"Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen."Extract from article by Mark Lynas.
Seven years ago, we had a terrific holiday in India led by a wonderful guide, a sufi Muslim called Hamid Shah. We are still in touch with him thanks to the Internet and he has just sent us seasons greetings with this moving ecological message:
"May the year 2010 bring peace, love and joy over the inhabitants of entire globe to make it a better place to live. Let all of us contribute one way or the other, more or less to heal the wounds of mother earth, wounds inflicted in the name of development which is reflected clearly in the disasters being observed! Abused mother earth has sustained enough! Now she is crying enough is enough! May all of us have the wisdom to listen to our mother!"
As representatives of all the world's nations gather in Copenhagen for the climate change summit, today 56 newspapers in 45 countries using 20 languages take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial on the need for an early and effective agreement.
You can read the text here.
An oceanic gyre is any large-scale system of rotating ocean currents - a fuller definition in this page from Wikipedia.
Apparently, around the globe, there are five huge gyres that contain accumulated rubbish from the oceans in what represents an environmental disaster - more information in this article from the "New York Times".
If we carry on fuelling world economic growth largely through the use of oil resources, one day the oil will run out. For years, people have talked of "peak oil" - the time when oil production levels start to fall. According to this story, oil reserves are not as high as was thought and we may already have passed the point of "peak oil". It's clearly time to use less oil and develop more climate-friendly energy alternatives.
Some UK supermarkets are greening up their act and doing more to help customers shop green but others are lagging well behind according to new mystery shopping exercise by Consumer Focus on whose Board I sit.
The UK's top nine supermarket chains were ranked on sustainability measures such as availability of UK in-season fruit and vegetables, organics, higher welfare meat and eggs and sustainably sourced fish. The survey looked not just at availability in the store but also how clearly these products were displayed and promoted to consumers in-store.
The exercise found that the gap between the best and worst performing supermarkets has got wider since the first survey in 2006. Sainsbury’s and M&S made the biggest leap by achieving the first ever overall “A” (excellent) score. They were followed by Waitrose, which retained a “B” grade. Other supermarkets such as Morrisons showed improvement over the course of the surveys; Tesco showed no progress since 2007 and Asda moved down the ratings.
The survey also found some good green practices among the high street chains. The discounters Aldi and Lidl, surveyed for the first time, were the only two supermarkets to have closed doors on all freezers, thereby helping to conserve energy. The co-op was found to be selling the highest proportion of fairly traded products among its own brand products than any of its rivals.
This Saturday 24 October is the International Day of Climate Action .
Already, over 4000 creative events are being planned in over 170 countries - from the slopes of Mount Everest to the underwater reefs of the Maldive Islands, to the parks and streets of your own communities. Activists will be uploading images of their events in real-time to both the 350.org website and on the giant screens of Times Square. By day's end, there will be an unprecedented global gallery of images and stories, enough to make both old media and new ring out with this crucial number.
What’s the big deal with 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for parts per million carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. 350 is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. Most immediately, 350 is the number world leaders need to lead with as they prepare to meet in Copenhagen this December to draft a new global climate treaty.
Watch this animation and see how you can be involved.
"As the world's population grows, competition for food, water and energy will increase. Food prices will rise, more people will go hungry, and migrants will flee the worst-affected regions. That's the simple idea at the heart of the warning from John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, of a possible crisis in 2030."
This is how BBC online opens a major examination across the BBC's media outlets of a crisis facing the whole of humanity. More information here.
We've all heard a lot about the growing threat to the planet from the danger of climate change. But what are the answers? The "Guardian" newspaper today has a special four-page supplement in which it considers twenty possible solutions.
"The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis."Full "Guardian" story here and full text of the WWF's "Living Planet Report 2008" here.
First, the good news - on Sunday, I reported a water leak in my main road to the local water company and today work began on stopping the leak.
Now the bad news - this is the fourth time that I've reported a leak in this location and each time the problem is sorted for a few months and then the leak reappears.
There's a section on my web site which provides advice on How To Save Water and the last piece of advice concerns burst pipes, but hopefully you won't have to phone your water company as often as I do.
"The gloomiest August on record has given way to a wet September, leaving sun-loving Brits once again feeling cheated of that most elusive of natural resources. At work and at home, at bus stops and in pubs, people talk about the weather."This is how a BBC online piece on the British weather begins.
I always tell foreigners that Britain has four seasons - but not necessarily when one expects them and sometimes all in the same day. On the other hand, the vagaries of the British weather gives us something to talk about. Without the weather, we might have to talk about politics or religion or - perish the thought - our feelings.
According to a new campaign launched by the New Economics Foundation in the UK, in just 100 months' time we could reach a tipping point in terms of climate change whereby we reach a concentration of greenhouse gases at which it is no longer "likely" that the world will stay below the 2C temperature rise threshold after which climate change could become irreversible.
You can read the case for this claim here and you can check out the campaign web site here.
A third of the food we buy in the UK ends up being thrown away. This is a waste of money and a contributor to climate change. For ways to reduce your food waste, visit this site.
I blogged about E-Day yesterday. Regrettably the initiative failed.
The web site puts it this way:
"E-Day did not succeed in cutting the UK's electricity demand. The drop in temperature between Wednesday 27 Feb and Thursday 28 Feb days probably caused the amount of electricity use to be higher than expected, as a result of more lights and heating being left on than were originally predicted."Perhaps it should have been publicised more.
A theme of the entries on this blog this week has been energy. So it's appropriate that E-Day has just commenced and that I should highlight it on my blog.
Energy Saving Day (E-Day) is happening between 6pm today and 6pm tomorrow. Everyone in the UK is being asked:
(a) To leave off electrical items which are not in use, and
(b) To leave these items off for as long as possible.
Items which could be left off for E-Day might include:
- Lights left on in empty rooms or overnight
- Televisions left on standby overnight
- Mobile phone chargers left plugged in or
- Computers or printers left on overnight
Over the following 24 hours, E-Day will endeavour to show how even small energy saving measures can be made to add up, and potentially play a part in tackling climate change. The results will be shown on E-Day's homepage here.
Yesterday, I blogged about how the recent increase in fuel prices is forcing more and more UK households into fuel poverty. One way of reducing fuel usage - which saves money for consumers and reduces damaging emissions - is to install smart meters. The cost is variously estimated at between £6 billion-£13 billion, but the benefits would be considerable.
In Italy, which has had smart meters in its 30M homes since 2005, energy use has dropped 5% a year. Parts of the USA and Canada that have taken up smart meters report similar drops in consumption.
The things you can find on the web (or at least my friend Nick can) - such as the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island!
I live in a leafy part of north-west London where there are lots of trees. As I turn from my street into the main road, there's a tree that has a black plastic bag fluttering from one of the branches. It's been there years and years and years. It's a constant reminder to me of how plastic bags are messing up our environment and how incredibly slow these things are to decompose.
In my book, therefore, Rebecca Hosking is a heroine. She managed to persuade all 43 shopkeepers in her home town of Modbury to replace the use of plastic bags with reusable cloth bags. Nearly 80 other towns are now in various stages of introducing their own bans. Last week, the 32 London boroughs said that they would seek a new law to enable them to do the same. This week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would seek a meeting with supermarkets to see how plastic bags could be eliminated.
You can read a profile of Rebecca Hosking here here and learn how to make your own cloth bag here.
My attention has been drawn by a friend to a great initiative called Freecycle. The site explains that:
"Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. Our goal is to keep usable items out of landfills. By using what we already have on this earth, we reduce consumerism, manufacture fewer goods, and lessen the impact on the earth."
A colleague of mine at Postwatch Liz Lainé has recently been on BBC Breakfast television showing how to turn old bits of material into what the 'guerrilla bagging' movement calls a 'morsbag'. This is a reusable bag for shopping that means less plastic bags and less damage to the environment. You can learn more about the movement and see how to make a 'morsbag' here.
Here in the UK, it's Recyle Now Week.
On average, we throw away our own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks, so there's a lot that each of us can do to help.
Check out the advice here.
Now that would be wonderful.
The world uses more than 1.2 trillion plastic bags a year - an average of about 300 bags for every adult, or 1m bags used per minute. On average, we use each plastic bag for 12 minutes before discarding it. It then can last in the environment for decades.
Plastic bags do not biodegrade, they photodegrade - break down into smaller and smaller bits, contaminating soil, waterways and oceans, and entering the food chain when ingested by animals.
Places that have banned or discouraged the use of plastic bags include: Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, Taiwan, Mumbai, Scotland, France, West Bengal, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Switzerland, Rwanda, Denmark, Germany, South Africa, California, Somalia, Botswana, Philippines.
There has recently been a lot of publicity in the UK about the decision of the town of Modbury in Devon to ban plastic bags. How did they do it? You can read an account here and check out the web site of the campaign here.
The average person in their lifetime will have 7,163 baths using 1 million litres of water.
You will also use 656 bars of soap, 198 bottles of shampoo, 272 bottles of deodorants, 276 tubes of toothpastes, 78 toothbrushes, 411 skin care products, 37 perfumes, 35 tubes of styling gel, 25 bottles of nail polish, 21 sticks of lipstick, 11,000 tampons/sanitary towels, and 5.6 bottles of fake tan.
Shower gel components take 800 years to disappear from the water system.
We wash our hair 11,500 times in a lifetime.
In an average lifetime, one gets through 8 cars, 3.5 washing machines, 3.4 fridges, 3.2 microwaves, 4.8 televisions, 9.8 DVD players, 15 computers….
240 kg of fossil fuels, 22 kg of chemicals, and 1.5 tons of water are needed to produce a home computer.
£920 is spent per person on the average Christmas. Over a lifetime, 628 Christmas gifts are received.
The average person spends £385 per year on clothes and £3,222 over a lifetime. The clothing market is worth £23 billion in the U.K.
500 litres of water and 40 g of pesticides are needed to produce a t-shirt.
570 kg of chemicals are added to the water system through washing clothes.
In an average lifetime, you will expel wind 12-25 times a day representing 1-1.5 litres of gas a day or 35,815 litres altogether. You will use 4,239 toilet rolls to cope with 2,865 kg of faeces.
Sewage is created at the rate of 150 litres per day per person, but also disposed of across the country in a day are 2.5 million tampons, 1.4 million sanitary towels, 700,000 panty liners. and 270,000 condoms.
3,800 nappies are disposed of every day. 2.5 billion are disposed of each year. Nappies are the largest contributor to landfill and take 500 years to decompose.
Bt the age of five, we will have produced more carbon dioxide than that of a person in Tanzania over their lifetime.
A total of 40 tons of waste are sent to landfill sites over a person's lifetime.
On 26th April 2007, Channel 4 television showed a programme called "The Human Footprint". The programme featured a host of fascinating statistics which are averages per person over a lifetime of 78.5 years. Of course, averages only tell us about typical behaviour and the figures will vary greatly between individuals, but I thought that each day this week I would share with you a few of these figures.
In an average lifetime, you will drink 15,951 pints of milk. To produce this amount of milk for the population, 2.1 million cows are needed, eating 100 kilograms of grass a day.
89% of us will eat meat. The average person will in a lifetime eat 4 head of cattle, 21 sheep, 15 pigs, 1,200 chickens and 13,345 eggs.
Also you will eat 2,327 kg of potatoes, 4,283 loaves of bread, 5,272 apples, 10,866 carrots, 845 tins of bake beans, and 10,000 chocolate bars representing 8.2 kg a year of chocolate.
95% of our food is imported. Food packaging will represent 8.5 tons.
You will drink 10,351 pints of beer, 1,694 bottles of wine, and 74,842 cups of tea.