Ecuador Referendum upholds Rights of Nature

It's been a life affirming week for me - a week of intense study of Earth Jurisprudence at Shumacher College, followed by a UKELA weekend workshop in Derbyshire. Earth jurisprudence is aimed at ensuring that legal and governance systems support, rather than undermine, the integrity and health of the Earth through the development of an ecocentric approach to law and governance. While most of the world’s legal systems advance the interests and concerns of the human community and provide no real protection to other species, or to the planet itself, Earth jurisprudence proposes a radical overhaul of approaches to law making, to ensure that the planet and all species have rights, by virtue of their existence as members of a single Earth community.

But most life-affirming of all, after a week of concentrated examination of theory and application (and some unforgettable wild moments to boot) came wonderful news from Ecuador. Sunday 28th September brought a historic moment in the evolution of protection of our planet.

By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador voted for a new Constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. In a country rich with ecological treasures, including the Galapagos Islands and part of the Amazon rain forest, the constitution also calls on government to avoid measures that would destroy ecosystems or drive species to extinction. Ecuador is now the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights.

With this vote, the people of Ecuador are leading the way for countries around the world to fundamentally change how we protect nature.

Article 1 of the new "Rights for Nature" chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: "Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies."

Ecuador's constitution recognizes that ecosystems possess the inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish, and that people possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of ecosystems, and the requirement of the government to remedy the violations of those ecosystem rights.

What is so interesting is that this Constitution has been borne out of crisis and driven at local municipal government level. Because there have been so many abuses, pollution, violence and corruption by foreign mining companies, the people revolted against this so-called development by central government. Thus, this remarkable piece of legislation was borne of the people taking responsibility for their land.

But all is not yet perfect. Whilst the Constitution is a vast bridge in the right direction, it does at the same time incorporate sweeping powers bestowed upon the President. Pressure from US and Canadian governments remains to allow mining in particular in the south of the country where there has been less local opposition. Time will tell whether the weight of US destruction continues or is prevented.

Nevertheless this is cause for huge celebration. The world’s environmental and social crisis will only get worse, unless humans are compelled by law to respect the laws of nature and the rights of other members of the Earth community. Ecuador's Rights of Nature Constitution is Wild Law in the making - and a vitally crucial precedent that other nations must follow.


Wild Law by Cormac Cullinan
Enact International
Centre For Earth Jurisprudence
Earth Jurisprudence
The Legal Defense Fund
The Pachamama Alliance
Cotacachi
UKELA

Transition Towns Comes to London

Just a reminder of tonights event - a few places remain, so do come along if you have not already replied, we will squeeze you in.
Concerned about escalating oil prices and Peak Oil?
Frustrated at the lack of governmental support?
Wondering what to do to survive the post-petroleum world?

Mike Grenville of Changing Worlds will be discussing Peak Oil and the urgency of action required.

Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook, will be speaking on how communities can respond effectively to climate chaos and the end of cheap oil - and how to start to build local resilient networks.

Some Transition communities and other like-minded organisations are already in existence in London. Come hear what they have to say, discover what is going on in your area, learn what pitfalls to avoid when starting a group and much more.

Panel Discussion speakers: Suzy Edwards of Camden Climate Action Network, Duncan Law of Transition Town Brixton, Mary Fee of LETSLink, Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting and Hilary Gander of Transition Town Kingston.

With music from members of the Brass Volcanoes, a carbon-neutral jazz band

What: Transition Towns Comes to London
Who: Rob Hopkins and Others
Where: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1
When: Tues 16th Sept, 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Cost: £5 on the door (includes refreshments)
RSVP: events@wisewomen.me.uk


(photo: Rob Hopkins, Mike Grenville, Suzy Edwards, Duncan Law, Mary Fee, Hilary Gander)

* To buy the book, The Transition Handbook, visit the Wise Women Books page

Not Guilty - The Kingsnorth Six

At a time when banks and mortgage lenders are either going belly-up or being bailed-out, hurricanes are taking their toll over Asia and India, stock markets are crashing and estate agents are going out of fashion at the rate of one a day (just how many are there?), there are indications of the beginning of a shifting consciousness - in the UK at least. People are beginning to demonstrate their concerns in unusual ways, and are beginning to vote with their conscience.

Just last week at Maidstone Crown Court an unusual and important jury verdict was declared which favoured the planet and the natural world. Six Greenpeace activists were cleared of causing criminal damage around £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station. Their defence was that their occupation of the power station prevented property damage (caused by climate change). It is a pioneering case in which preventing such property damage has been used as part of a "lawful excuse" in legal defence.

This is a vitally important step in recognising potential legal 'rights' of the planet. It also gives strength to future actions by environmental activists in advocating for the rights of species and planet. The allegation hurled at the jury after the return of a Not Guilty was that it was a "sympathy vote" for Greenpeace. But sympathy is just what is required - it is a direct manifestation of a jury recognising the need to protect our planet, and they supported Greenpeace's actions in trying to do so, deeming thier actions reasonable and urgent. As Ben Stewart stated outside court: "When 12 normal people say that it legitimate to shut down a coal fire station because of the harm to the planet, then one has to ask where does that leave government energy policy?"


(Five of the 'Kingsnorth Six' at the top of the 200m chimney)

Yurtling Energy at Embercome

I've never been to an event such as the one I have just experienced this weekend. It wasn't a corporate event, it wasn't a conference, no workshops were advertised, in fact the remit was incredibly loose. Alongside 30 or so others working to tackle climate change, I had been invited to spend the weekend in Devon to share, plan and plot - and to sleep in a yurt.

Didn't take me long to say yes. I love geodesic domes, so yurts with woodfire stoves do it for me too. And the subject matter - well obviously that's my kinda thing too. I had no real understanding of what was to come of it, so I merrily pitched up with no preconceptions, just left myself open to the experience.

And it was inspirational. A bunch of equally committed individuals who are in so many varied ways making a difference; academically, politically, in business, with communities; by shaping, creating, facilitating, inspiring. All in a glorious environment, fuelled by the most delicious organic food from the gardens (all thanks to Andy, Alistair and team). Shaped by the lightest of touches by Mac, we discovered easily enough how to self-select on discussing various topics. This opened up new understanding, new connections, new inspiration. So many discussions bore so much fruit in such a short period of time, be it over wine in the evening, whilst walking in the herb garden, or sheltering together in the poly-tunnel whilst the rain poured off the sides. So much to hear, to say and to do.

It struck me that the core reason why this weekend proved so successful - why such strong bonds were established - was because we were all reciprocating. Giving and receiving experiences, sharing wisdom, offering assistance and skills. It's the stuff of true friendship, not just for us as humans, but for our interaction with the planet. Reciprocity is equally important just as it is for us human to human, but also for our interaction with our planet. It is not for us to merely take it's resources. We need to extend that reciprocity to our world as well. And that was something I learned more about this weekend when discussing how to create a sustainable world. That reciprocity applies both internally and externally if true sustainability is to be understood and created.

I left energised and revitalised, feeling the growth of not only the plants and trees in the woods that surrounded us, but also of us - individually and collectively. What comes out of this, well, that remains to be seen. But I know one thing - it will all be good for the planet.


Thankyou all.
Embercombe

New Leader of the Green Party: Caroline Lucas

Great news: Caroline Lucas has won the Green Party's first ever leadership election by a remarkable landslide of over 90%.

The UK Green party has never had a leader, leaving it faceless in a world where personality politics steals the lead regardless of values. Now it has - and what a great person to drive the Green Party forward at such a crucial juncture.


Caroline comes with gleaming green credentials: she is an acknowledged expert on climate change, international trade and peace issues and recently co-authored the Green New Deal Report.


She is a Vice President of the RSPCA, the Stop the War Coalition, Campaign Against Climate Change and Environmental Protection UK, as well as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament National Council and a Director of the International Forum on Globalization. The think-tanks Protect the Local, Globally and Centre for a Social Europe have Caroline as an Advisory Board Member, as does the Radiation Research Trust, the Transitions Towns Network and she is also a matron of the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN).

Wise Women hits the big time in Viz

Click here to read more....

To book upcoming Wise Women events, see:
Transition Towns Comes to London, September 16th
Cosmetics and Chemicals: What is in your Shampoo, September 9th

www.ev-eon.com

ev-eon.com

The Environmentalist's Nuclear Debate: (3) My response

My response to Mark Lynas:

Why is it that you support 4th generation nuclear when Concentrating Solar Power can provide such an enormous slice of the baseload generation required, without any of the political, environmental and social detriment of nuclear?

CSP is mature technology, overnight storage is not a problem, it will be fully commercialised by 2011 - 2012, when (going by current known contracts) 9GW will be online globally, and it is anticipated if expansion continues at a conservative rate of 29% per annum, then 200GW will be online by 2020 (compare with 100GW online for wind as of this year, after 25 years). It's environmentally benign - even positive when you combine it with desalination, fast build (2 - 3 years from granting of licence to grid connection), no high insurance costs, no decommissioning and waste headaches, no trans-border devastation when bombed by an irate terrorist - only 7 years bad luck (and why bother to bomb a bunch of mirrors where each fresnel mirror can now be built and replaced in 3 minutes in any event) ...and even the political will is cranking into action now with the Med Solar Plan (20GW in North Africa by 2020) under the recently endorsed Union for the Mediterranean, the removal of the Feed-in Tariff cap in Spain due later this year (20GW by 2020), another 16GW is expected in other southern sunbelt EU countries, the generous state credits in South West America esp in California (30-50GW by 2020 thanks mainly to Arnie's ambitious targets), the Masdar Project (500MW by 2013), India (generous FIT's for solar put in place earlier this year), China (test plant outside Beijing) etc etc. CSP does not pose an energy security risk; it is not a finite resource that is being threatened (and therefore one that we go to war over). It is dependent on the heat from the sun in the deserts - an abundant resource and, moreover, less than 1% of the world's deserts can give us all our global electricity requirements - so no worries on that front either. We can therefore switch all land-based transport over to clean electricity as well. As for transporting the stuff - easy: High Voltage Direct Current lines (which have been in use since the 1950's), such as the HVDC links that run from the 3 Gorges Dam in China to Guangdong - 2,000 kilometers away - with just 3% losses per 1000 km.

So, why do we not hear more from you guys - the heroes of the environmental world - supporting, lobbying, promoting, fighting, shouting for CSP, rather than announcing your qualified support of nuclear? Shame on you.

If you would like to know more about CSP, check out TREC-UK and for an easy intro: concentratingsolarpower.info.

[table reproduced from CSP v Nuclear, Carbon2Share, Colin Challen's interparliamentary newsletter, July 2008]

The Environmentalist's Nuclear Debate: (2) Mark Lynas

The nuclear debate continues, with that other environmentalist and climate change author of note - Mark Lynas - proffering his position. Last week in the New Statesman he took, as he himself admitted, a rather stronger position than Monbiot: "that increased use of nuclear (an outright competitor to coal as a deliverer of baseload power) is essential to combat climate change." He too qualified his position, but from the point of view of the need for technological advancement. He gave as an example of potential improvement the Integral Fast Reactor (a design of fast breeder plant).

This is what he had to say about the IFR:
1. "It could generate power by burning up nuclear waste leaving only short lived by-products unfit for nuclear bombs (thus could cancel out concerns about nuclear proliferation);
2. the reactor design, is close to “fail-safe”, automatically shutting down if things begin to go wrong, because the safety mechanisms are inherent, and do not depend on human or mechanical intervention.
3. Lynas admits that such “4th generation” nuclear power stations are still a dream, but believes that they are potentially much more realistic than CCS.
4. Lynas proposes that 4th Gen plus renewable energy could provide complete decarbonisation of the worlds electricity supply and on a timetable that Dr Hansen and fellow climatologists demand."

Although I cannot respond on the technological potential of 4th generation nuclear plants such as the IFR that Lynas proposes, I know a man that can: Paul Brown, the venerable ex-Guardian environment correspondent, expert on all thing nuclear, author of the heavyweight tome Global Warning (a copy of which was sent by the President of the Republic of Maldives - a man uncomfortably close to the effects of global warming - to all 193 Heads of State, so they really have no excuse) and more recently of Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance.
So, I wrote to him asking the following:

1. Is it true, as Lynas asserts, that 4th gen nuclear would prevent nuclear proliferation?
2. Is the design indeed close to fail-safe?
3. Is it accurate to say that 4th Generation nuclear is more realistic than Carbon Capture and Storage?

This is the response I received from Paul Brown:

"There are no grounds for saying that a fourth generation of nuclear power would prevent proliferation. There are three generations at present, the third generation is the one being constructed in Finland and another in France. It is the type the government wants to build in England.

Many "new" designs for new nuclear power stations exist, all of them called fourth generation reactors. What this means is they could be the new form of reactors adopted after this present third generation. For all of them it is claimed they will be cheaper, safer, and better in every way than the present generation. All this is unproved hype. None has been built so it all theory - like so much else about the nuclear industry. The reason they have not been built is essentially because the first one (of every design) would be very expensive to build and might not work. No government is prepared to fund them so far.

The fourth generation that Lynas is talking about is a design that will burn existing stocks of plutonium and uranium thereby reducing stocks of these bomb making materials, therefore reducing proliferation dangers. The UK government was asked by British Nuclear Fuels to sanction research and development into building one of these at Sellafield but was refused on the grounds of cost.

So the answer to your first question is no - Lynas is not correct - and no one knows whether an "integral fast reactor breeder plant" would really work. Fast breeders only worked on small scale dustbin size projects and broke every time France, Japan, and Russia tried to scale them up.

Second question: Note the "close to" fail-safe. Could have said in theory the design is fail safe. In other words it has not been tried, so how can you know? Nuclear fission is a controlled nuclear explosion. It is virtually impossible to make it fail-safe.

CCS? There are lots of problems with it. Carbon capture and storage is an unproven technology unless you count pumping carbon dioxide directly back down under the sea as they do in Norway. Carbon dioxide has no use so everything you do with it has a cost. Transporting it, pumping it etc is all expensive. Even if you worked out how to do it efficiently there are very few places in which it is possible to pump it and expect it to stay there. Old oil and gas wells have to be near the carbon dioxide capture sites and leak proof to have any chance of being viable. In my view it has limited application even if we could make it work, simply because there is nowhere to put the carbon dioxide. If you could convert it into something like else like a fuel by growing algae to make biofuels it might be a runner. It would at least reduce the impact. My view is that CCS is a red herring in the real debate. CCS and fourth generation nuclear are diversions and will never deliver on the scale we need in the timetable we need it by.

My view is that concentrated solar power, tidal turbines, wind power, solar PV, wave power, geothermal and massive improvements in energy efficiency, combined heat and power, insulation and the like, could deliver faster and enough to solve the problem. Anything else is putting off the reality and hoping technology will provide a fix. We have the technology, what we do not have is the political will. Only political will brought about by campaigners like you is going to save the planet".

Paul
Global Warning

The Environmentalist's Nuclear Debate: (1) George Monbiot

Things seem to stirring up the debate over nuclear and it's making quite a few greenies hot and steamy, to say the least. So, in order to unravel the issue at hand here is a lazy environmentalist's dummies guide to the issue in hand (part 1):

Earlier this month, George Monbiot posited his thoughts on nuclear. What he stated was that “I no longer care whether the answer (to our future electricity supplies) is nuclear or not” providing all new build meets the following stringent conditions:
1. the government sets a maximum level for carbon pollution per MW hr of electricity production, eg 80kg of CO2 – then leave the rest to the market;
2. so, total emission are taken into account;
3. the public are informed as to where and how waste is to be buried;
4. how much this will cost;
5. who will pay;
6. a legal guarantee put in place that no civil nuclear materials will be used by the military.

His qualified support is predicated on the belief that "we can no longer afford any rigid principle but one: that the harm done to people living now and in the future must be minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be.”

Interestingly Monbiot, no slouch when it comes to reading pertinent reports (including the TRANS-CSP report), suggests that the likely outcome will progress towards the majority of our electricity being generated by a wide range of renewable energy systems interconnected by transnational supergrid networks, and with the use of storage no subsequent loss in the reliability of power supplies. "Unlike Carbon Capture and Storage," he says, "wind, wave, tidal, solar, hydro and geothermal power are proven technologies. Unlike nuclear power, they can be safely decommissioned as soon as they become redundant." So, a powerful argument in support of renewable energy, Mr Monbiot.

Here's my take on this: Monbiot's position on nuclear is one cushioned with conditionality. In essence he qualifies his view on this basis: nuclear is potentially fine to have in the equation providing certain stringent conditions are met. And, if Monbiot’s conditions are followed to their logical conclusion, the market is more than likely to dictate that other renewable technologies will fill the gap in any event.


Monbiot: Coal Scuttled

Climate Camp, Kingsnorth

It was an early dash through Smithfield, with cheeky Bummarees calling out at me as I ignored the anti-cycling signs (what signs?) and whizzed through the tail-end of the morning's meat market. Down to St Pauls, swooped round and along then over London Bridge to meet my fellow eco-warrior Vicki (Director of the Kingsnorth No New Coal film, and fellow Wise Woman) before hopping on the train down to Strood in Kent. So off we headed to support the protest against the proposed new-build coal station at Kingsnorth.
[Vicki, part of the radical wing of WW in action]

The boys in blue were out in force, (which I can only presume for them is a bit of a holiday from any serious work as this is a peaceful demo), taking inordinate care and time to stop, search and video us all. Very polite, proud and patient in explaining their PACE powers. One gets the impression they've all just passed their Advanced Activist Management Skills course. They had a super new toy parked up that was later put to much use - an all singing and dancing yellow and black helicopter which buzzed like an oversized busy bee away above the camp for most of the day. (Do plod-squabbles break out over whose turn it is to play with the machine? Ooh to be a fly on the wall of their conversations)

Into the camp, eventually, and it's glorious - a haven of peace and commonality of purpose, with hundreds of tents smattered around clustered in geographical areas (Londonium I am told has the best facilities, naturally. They have sofas in their feeding tent), composting loos to rival those at CAT, the odd freestanding turbine and PV panels. Bunting billows in the early morning breeze as the sun starts to warm the early morning haze and the clouds begin to disappear, opening up to a warm blue-skied summer day.

I am speaking on Concentrating Solar Power in the main space - the one with electricity, so I am informed. I am offered a bike to power my presentation, but sadly it seems to only give power to either the laptop or the projector, not both at the same time. How great that would have been to have had it generating clean energy to give my talk on the ultimate clean energy solution, courtesy of a fast pedlar.

By 10.30 the camp has woken up, and tent A fills. There are workshops running throughout the day and all week, which is a marvellous way to tap into some excellent speakers on all matters climate change related. It's a good turnout, and later as I survey the site I reckon there are in around 1500 folk there and some kids. One pretty eight year old tells me he will make me a paper fan for anything(!). So we seal the deal for half a choccie bar, but only once he has been assured on the contents - that it is indeed vegan and is made of raw chocolate and agave syrup. He seems very pleased. I am equally pleased with my fan.

I bump into chums old and new, catch up with more radical WW's - and Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto 2: How to Manage the Global Greenhouse, which delights me greatly. I've been itching to read it, as my gut instinct had been telling me that it will be an important one. In a nutshell, Tickell is advocating upstream control of greenhouse gases at point of production, not of emission (ie nail the oil companies, not the consumer).

Lunch at Londonium is delicious before scooting off to the site media tent for a bit of an interview, then off to hear a few workshops: Shaun Chamberlain on TEQ's (who argues from the other end of the spectrum - downstream control: carbon rationing of the consumer), David Flemming (the originator of TEQ's) on Anarchy (whom, upon arrival at the site, was reputedly chased by eager journos wanting to know if he was an elderly Tory MP. What anarchy he could have had there!).

It's hard to leave. The evening light is long, the banter fun (Meyer Hillman is stomping around furiously, indignant about some comment made by George Monbiot), fresh garlic wafts across from Wales (no sofas here; they have hay-bales from Machynlleth), and I had promised to pop in to commune with my fellow Scottish countrymen and women (bet they do great porridge first thing). But no time, we have to go (having hitched a lift back - thank you Oliver, much appreciated). We head of into the sunset as more people are pitching up in preparation for the day of mass action and march to Kingsnorth Coal Station on Saturday. I wish I could be there - the preparations sound fantastic. The only blot spied on the landscape is the batallion of 22 police trucks filled to the gills moving in with yet more troops. What kind of world do we live in when the state deems it neccessary to lavish £7 million on policing such a well-organised, peaceful but vitally important (and legal) protest?


Climate Camp
No New Coal
Monbiot: Coal Scuttled
Kyoto 2

100 months

We have a hundred months to save the planet. When the clock stops ticking we could be beyond the climate's 'tipping point', the point of no return, so says the Green New Deal report just published today by the New Economics Foundation.

onehundredmonths.org has just launched today - I'm supporting it, Wise Women are supporting it, and I hope you will too.

-----------------------------------------

75 years since President Roosevelt launched a New Deal to rescue the US from financial crisis, a new group of experts in finance, energy and the environment have come together to propose a ‘Green New Deal’ for the UK.

And, as the Green New Deal Group launch their proposals, new analysis suggests that from the end of July 2008 there is only 100 months, or less, to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before we hit a potential point of no return.

Proposal’s set out in the Group’s report include:

* Executing a bold new vision for a low-carbon energy system that will include making ‘every building a power station’.
* Creating and training a ‘carbon army’ of workers to provide the human resources for a vast environmental reconstruction programme.
* Establishing an Oil Legacy Fund, paid for by a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies as part of a wide-ranging package of financial innovations and incentives to assemble the tens of billions of pounds that need to be spent. These would also include Local Authority green bonds, green gilts and green family savings bonds. The monies raised would help deal with the effects of climate change and smooth the transition to a low-carbon economy.
* Ensuring more realistic fossil fuel prices that include the cost to the environment, and that are high enough to tackle climate change by creating economic incentives to drive efficiency and bring alternative fuels to market. This will provide funding for the Green New Deal and safety nets to those vulnerable to higher prices via rapidly rising carbon taxes and revenue from carbon trading.
* Minimising corporate tax evasion by clamping down on tax havens and corporate financial reporting. A range of measures including deducting tax at source for all income paid to financial institutions in tax havens would provide much-needed sources of public finance at a time when economic contraction is reducing conventional tax receipts.
* Re-regulating the domestic financial system. Inspired by reforms implemented in the 1930s, this would imply cutting interest rates across the board– including the reduction of the Bank of England’s interest rate - and changes in debt-management policy to enable reductions in interest rates across all government borrowing. This is designed to help those borrowing to build a new energy and transport infrastructure. In parallel, to prevent inflation, we want to see much tighter regulation of the wider financial environment.
* Breaking up the discredited financial institutions that have needed so much public money to prop them up in the latest credit crunch. Large banking and finance groups should be forcibly demerged. Retail banking should be split from both corporate finance (merchant banking) and from securities dealing. The demerged units should then be split into smaller banks. Mega banks make mega mistakes that affect us all. Instead of institutions that are ‘too big to fail’, we need institutions that are small enough to fail without creating problems for depositors and the wider public.

The Green New Deal Group urges the UK Government to take action at the international level to help build the orderly, well-regulated and supportive policy and financial environment that is required to restore economic stability and nurture environmental sustainability, including:

* Allowing all nations far greater autonomy over domestic monetary policy (interest rates and money supply) and fiscal policy (government spending and taxation).
* Setting a formal international target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that keeps future temperature rises as far below 2°C as possible.
* Giving poorer countries the opportunity to escape poverty without fuelling global warming by helping to finance massive investment in climate-change adaptation and renewable energy.

For further details and full report: NEF
onehundredmonths.org
The Final Countdown


Wise Women

The Age of Stupid

It's a humbling thing to see two children surviving the death of their father in the midst of the rubble of Iraq, in the full knowledge that his death was a direct result of the developed world's (read UK & USA) grab for oil. It's deeply moving to see the loss of a french glacier to climate change, and to hear the narrative of an 81 year old mountain guide who has lived there all his life. It's maddeningly frustrating to see the loss of a Devon wind farm application to local aesthetic fears (hey, what are motorways but a scar on our landscape? A scar that is creating part of the problem by carrying the very vehicles that are pumping damaging emissions. What an irony that we accept motorway expansion with so little fight, unlike the wind farm applications). It's challenging to view the contradictions of the oil worker who believed himself to be an environmentalist. These and other stories are the stuff of The Age of Stupid, the new movie from 'McLibel' Director Franny Armstrong and the Producer of the Oscar-winning 'One Day In September', John Battsek. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055. He watches 'archive' footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?

There were few dry eyes at the end of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group sceening at Portcullis House yesterday afternoon. Such was the impact on an audience consisting of hardened environmentalists, seasoned campaigners and (a smattering of) concerned MP's. The Q&A session afterwards elicited some insightful responses. Colin Challen MP called for everyone to join the "Militant Green Tendency and go agitate your party of choice at every meeting you can until Climate Change is top of the political agenda". Franny Armstrong, the director, asserted that the only way forward is for there to be strong international laws put in place (a timely reminder just as the crucial Climate Bill, the world-first climate change law, is making its way through parliament). Roger Higman of Friends of the Earth, when asked whether we had enough time to turn things around, stated that he was optimistic it could be done. On a scale of 1 - 10, he put his personal belief at a 9 - 10. And Peter Postlethwaite (who forsook his normal actor's fee and stayed with chums rather than incur additional costs during filming)? Good news there: he's finally got the go-ahead for his own turbine to be installed at his eco-home in Shropshire.

Later in conversation with Mark Lynas over a pint, we nattered on the rapid evolution of knowledge on climate change. Even with a film that flags up best understanding on climate change at the beginning of 2008 (with Mark filmed in his garden shed - clearly the hub of much activity - succinctly explaining why 2 degrees is such an important figure), scientific understanding has already moved forward and the framing of the issues has shifted (see the controversial Kyoto 2 book by Oliver Tickell, due to land in book stores next week). The concept of 60 - 80% reductions of greenhouse gases has now been superceded by the general scientific acceptance that, as Mark put it, to ensure we get within spitting distance of getting no further than a 2% degree increase of temperature (and all the attendant climactic conditions that will bring) will mean that we must bring our emissions to 350 parts per million. Our emissions already stand at about 385 parts per million. Thus, we have in effect already overshot. Quite simply we need to progress to a zero-carbon world as soon as possible. That's not to knock the important message that The Age of Stupid is presenting, as Mark was quick to point out. It's valid, vital and very very good.

We Can Solve It says Al Gore

Al Gore's challenge to America to produce 100% of its power from carbon-free sources in 10 years.

wecansolveit.org

Mediterranean Solar Plan gets green light

Sometimes certain decisions are determined in the international political arena that are seismic in their potential for shaping our future yet remain largely under the radar of general public knowledge. Of course CSP being my bag, means I am here to bring you the latest sunny developments - and the future is indeed looking bright.

In Paris on Sunday 13th July at the Heads of State Summit, a formal declaration launching the Union for the Mediterranean was issued, laying out the goals and workings of the 43-member organisation. One initiative in particular holds huge promise - the formal endorsement of the Mediterranean Solar Plan, which was presented by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even Gordon Brown has backed the Solar Plan, stating at the conference: "in the Mediterranean region, concentrated solar power offers the prospect of an abundant low carbon energy source. Indeed, just as Britain's North Sea could be the Gulf of the future for offshore wind, so those sunnier countries represented here could become a vital source of future global energy by harnessing the power of the sun. So I am delighted that that the EU is committing at this summit to work with its neighbours - including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and the League of Arab States - to explore the development of a new 'Mediterranean Solar Plan' for the development and deployment of this vital technology from the Sahara northwards.".

According to the International Energy Agency in it's recently published Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 - Scenarios and Strategies to 2050, on top of the investments in the Business-as-usual scenario, total additional investment needs for the period 2010-2050 amount to USD 45 trillion. The average year-by-year investments between 2010 and 2050 needed to achieve a virtual decarbonisation of the power sector include, say the IEA, the build of 215 million square metres of solar. Others technologies proposed to achieve 50% cuts by 2050 include 55 fossil-fuelled power plants with CCS, 32 nuclear plants and 17 500 large wind turbines as well as widespread adoption of near-zero emission buildings and, on one set of assumptions, deployment of nearly a billion electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

The Union for the Mediterranean agreed that the recent activity on energy markets in terms of both supply and demand, confirms the need to focus on alternative energy sources. Market deployment as well as research and development of all alternative sources of energy was declared a major priority in efforts towards assuring sustainable development. The Secretariat is now tasked to explore the feasibility, development and creation of a Mediterranean Solar Plan. It is expected that 20GW of CSP will be constructed by 2020, with electricity exports transmitted into Europe, and exponential growth thereafter.

The political will is now in place for the deployment of CSP plants in the Sahara Desert, with transmission of it's clean electricity into Europe. It's nemesis will of course be nuclear. But CSP has many advantages over nuclear: rapid construction times (3 years versus 10 -20 years), low environmental impact (even positive environmental impact can be achieved where desalination is incorporated in the plant, thereby providing water for both human consumption and agricultural use), unlimited availability of resource (in any given 2 week period, deserts receive the same amount of energy from the sun as is contained in all nuclear fuel reserves), lower security and terrorist risk (compare the bombing of a nuclear plant to the taking out of a bunch of mirrors in the desert - transnational devastation versus 7 years bad luck). Let the race commence.

Wild Law

I'm back - after 2 weeks in the wilderness. Well, Scotland, to be exact, but in some ways it felt like a dip into the wild. After a weekend in Edinburgh for a bit of film festival celebrations for the premier of my brother’s latest documentary (The New Ten Commandments), we headed off up the west coast to the Highlands. A land I know well and love, in part due to the lesser dominance of human impact. No TV (no problem), no radio (hmm), no phone connection (survivable), no internet connection (hugely frustrating). Just the two of us, millions of midges and a pile of books.

Where some pray under the hallowed edifices of the kirk, I communed with the ancient and sacred standing stones to be found in and around the Kilmartin Glen trying to unravel the mysteries of a civilization who had far greater connection with our planet than we do. A childhood shaped by authoritarian Catholicism and the rigid teachings of Jesuits failed to instill in me a belief in religion (the questioning of which led to much time spent outside the classroom). To this day it remains too ethnocentric and paternal for my taste. Instead, it made me question what our earth’s systems are. In time this has evolved into a recognition that all species and organisms – non-humans – have rights too.

As often happens, an accumulation of thoughts ideas and conversations come full circle. For me…a year in Vienna in 1988, working with an ecologist who taught me about Tree Tenants ... more recently, last year a conversation with a close friend about tree rights… a co-incidental introduction to a few fellow tree rights supporters … an email dialogue … an introduction to some seminal texts…an invite to an inspiring day course on Earth Jurisprudence at the Gaia Institute. Books mounted by my bedside tantalizing me to read, but I needed a little time to digest, rather than hurriedly devouring before turning my thoughts to other more immediate concerns. Thus, with very little distraction, and in the midst of the most beautiful countryside, for the past two weeks I have turned my thoughts to addressing what I now consider to be crucial for the environment - even more significant than saving our rainforests and the implementation of technological renewable energy solutions (this is not to denigrate their importance – for they are of course also vital). Something that requires nothing less than a dramatic shift in our collective consciousness.

To stop and even reverse the plundering and the violation of our world’s resources (and as a consequence that which has triggered climate change), we need a recognition of a Duty of Care for our planet. Nothing less than a mandatory principle – the creation of a legal standing of the inherent rights of the natural world - is required. Such an overriding objective should thus be accorded primary consideration by what Thomas Berry in The Great Work refers to as the the four major spheres of influence – academic, economic, political, religious and their corresponding bodies: universities, corporations, governments and religions.

Our legislative frameworks shape our societies, but somewhere within our development humanity failed to recognise that planet rights must be respected too. We now accept that the exploitation of our eco-systems is human-driven; with this knowledge comes the responsibility to act. Without an overarching recognition of planet rights, all legislation applied to provide energy and environmental protectionism remains piecemeal, incoherent and insufficient for the radical shift in consciousness and understanding that is required.

10th December 2008 will mark the 60th anniversary of our Universal Declaration of Human Rights; 60 years that have also fashioned our planning, energy and business laws and as a consequence our general belief of our dominant role within the planet. But at what detriment: a detriment that needs to be redressed now to ensure future protection. Is it not now time for an International Declaration of Planet Rights?

"The Power of the World always work in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days...all our power came from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished"
Heka Sapa, North American Oglala Sioux 1930 - 1931


...and one I read that made me laugh out loud: There's a Hippo in My Cistern by Pete May.

350

There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few month's ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary.

In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally.

We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.

And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them -- to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author, most recently, of "The Bill McKibben Reader," is the co-founder of Project 350 ( 350.org), devoted to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. A longer version of this article appears at Tomdispatch.com.

UK-German Climate Change partnership

They say a week is a long time in politics, and I seem to have been spending a fair bit of time flitting in and out of the House of Commons this last week. Wednesday brought me to a meeting with Matthias Machnig, State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, to mark the launch of the Climate Change Partnership between the German Embassy in the UK and the APPCCG (All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group). The primary aims of the Climate Change Partnership are to strengthen bilateral political engagement between the United Kingdom and Germany on climate change issues, to promote shared learning and to make joint progress on developing policies to combat the threat of climate change. And boy, do we need this! Languishing as we do at the bottom of the EU renewable energy league table, with only Malta producing less renewable energy as a percentage of total energy consumption. Germany meanwhile is light years ahead in it's adoption of renewable energy.

In one particular respect it was a delight to hear this German minister speak - no obfuscation, no fudging, no flummery. Rather, a lot of use of terms such as "it is our strongly held belief (that nuclear is not the answer)", "we do not believe in (renewable energy credits)", "it is our clearly defined policy...", "we will not accept (a system where FIT's are harmed)". All wonderfully exacting, and if he did not like a particular question, he simply did not answer it (of course the omission in itself presented it's own position - bringing to mind Urquhart's delicious line in House of Cards: 'You may very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment'). And all backed up with implemented policies. After having been at the receiving end of a fair bit of frustrating UK politico-speak on energy issues recently, this was all music to my ears. No consultations with the renewable industry (we are onto our 3rd), simply a commitment to addressing energy issues, and a swift implementation of the necessary laws. There is an overriding sense of wir benötigen es, wir tun es - we need it, so we do it.

So, this is what Germany is doing. They are:

goal of 40% reduction of GHG emissions in Germany by 2020;

package of emissions reduction policies representing a commitment of €3.3 billion;

14 new laws and regulations, each designed to encourage businesses to conserve energy or expand Germany's production of renewable energy;

increase of 30% energy from renewables by 2020 (currently 15% - compare with UK 2%);

strong supporters of electricity liberalisation in Europe;

Germany does not believe in nuclear; committed to phasing out old nuclear plants and no new build;

€500 million ($736 million) in subsidies to encourage home- and building-owners to install efficient heating systems;

target of 10% renewable energy to be implemented in all existing housing stock, to be increased next year;

2009: one of their core legislation for next year will be on rebuild standards for inefficient housing stock;

all newbuild must meet Passive Haus standards by 2020;

creation of an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), to build a coalition of countries and finance, bringing together all knowledge of renewable technologies, facilitate in research and policy advice. Germany is seeking UK government support and hope to implement such an agency at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009.

currently finalising it's proposals for the second Energy and Climate Package Leaders Declaration for the forthcoming G8 Summit to be held in Japan 7 - 9th July, making it clear what sort of responsibility developed and developing countries must have.

On answering questions;

believes Contraction and Convergence per capita approach is best for the long-term, but not before 2050;

supports second generation biomass from EU; will stick to 10% by 2020 as believes it is do-able;

supports demonstrator CCS, with expectation of 10-12 CCS plants throughout the EU (2 German companies, RWE CCS build by 2014, and Vattenfall). New coal stations must only be built with CCS, CHP or via CDM.

views EU supergrid as essential, pushing for strong investment;

believes that Concentrated Solar Power import from MENA into the EU supergrid is compatible for the future once infrastructure has been put in place (but that any CSP importation before 2020 must be additional, not as part of meeting EU Member State targets)

We have much we can learn from the Germans on energy policy. This looks to be a fruitful union. As my fluent-speaking Nanna used to say to me, "ya mein liebschien, es ist sehr gut."

Message from Perth, Australia

This is an email I received yesterday. It drove home how our energy requirements can be so easily disrupted, and that such a scenario happening in the UK is not so infeasible. This is what Eric had to say:

Hello Polly,

I live in Perth, western Australia, and this Sunday morning on the radio I was listening to the BBC overseas broadcasts, when the topic of Solar power was being highlighted.

I heard your name, and have since gone to various web sites linking you.

I am a "Senior Citizen", and although without any technical schooling or background, I have been wondering for many years why Solar Power has not replaced fossil fuel. I now, understand that it has been too expensive in the past, and that mining companies have been only too pleased to dig up coal, drill for oil, and "uncork" the underground and undersea gas reserves.

Perth has in the last two weeks, been made aware that an off sea gas drilling company..."Apache" rig.... had a recent flame out or explosion, causing the rig to cease operations. This has led to ONE THIRD of Perth's gas supply being closed. Repair to the rig, may take many many months, highlighting the sad reality of what can happen to industry and households.

Today's newspapers, and some politicians comments have told us that, some factories, mining companies, brewing companies, steel companies, may have to temporarily reduce staff and output. Hospitals and hotels have been advised to reduced their laundry as much as possible, in an attempt to preserve what gas is available from other outlets. Home owners have been encouraged to "turn off" lights and electric equipment when not being used, to reduce the demand on electricity from steam turbines heated from gas.

This is the Twenty First century, and it really is quite laughable, when all the technology that has evolved in the minds of mankind in the last one hundred years, leads us to cutting down on laundry, and turning the gas heater down.

This continent is the sunniest continent in the world. Blazing sun and dry open desert, lost in a flat landscape, ideal for solar power; and one off shore gas rig shuts down, leaving us an embarrassment. Even our sea water vaporisation unit, designed to help provide a flow of useable water,(* which due to too many very dry years has cause reservoirs to dry out ) has been told to shut down to lessen the demand on power. ......Thankfully its winter and we are getting rain, and not subject to another drought.

I notice in one of the web sites liked to you, suggested you have stated that CSP plants have been constructed in Spain, Australia and California.

Can you give me more information on where in Australia, and those involved in the construction and planning?

Oh, and as a P.S. one of our smelly black coal fired power stations, previously "mothballed" has been given the green light to start up again. Now is that progress.

Our State Premier Mr. Alan Carpenter, and his Energy Minister Mr. Fran. Logan, could probably....no....most probably, benefit from a communication from you and your foresight.

This is a great state in a great country, but its sad that today we are using nineteenth century resources to drive the machinery of the twenty first.

Hopefully the world will appreciate one day, people who like you, try to open the eyes of those who are not prepared to look.

Thanks
Eric Fry

TREC - AU

Solar Desalination

Acquasol

Climate Forum, London 14th and 15th June

This year's International Climate Forum has changed venue. No longer LSE, this time the fantastic 2 day event will be held at the South Camden Community School, Charrington Street, NW1 (just 5 mins behind Kings Cross Station).

Covering all the topical Climate Change issues, it is a wonderful opportunity to attend workshops covering the Science of Climate Change, Energy Solutions, Transport, International Policy, Cuba, Community Based Networks, Geoengineering, Contraction and Convergence, Direct Action - and many more. Plenary sessions will include wise words from the likes of of Michael Meacher, Tony Juniper, and Ichin Cheng.

And of course TREC-UK shall be there to raise awareness of Concentrating Solar Power. Dr Gerry Wolff will be talking on Saturday 10.30 - 12.00 on Solutions, and I shall be running a workshop on Sunday 11.30 - 13.00, DESERTEC - Clean Power from the Deserts. I will be demonstrating how half the world's energy requirements can be fulfilled by CSP by 2050, what is required to get us there and what exciting developments are in the pipeline.

Hope to see you there.

International Climate Forum

The petrol pump's running dry

Whilst Peak Oil is rapidly becoming mainstream with Joe public, amazingly the government seems to still be in denial. Malcolm Wicks, in response to questions put in the House of Commons Debate on Oil Prices, stated that "the huge increase in the price of a barrel of oil has caught the whole world by surprise and we are in, frankly, difficult and uncharted waters."

Whilst it is true we are in unchartered waters, the rise in price has been anticipated ever since Hubbert first came out with his theory on Peak Oil back in the 1950's. Unfortunately, our government has been basing their policies on forecasting of increase of oil prices to $70 - in 2020! So, no suggestion of reduced supplies there then. How is this possible? Oil is a finite resource, we are now in a position that what little remains out there is more difficult to get at and thus extraction will prove ever more expensive, not only in financial terms but also environmental costs. Thing is, Peak Oil is not a difficult concept to grasp. The tank is running dry, and as one clever bod put it, we are now trying to suck out the remaining dregs that have soaked into the pub carpet (a rather disgusting analogy, but oh so graphically pertinent). Market economics dictate that as a finite source dries up, so it's price will escalate. Mr Wicks and Mr Brown seem to be under the impression that "the solution is increased production". But of what? Certainly not oil.

Mr Wicks, have a look at peak oil.com, although you may experience delays. Spotted on their website by my mate Marm, is their new posting:

Welcome new visitors!

The site is responding slowly due to an influx of thousands of new visitors, so expect delays until our upgrades are in place.

Thanks for your patience.

Becoming a low Carbon Society

Another slightly belated blog - but it's an important one. This time I have been to the All Party Parliamentary working Group on Peak Oil and Gas (appgopo for short - an unusual acronym for sure) meeting on Becoming a Low Carbon Society, with Rob Hopkins speaking on Transition Initiatives, Simon Snowden from Liverpool University on Oil Vulnerability Auditing and Shaun Chamberlin on Tradeable Energy Quotas. Very usefully, you can view all three powerpoints and listen to the sessions online at the appgopo website. They are all worth listening to.

I'm wanting to write about TEQ's - Tradeable Energy Quotas (also known as Personal Carbon Allowances). I've written about them before, and here they are again, because like a lot of successful concepts, in essence it is simplicity itself.

TEQ's are like the toy money we played with when I was a child; there were three of us, and each was given the same allocation. We could spend it as we liked in our pretend market but with certain limitations (no sweets!). Once it was spent it was gone, but if we liked we could trade it in between each other in return for real money. How much it cost to buy in more depended on the generosity of my sister, or the meanness of my brother. An early lesson in the volatility of market conditions.

So, with TEQ's you receive your allocation to spend on energy. The allocation is preset annually, reducing each year in accordance with the requirement to reduce our carbon emissions. When you buy energy, such as petrol for your car or electricity for your household, units corresponding to the amount of energy you have bought are deducted from your TEQs account, in addition to your money payment.

Are you 'energy lean", cycle everywhere and have some whizzy microgeneration at home to cut your energy bills, and so do not use up your allocation? Then you can make some (real) money out of this. Just trade in your TEQ's and sell them to the more energy profligate. Need more than your allocation? You can buy from those who are selling their surplus.

It's a great system. It will reduce our use of fossil fuel; promote understanding of the true cost of our use of fossil fuel and it's creation of CO2 emissions;encourage behavioural change and use of clean energy alternatives. It is an equitable system (everyone treated the same); it guarantees national carbon reduction commitments in line with international targets (an independent committee would set the level allowable for the market each year in accordance with reduction national targets), it allows for a phased energy descent.

TEQs provides an effective and fair response to both climate change and resource depletion and enables a nation to ensure fair access to energy for all. It supplies the incentive for citizens, organisations and Government to work now on achieving the necessary rapid transformation in the way we use fuel into the future, and it provides time to plan ahead. It empowers localities and individuals to be able to make a tangible difference. It is fair, simple and practical, and it gets results by uniting the nation in a common purpose.

So why is this not being implemented? Last week DEFRA undertook a pre-feasibility study on the implementation of TEQ's and confirmed that there were no technical barriers to it's implementation. But that's as far as it got. No movement there - for the time being. But with escalating energy prices ( Goldman Sachs recent report claims oil price could increase to $200 per Barrel within 6 months, others believe it shan't stop there), the increased awarenesss that oil companies are consolidating (have you noticed how fast petrol stations are rapidly disappearing?), and the energy crisis becoming more painful by the day, our government might wake up soon. Indeed, BERR have just welcomed an investigatory report into future oil availablity - but this will take a year before completion. Regardless of exactly how much more (or more to the point - how little remains - even Bush thinks we're running out) exists, we know we need to wean ourselves off our oil dependency as soon as possible.

TEQ's are a simple system, one that would not take much to implement, and I'll wager will be with us sooner rather than later. The Draft Climate Change Bill allows for it's implementation without additional primary legislation, which is good news. A case of watch this space.



teqs.net

When will our Government wake up to the Energy Crisis?

This is belated blogging. But I suppose that is the beauty of blogging - you can get back to it when you have time. The last month or so I have been pretty much out of the loop of things, but I'm now back on full(ish) form, with news to tell of what I've been getting to here in London that's worth noting.

So, last week I attended the Praseg Annual Conference with my TREC hat on to get all and sundry up to speed on Concentrating Solar Power. The added bonus is of course the chance to sit in on various MP's waxing lyrical on their (sometimes not so) green credentials. One MP did stand out however: Phil Woolas MP.

This is a man who really seems to get it. In fact it is the first time I have heard a mainstream-ish Labour MP (outside the lone voices of climate change reason; Colin Challen and Michael Meacher) voluntarily raise his own views on Peak Oil. It is after all part of his remit as DEFRA Minister for the Environment; he has responsibility for climate change, energy and the environment. Nevertheless, it was interesting to hear his take. 12 months ago, he admitted, he would pay lip service to Climate Change. Now, he says, anyone who does not get it is in denial. "Well, it’s just happening, you can feel it - and see it all around the world." Yes, you do, I thought - you've grasped the urgency of the situation.

"UK economic activity accounts for 15% emissions worldwide", he went on to say (note: this is a rarely alluded to fact by our government, so well done in not sidestepping this unattractive but vitally important fact), "2% of which comes directly from within our shores. Technology transfer and a global carbon market is required – and we must include rainforests. It is wrong to assume it’s all China – my experience is that China gets the point and is addressing it."

On the Kyoto Protocol: "What concerns me is if there is not an international agreement at Copenhagen (Dec. 2009 is the date for the UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen and projected completion of UN post-Kyoto deal). I fear they will say - forget it, we will do what we have to do. But not many people are looking at the big picture. When canvassing last week, not many asked me to increase our Kyoto commitments."

On Peak Oil: "Peak Oil is a symbol of all our other rapidly depleting resources. We are running out, we can’t keep on living as if we have three planets. This is a profound challenge to us."

So, a man who talks the talk - but do we have a government who will walk the walk? The other morning when interviewed about escalating energy prices, our Prime Minister Gordon Brown on radio 4's Today programme claimed the solution was that we just need to get out there and "find more oil". Does he not know that we are, if not yet at Peak Oil pretty much on our way? The problem is, if the current escalation of energy prices to $126 a barrel are not attributable to peak oil, what will it be like when we are on the rapid downhill slalome race of declining output? This time last year oil was $75 per barrel and the lone voices predicting a hit of $100 per barrel by 2010 were viewed as extremists. Recent history demonstrates that even those with a bit of foresight were being too conservative in their estimates. As David Strahan said the other week at our WISE Women Speaker Event - we ain't seen nothing yet.

But there is a further layer of complication to add to the decline in global energy resources. We have our own homegrown decline in energy resources to contend with here in the UK. We have a swathe of opted-out old coal stations that must, as directed under EU legislation, be closed by the end of 2016. Some are already working on limited capacity. Add to this the end-of-life of most of our nuclear stations (some of which are now working at very limited capacity, and when working at full capacity only accounts for at best 3.8% of our energy requirements. A dip in the ocean, you might say, in terms of what is required post 2016), and a picture emerges of a rather rapidly growing energy gap here in the UK which we have not been preparing for. By my simple calculations, if we say energy descent kicks in by 2010 at a conservative 3% per annum (peak oil puts additional strain on other finite resources), that makes an energy deficit of 18% by the end of 2016, before taking into account the UK energy gap dip of roughly 32% of our own capacity. That makes a remarkable 50% energy deficit within 8 years.

So my calculations may be very simplistic (and possibly wrong - I am no expert forecaster). The slide above interestingly demonstrates the UK energy gap as approximately 32% reduction of capacity, with oil being completely factored out by end of 2016. Either way - there is a substantial UK energy gap that does not seem be addressed. Bill McKibben famously said in his book The End of Nature; until we feel the fear in our bellys, we will fail to act. How may more MP's need to feel that fear before they act?