Author Archives: jenny

Carbon fibre cars would cut oil consumption,says Amory Lovins

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_IYcApQDj_0

Amory Lovins, advocate of Natural Capitalism – an idea which has many critics–  talks on this video about the advantages of switching car manufacture from heavy steel to lightweight carbon fibre, radically increasing energy efficiency and making it easier to run cars on electricity instead of fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, for those of us who rely on public transport, we’re going nowhere fast – what with cuts to rural bus services in Somerset and the crap bus service between Hebden Bridge and villages on the tops.

Perhaps we need investment in carbon fibre buses as well as cars.

In the 1990s, the Metro in Houston, Texas used a German-made, carbon fibre bus that ran on a smaller diesel engine. That led to immediate savings, with further savings likely from reduced brake and tyre wear and better mileage. John Franks, Senior Director of Bus Maintenance at the Houston, Texas Metro  says, “Lightweight buses pay for themselves.” Yorkshire Metro, are you up to speed?

Green bus manufacturing in Leeds

On our doorstep, the bus manufacturing company Optare is producing Optare Eco Drive buses. These are lighter than conventional buses and run on Lithium batteries.

Optare bus_ photo from Automotive Council website

UK delegation to Rio+20 – government, NGOs, Unilever & Aviva

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The ever-wonderful Otesha project is blogging about who’s who on the official UK delegation to Rio +20 (not hug-a-husky David Cameron, though).

In brief:

There is Non-Government Organisation (NGO) and Business representation on the delegation, something which has not previously happened at the The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Otesha Project blog asks:

” Is it good that Oxfam and WWF have close access to the delegation? Maybe, although it brings up interesting questions about how entrenched NGOs have become in the UN processes. Is it good that Unilever and Aviva do? I don’t think so…at the end of the day they are representing their shareholders… Because companies’ sole obligation to their shareholders is to turn a tidy profit.

And… if NGOs and Business get to have an official voice on the delegation… where the eff is the youth representation? Some of the other countries have official youth delegates, and rightly so. Because there are no other stakeholders who are going to be more affected by what happens here at Rio+20 than young people. Last night, we found out that any mention to a potential High Commissioner for Future Generations has been deleted from the text. This is not good enough. “

For the full list of our democratic representatives at Rio +20, see the blog.

 

Ask Craig Whittaker to sign Early Day Motion 47, calling for Energy Bill Revolution

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Please email  craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk and ask him to sign Early Day Motion 47. This calls for Parliament to pass the Energy Bill Revolution proposal for the UK government to use the revenue from carbon taxes to pay for insulating people’s homes. Over the next 15 years, the government will raise about £4billion/year from the two main carbon taxes – the European Emissions Trading Scheme and the Carbon Floor Price.
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Rio+20 day 5 live blog -reposted from Responding to Climate Change

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Here’s the link to Responding to Climate Change’s live blog on day 5, which has been mostly about desertification and also an RTCC report on the sorry “compromise document” that the Brazilian government’s produced as the basis for discussions by heads of states and ministers at the high-level sessions which start on Wednesday.

Ask Craig Whittaker MP – again – to sign the Rio-UK Declaration

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Craig Whitaker MP hasn’t yet signed the Rio-UK Declaration, and he hasn’t replied to my request to him to sign it.

Has he replied to anyone else’s? I can’t be the only Calderdale constituent to have asked him.

Here are some ways of getting your MP’s attention

  • Email a follow-up message to Craig Whittaker MP at craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk. If you send a quick note to say you notice he hasn’t signed up yet, this will show you expect him to act.
  • Stop Climate Chaos has a downloadable declaration poster which you can send to Craig Whittaker MP and ask him to sign it.
  • Phone him on Tel: 020 7219 7031. Explain over the phone why this issue is important to you (and if possible their constituency). You can always leave a message if you can’t get through.
  • Meet him: Arrange a meeting – it’s too late to attend one of his surgeries – the next one is Friday 29th June 2012: Todmorden: 10.00am until 12.00pm, Brighouse: 2.30pm until 4.30pm. But it should be possible to book a meeting. Stop Climate Chaos suggest taking a declaration poster for him to sign – see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stopclimatechaos/7345368576/in/photostream
  • Tweet him:  Copy Craig Whittaker into your tweet and he’ll receive it directly. Here’s a sample tweet: “[@Craig_Whittaker] Please sign the #Rioconnect Declaration. I want to see your photo on this page http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/rio-action“
  • Post on his Facebook wall:  You could post something like the tweet above onto their facebook page. I’ve posted a message to him via his Facebook page.

Occupy Rio +20 petition

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Occupy Rio +20 have created a petition that you can sign.

It basically calls on the upcoming Earth Summit, twenty years on from Rio in 1992, “to vastly scale up political, financial & public response to the environmental, social & economic crisis of our time, & to raise ambition to the level that science demands… Governments, corporations and financial institutions must wake up and dramatically prioritise people & the planet over abusive exploitation for short-term profit & “growth”.

The Durban climate justice website outlines some backgroundto the Occupy Rio +20 petition.

This video (a promo for an Alternative Conference for the Rio Summit, to be held on 16th/17th June in central London) lists the ways in which the 1992 Rio Earth Summit has failed, so clearly we need Rio +20 to decide on a more effective set of approaches to reducing and adapting to climate change.  One that puts people and planet first, not profit and financial speculation on carbon prices  and natural resources.

Here is the Rio + 20 Position Paper of La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement. It denounces “The great deceit of 1992… “sustainable development”, which social organizations initially saw as a possibility to confront the root of the problems. However, it was nothing more than a cover-up for the search for new forms of accumulation. Today they look to legitimize a new façade under the name “green economy”.

La Via Campesina’s Position Paper is clear that all the talk of “green economy” is in fact more of the same old same old. “Governments, business people, and the organizations of the United Nations have spent these last years constructing the myth of the “green economy” and of the “greening of technology”. They present it as a new possibility to bring together environmental stewardship and business, but it is in fact the vehicle to obtain new advances of capitalism, putting the entire planet under the control of big capital.”

This video explains how the “green economy”agenda that the rich countries seem to be shaping up for Rio +20 is part of corporate colonialism, that grabs land, dispossesses small farmers and undermines food sovereignty.

 

Green jobs alliance inspiration

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I’ve come across two very interesting websites: Otesha UK and East London Green Jobs Alliance.

Green Jobs and Justice

Here’s an interesting blog about Green Jobs and Justice by a Co-Director of the Otesha Project UK

Between them, these two groups are organising green job training schemes in East London, working with local colleges, trades unions and businesses which are offering placements to trainees.

As far as I know, nothing like this is happening in Calderdale. Why not? There’s a crying need for jobs in the area, particularly for young people, and there’s plenty of need for green work to be done in all kinds of sectors like home and businesses’ energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy generation, waste reduction and prevention, cradle to cradle production cycles etc. Calderdale College is opening a Sustainable Environmental Technology Centre in September 2013, so there will soon be young people with green skills – and looking for work.

18 per cent of Calderdale households are on the edge of poverty

18per cent of households in Calderdale are on the edge of poverty, according to  Experian-calculated data in the Guardian. This means if the economy gets any worse, 18 per cent of Calderdale households would be forced into poverty.
UK ON THE EDGE INDEX – Calderdale:
  • 18% are on the edge of poverty – 15,624 households
  • Calderdale is ranked 116 in the UK out of 424
  • This is is how the community breaks down
    • Often indebted families living in low rise estates: 1,372 households, 1.5%
    • Older families in low value housing in traditional industrial areas: 2,431, 2.7%
    • Low income families occupying poor quality older terraces: 6,158, 7%
    • South Asian communities experiencing social deprivation: 3,275, 3.7%
How this index is calculated:
The index, created by Experian Mosaic, measures those suffering high levels of financial stress and finding it difficult to cope within their current income – they are the most vulnerable to poverty if their situation worsens.