garden time

The poppies have attracted bees . . .

. . . but now they've gone to seed.

A bounty of blackcurrants? 

Here is this year's veg (fruit?) plot.

So . . . I pulled up some poppies, transplanted some tomatoes, harvested (!) a dish of blackcurrants and pruned the bushes.  They're in large pots, but I don't expect miracles.  Time will tell.  I checked my compost pot and it's full of worms working hard.  Then I shifted containers around - a few quite large, most small and mostly full of flowering plants. 


There's a noticeable difference in leaf colour between the tomatoes which I planted in the ground two weeks ago, and the ones which were in the trough until yesterday. 

Talk or action?

Labour seems to be all talk and no action on green issues. Not that any of the others are likely to be much of an improvement. I think Labour lost its soul when Tony Blair cosied up to big business, but that's hardly news.

See what they haven't done here . No wonder we're all so damned cynical.

France - electricity consumption down 1%

An article in Le Point claims that electricity consumption was down 1% on normal usage, i.e. about 800 megawatts.

Click on title for details.

And in America North and South

The New York Times reports on Earth Hour's success.

Now we wait to see what the consequences are. The meetings below are ones to watch, not caused by Earth Hour, but maybe influenced by it.

Obama has announced a meeting in Washington on April 27-28 where representatives of the 16 major economies will meet to discuss action on climate change. This will lead up to various meetings, culminating in one in Italy in July.

And of course it should have some influence on both the G20 in the UK, and the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009.

Earth Hour in the UK

This had more publicity on the BBC at any rate than last year. Updates were posted throughout the day as 8.30 pm reached each part of the world. Late last night this article about the Uk was posted online.

Colin Butfield, campaign director for WWF, said a number of "iconic landmarks" such as Buckingham Palace, the Gherkin, the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and the London Eye were plunged into darkness for an hour to mark the event.

On Facebook's page, and on the Earth Hour website there were a lot of facetious comments, as well as the positive. Some people feel morally obliged to represent the negative and anti-communal side of human nature. Oh well. It just shows how different we are, and how variable the nature of the human beast.

See the lights switched off

BBC video of some of the cities from Sydney to Paris as the lights go off.

Scotland takes part

Scotland is also taking part in Earth Hour's switch-off

From Sydney - to the world

Report in the Sydney Morning Herald

This year, exceeding the wildest dreams of its organisers, participation (in Earth Hour) has swollen to an estimated 1 billion people in 83 countries. Of them, 47 were developing economies, up from nine last year.

Earth Hour 2009

This has received rather more publicity this year - I've heard it mentioned three times on the BBC radio News this morning, including a short interview.

There is an article on their website, too.

In Europe the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Edinburgh Castle will be in darkness for one hour.

A symbol, indeed, but an important one.

Though there are dedicated environmentalists such as George Marshall, founder of the Climate Information Outreach Network , and the blog who argues against this action, as ineffective and likely to resonate badly with the unconvinced, to whom darkness is a Bad Thing, associated with death, decay and privation.

And there are plenty of 'rebels' posting on the comments threads, pledging to leave all their appliances ON.

Births, deaths and Co2 emissions worldwide

To see the statistics for births, deaths and CO2 emissions for all the world's countries, hover your cursor over the one that interests you.
Huge differences in the length of time it takes to emit 1000 tonnes of CO2. But this is given per country, so to get a meaningful comparison we need to divide by the population, I think.

Bristol - cycling city

From a BBC article

Bristol will receive a share of £100 million in order to

Create the UK's first on-street bike rental network

Establish a 're-cycling' scheme that repairs bikes and provides them free of charge to deprived communities

Build state-of-the-art facilities for cyclists commuting to the city centre

Create a dedicated cycleway to link the suburbs with the city centre

More than double the number of children receiving cycling training

Develop a Personalised Travel Plan programme, focusing on changing the way people conduct short journeys to work.

Excellent news for the city which started Sustrans, and well done all those hill-climbing cyclists in the town. It will certainly encourage me to cycle more when I'm there. Last week's score - 2 rides of about 30 - 40 minutes.

Other areas which will receive funding for cycling include York, Stoke, Blackpool, Cambridge, Chester, Colchester, Leighton, Shrewsbury, Southend, Southport and Woking.

I reckon that Leicester should be in there. They're pretty keen on encouraging cycling as well.

For further interesting comments on Bristol and cycling look here

A mixed curse on our throwaways.

Litter lurks in scenic lay-bys -
plastic ghosts of drinks long drunk,
cardboard memories of fast-food feasts,
packaged to go for the car-borne.
Carefree, they cast their cans
for others, less carefree, to carry.

I curse their castaway ease -
may their dross return in dreams
and wrap them in tendrils of plastic,
bitter blossom on so many hedges.

May they all be reborn as cleaners,
pittance-paid for the shit-work.
May their cars be recycled as cycles,
and their legs be blessed as they ride.



This looks like more purposeful dumping of rubbish...pic taken at end of Feb.

More baby steps

Moondreamer made the suggestion and now we've acted on it. We've started a new blog Towards 2011 - 100 Years of International Women's Day. (I'm not putting a link to the IWD home page because some script on it keeps crashing my AOL connection.)
We hope to include articles about gender differences, facts about women - our achievements, areas where inequality still reigns, along with areas where men and women are crossing the old boundaries. We're also looking for feminist humour and cartoons. I don't mean jokes about men.

On another tack, a friend from Writers' Dock has started a petition to the PM on an ecological and aid issue. Another baby step, but hell, you have to start somewhere.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Covenant Foreign Aid where Ecological Resources exist, such as endangered rainforests, fisheries and reefs, so local populations are directly compensated for conservation. We urge the Prime Minister to acquire renewable leases on such areas for UK monitoring rights to ensure the money is spent effectively.
The aims of this petition are to advance anti-climate change measures, to ensure Aid is spent effectively and fairly, and report to the Public on its effectiveness.

Baby steps does it.

According to a contact in Australia, during this year's Earth Hour 'the saving was equivalent to two power stations being temporarily out of service.'

Last year it was a Sydney-based event. This year it has gone global. According to the BBC link in the previous post, (which keeps changing some of the details) Chicago and San Francisco took part, along with Bangkok, Manila, Toronto and Dublin. New Zealand joined in as well. In Bangkok they saved 73.34 megawatts of electricity, which would have produced 45.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

In Britain, a number of villages arranged their own lights-out, although there has been no big publicity. 26 councils dimmed lights. I don't know which they were. On the south coast, Brighton turned off the lights on its pier, and in London - which was not officially involved - lights were turned down at City Hall.

Next year, will there be more? I guess it's our call.

Earth Hour did happen

Thanks BBC again - you publicise it after the event, for those who are looking. I didn't find much about it beforehand. I wonder why the UK doesn't really do this sort of thing.

Anyway, you can link to Earth Hour 2009 and year-long action against climate change at this world wildlife fund link .

Energy Saving Day? Oops!

I blinked and I missed it.
The first I heard about E-Day was when someone mentioned it on Writers' Dock at 7.20pm, almost an hour and a half after it was supposed to start. I don't listen to radio or watch TV as much as I used to, so it could just be that I was ill-informed. However it seems to have been one of the biggest non-events in recent months.

I quote from the article on the BBC website . My comments are in bold type.

The E-Day concept started life as Planet Relief, an awareness-raising BBC TV programme with a significant comedy element.
Why do we have to have comedy with everything ?
But in September the BBC decided to pull the project, saying viewers preferred factual or documentary programmes about climate change.
Thanks, guys.
The decision came after poor audiences for Live Earth, and public debate over whether it was the corporation's role to "save the planet". Dr Prescott then decided to see whether he could mount E-Day as an independent operation, and secured the backing of important partners such as the National Grid and the UK's major energy companies.
As though we're going to do what these people suggest, when we're constantly bombarded with information about how much money they make out of us.

Funny how we're all so ready to complain about the cost of energy and the price of fuel, when one of the reasons we pay so much, is simply that we waste so much.

Now E-Day has been such a flop, I guess it will turn into a joke. We have such a cool sense of humour:
'Ho ho, let's make today energy wasting day.'
'I'm going to switch everything on at once for an hour.'

Well, I hope Earth Hour has more success. Or don't we care at all? (See my blog January 25th)

Recycle it.

Ok, I get excited about silly little things. Who knows how much difference this makes? But surely something is better than nothing. I've been annoyed at having to chuck these in the non-recyclables for a while.

Spotted this morning outside a local supermarket:

Earth Hour

I've just been reading about Earth Hour - at 8pm on March 29th anywhere in the world, you turn your lights and other electrical appliances off for one hour. It may be just a token gesture towards greenness, to raise awareness of how we could do something to help slow global warming, but in Sydney last year it cut energy consumption by about 10% for the hour.
I felt great about the idea, until I thought of my internet addiction. First thing in the morning, last thing at night and most stations in between.
But we could always play Scrabble by candlelight.

Nuclear Power?

It's back on the agenda.

The miracle cheap clean energy that will allow us to carry on using our ever more powerful gadgets, and our H-D televisions. And of course our computers. (Guilty, m'lud.)

The miracle energy with one huge drawback - how do we keep the waste safe for several thousand years?

There has been no major accident since Tchernobyl, but there have been reports of leaks and leukemia clusters.

How much of our energy will it produce? How much will it cost? How can we be sure the companies will pay for the eventual decommissioning and safe disposal of waste?


Why can't we do as well as Germany on the renewable energy front?

Eat less meat?

Jonathan Brown writes in the Independent
A prolonged drought in the US threatens corn yields and could push global cereal prices to new record highs. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3298372.ece

I wonder if we would be better to change our diet to more cereal, eating it directly, rather than feeding it to animals and then eating them. According to http://veg.ca/content/view/133/111/#diet
a meat-based diet requires 7 times more land than a plant-based diet.

OK, so I'm pretty much veggie, apart from the fact that I do now eat fish, but we could all easily eat less meat, without in any way lowering our quality of life.