Category: Politics

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UK government gives go ahead for shell to develop a new gasfield

As if we need any examples of the contradictory actions of rich governments, the UK government is still giving permission for new had fields to be created.

It is known that if we are to keep warning to 1.5 degrees or less, more than 50% of fossil fuels must remain in the ground. As such this move is foolish.

The government could do as much for consumer bills by bringing back the green housing grants-and funding it properly. Many people in the country can afford to do the work themselves but many more don’t stand a chance.

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Climate pledges are now high enough to be confident in keeping global emissions below 2 degrees, how to get down to 1.5 or even less

For anyone who has thought about it, the way that limiting temperature rise has been discussed has been ridiculous. Up till now, hitting 1.9 degrees average warming would be a success, allowing 2.0 would be complete failure.

We need instead to recognize that for any reduction in average global temperatures that we are able to achieve, there is a significant reward.

The work is not done, until the human race is no longer adding pollution to the atmosphere.

We need as a human race, to be replanting vast areas of the planet. We need to be cutting our emissions as fast as possible, and we need to be looking for ways to capture and lock away as much carbon as we can.

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Carbon dioxide levels is 50% higher than pre-industrialized levels!

Regularly the claim is made that, we may be adding carbon to the atmosphere but we are not changing the number by to great a degree. Well that excuse is now also gone – we have increased carbon emissions by 50%. This means that the planet is entering a condition that it has not been in for millions of years – far before humans arrived.

Why does this matter? There was life back at this time, wasn’t there? Well of course there was. However, last time the carbon dioxide concentration levels were this high, average temperatures were 2-3 degrees higher and sea levels were 15-25m above where they are now. Nowadays 634 million people live 10m above the sea level or less, approximately 10% of the human population – other studies put this number as high as 1 billion. The paper Nature communications 267 million people live on land 2m above sea level or less. Nearly 2 billion live at 100m height or less.

It is reasonable to suppose that perhaps 1 billion would be heavily effected by sea levels rising 25m- needing to move to other countries rapidly. Furthermore places like the UK would get a lot smaller and become more of an archipelago.

Last year there were less than 300 million migrants worldwide, and yet there is a great deal of worry about this. What would it be like if 1 billion people had to emigrate over a relatively short period of time – and this would be permanent – there would be no chance of these people every returning home.

This fails to take account of the fact that there would likely also be a similar number of people who would have to move from parts of the planet which are too hot to support human life any more.

Cutting carbon emissions very fast is now essential, but it is not enough. We also need to be removing billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.

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UK electricity generation to be carbon neutral by 2035 says Boris Johnson

By 2030 all cars sold will need to be electric or some other form of fuel. Combustion engines will be banned, this is good news. However, if the national grid continues to burn fossil fuels, the cars will still pollute, even if their efficiency, and therefore the amount of emissions that they create will have fallen.

This will mean that all power in the UK will come from wind, solar, hydro and nuclear.

One of the big advantages, is that this will shield us from price rises of gas impacting electricity prices. Unfortunately, at this time, many houses will still be heated by gas. This can be replaced over time.

At the moment gas power plants are still very important for keeping the lights on in the uk, but this will disappear over the next 15 years.

While there are still challenges, what we need as a country is to be moving in the right direction as fast as possible. Renewables plus nuclear is already above 50% – renewables supplied 43% with nuclear adding another 16%.

By removing carbon emissions from our electricity generation and travel, each family in the UK will cut their emissions by about 17%. No where near finished, but a very good start.

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Tanzania reimposes a rule banning export of animals, one day after they rescinded the ban put in place 2016

The ban was to be lifted for traders to clear their stocks, and would have been lifted from the start of June to the start of December.

Outrage forced the minister in charge to reverse the change within 24 hours.

WWF the worldwide famous conservation organisation warned on Saturday that relaxing this ban would undermine progress made in wildlife protection, particularly by encouraging poaching which has been on the decline in recent years.

Hosting 50% of Africa’s lions, Tanzania is essential for the thriving of many species and so this is a good thing.

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Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars

It seems obvious. Into one car you simply put electrons, into the other car you pump as much as 50kg of fuel, which uses more resources?

How anyone can compare the 30kg or so lost at the end of an electric cars life, to the 50kg or so that the average combustion car burns each week, is baffling

Over the lifetime of an electric car, roughly 30kg of raw material will be used. A combustion engine car will use 17,000 litres of oil.

Continue reading “Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars”
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Several years ago, I wrote about the Prime minister of the UK fighting against this ‘green C**P’ now they want us to look at them as the saviours of the energy crisis?

Back in 2013 David Cameron did a u-turn on government support for Wind and Solar power generation. This has greatly impacted the uptake of both – and the savings are small and will be dwarfed by the likely financial cost of the delay that they forced on us.

Gas prices have already risen by 50% and are likely to spike further later this year. The chancellor has made small moves to try to stop this (and has recently given up by promising us all money off our bill).

What is scary, is that had the Conservative government of 2013 not done what they did, we would already be generating more clean energy than that which gets imported from Russia.

Labour has pledged a 28 billion fund to lead a green recovery, his homes grant scheme has insulated just 10% of the pathetically small number of homes it had promised to insulate.

The Renewable Energy Association believe that it could build enough energy generation within 18 months to offset the loss of the terrawatt-hour imported from Russia – if obstacles were removed. Renewables are faster to come on line and cheaper than either Shale or north sea drilling.

Bizarrely, the Mail suggests that those fighting fracking are funded by Putin – a clearly stupid idea, as Putin wants fracking stopped so that he can supply the UK instead. Of course these extreme views have never felt the need to conform to something as unimportant as the truth. I would hope, however, that the absurdity of these positions would be so obvious as to make a mockery of them, and give the far right of the conservative party the backbone to do what is needed and ignore the contradictory voices coming from even further right.

We need to move away from gas. For goodness sakes, it is not a renewable resource, so one day the planet will have to survive without it. Lets make that day now, and not require our descendants to learn to survive in a world decidedly less pleasant to those wanting to live here.

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Tory MPs are arguing that the green transition is too expensive, an argument that has proved false many times over – currently being shown to be rubbish by the EU

It is a progressions that is very old

  1. Deny that there is a problem – in this case deny the increasingly clear evidence of climate change
  2. Claim that mitigation of the problem (which until recently they denied existed) is way to expensive – why would a sane person listen to some one who has been denying the problem for years
  3. Once the damage is done, say that it is too late anyway

Temperatures at some Arctic weather stations hit 30 degrees earlier this year. At the same time, down in Antarctica temperatures hit 40 degrees above normal. These readings are not anomolies. We have also seen mass coral bleachings on the great barrier reef (during a La Nina year, which is supposed to be cooler)

Scientists have predicted for decades, that climate breakdown will be incredibly fast when its starts in earnest, and at this point there will be little or nothing that we can do about it.

Have we crossed this terrifying point? We don’t know, but what we do know is that far from giving up saying it is too late and we just need to accept it, we need to accelerate our efforts to green our economy.

It is important to remember that the climate mitigation that was claimed to be too expensive, will be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of living in a world that is subject to runaway climate change.

Despite what many right wing conservatives currently claim, if oil prices remain high we could be looking at a significant saving not a cost from these decarbonisation projects.

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The absurd case of a local mayor being imprisoned for trying to stop illegal deforestation, and how this happens all over the world

Often concessions that are granted to groups overlap with protected reserves. Obviously this should not be allowed, yet it continues. Often the company can then do great environmental damage before the error is rectified.

Ipilan Nickel Corporation began felling trees in its concession area in Brookes point Palawan, Mary Jean Feliciano moved to stop them. After sending cease and desist orders that were ignored (during which time 7000 trees were cut down) she used her authority to shut down the companies operations and demolish their onsite facilities. The company fought back, and the Philippine Ombudsman sided with the company and Feliciano was suspended for a year without pay.

By the time that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued a stoppage order 7000 trees in the village protected area, which operates as their water catchment area, had been cut down. This aea fell within the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscapes which is a recognized protected area.

The cutting started on May 2017. The village knew what was going on, but the mining company security guards would not let the village authorities in to stop the illegal deforestation.

What is more ridiculous is that the Companies environmental compliance cirtificate was rescinded on december 14th 2016, and on may 17, 2017 it was confirmed that the firm no longer had the permit to cut down any trees.

In July of 2017 hte Palawan Council for Sustainable Development reviewed a petition by Feliciano, recalled the clearance it had issued, and bowing to public pressure the council recongized that 80% of the mining companies claims fell within “core zones” of the protected forest – clearly illegal to cut down.

Civil rights groups praised Feliciano, but the Philippine Ombudsman found her “guilty of oppression or grave abuse of authority” and served her a year long suspension without pay. They claimed that while the EEC of the company had been revoked, they still had an appeal which needed to run its course before she undertook any action.

This suit brought by the company is a clear form of SLAPP litigation – the aim is to make everyone too fearful to try to get in their way.

Around the world companies are using legal actions to delay orders to stop damaging the environment. In many cases including deforestation, by the time an order comes through to stop cutting down forests, all the damage is done. There are places where companies will have to pay large reparations, as well as reforesting more land than they illegally deforested – this process must be rolled out worldwide.

It must become too expensive to risk damaging the environment. Another requirement is for these countries to put a system in place which stops companies delaying the answer why they carry out the work that environmental action is trying to halt.

How can we help? it is hard, but we must make our voices heard over the noise that comes from all around us.

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