of private car usage (unpopular).

Since the Buchanan report in 1963, politicians of all colours have lacked the courage to take necessary action to balance the desires of individual motorists with the needs of the population as a whole.

Ken Livingstone has, to his credit, finally grasped this nettle, but unfortunately 40 years of lack of investment in public transport, combined with tax breaks (effectively public subsidy) for private motoring means that the problem is now far worse than ever anticipated.

Add to this the problem of climate change and it is clear that the congestion charge is too little too late. We can't afford to wait another 40 years for a brave politician to grasp the nettle of carbon rationing or Domestic Tradable Quotas.

Next year's Mayoral election will be a real test for the establishment parties. Will their green rhetoric match the expectations of millions of Londoners who want to live in an accessible, sustainable city?

CheatNeutral

Thanks to SchNews for flagging up this wonderful spoof of the Carbon Offsetting industry.

Are you a female stud or a male slag, spreading your love around a little too freely, and behind backs? How about the convenience of paying a one-off fee to expunge the guilt of your dodgy liaisons? Launched on Valentine’s day, a new website is offering the public a chance to offset their infidelity by funding one of CheatNeutral’s certified ‘monogamy-boosting’ offset projects, funding people to stay loyal and faithful. Naturally, they urge customers to first measure and reduce their unfaithfulness as much as possible, but by offering people the ability to offset the remaining ‘unavoidable’ cheating, they claim to be “saving relationships, making people feel better about themselves, and providing practical, achievable ways to reduce global levels of heartbreak.”

If you’re wondering what the cuckold this crazy-sounding scheme is all about, the site’s designers point to the logic of Carbon Offsetting schemes in explanation: “It’s a joke – about paying for the right to carry on cheating. Carbon offsetting is also a joke – about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon. What we need to be doing is reducing our emissions. Offsetting stops us thinking about how to do that.” The site may not help a vast new army of slutty anti-offsetters into action as much as amuse them, but so far over 65,000 people have done their bit (having had their bit) and offset in a bid to save the world’s love-o-sphere.

Road pricing is not the answer

The Times front page today is all about the mass opposition to Labour's plans for road pricing. While I have little sympathy with the lobby that says driving is too expensive already - the cost of motoring has fallen in real terms while the cost of public transport has soared - I agree with them to the extent that road pricing is a typical wrong-headed Labour solution.

It would be just like Blair to push through the wrong solution just because there is massive opposition ("It's almost as unpopular as the war colleagues, it MUST be right"). But if Labour succeed in setting up road pricing they will be creating a licence to pollute if you can afford it. The only real solution to congestion, air pollution and carbon wastage is carbon rationing. Whilst we might not favour the wartime slogan "Is your journey really necessary?", we could well ask people "Is it really necessary to go by car?"