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Lean, green killing machine
August 12, 2008
In a story not as weird as the environmentally-friendly bullets one but still somewhat unnerving, it appears the US military is gunning for an increase in the amount of energy it derives from renewable sources. Military chiefs want to see 25 per cent come from the likes of wind, wave and solar by 2025 and while it accounts for 1.5 per cent of US energy consumption, the biggest impact could be the civil application for military developments in technology and efficiency so the rest of the country could be following in its khaki-coloured wake. My feelings about this are understandably mixed. On the one hand, any shift away from fossil fuels towards greener alternatives is a good thing; on the other... well, it's the military. There's no point ranting about the development of new technologies to support an institution who's ultimate aim is (let's not beat about the bush here) killing people because there are countless everyday items with their origins in military development, from the internet to Superglue. But when the military PR machine is proud to claim that human rights vortex Guantanamo Bay has it's own wind turbines, you have to admire the stomach-churning irony.
What it’s like at Climate Camp
August 8, 2008
It was a beautiful morning, if a little muggy, as
I passed through the Kent
countryside to Strood yesterday on my way to Climate Camp. I had to find out
for myself what it was really like at the farm opposite Kingsnorth
coal fired power station, where E.On wants to build the first new coal plant in the UK for over 30 years.
Joined by fellow climate campaigners, we
received friendly smiles from local people who pointed us in the direction of
Kingsnorth, egging us on our journey. (After all, not everyone wants to live next to a
coal fired power station.)
Approaching the climate camp, we were greeted
by a police garrison complete with horses, dogs and vans. Herded like cattle,
we were stopped and searched extensively - after which
we cheerfully resumed our journey to join the hundreds of climate campaigners peacefully
enjoying the bright sunshine in a picturesque rural meadow. Or
dangerous criminals plotting to cause grievous bodily harm, depending on who you listen to.
I haven't been out of London in ages, and I virtually
skipped among the hundreds of colourful tents as I was given a tour of the camp
and its various workshops, kitchens and eco-washing facilities. I was
literally tripping over solar panels; the entire power supply to the camp comes from small windmills and solar cells. Even the cinema was bicycle powered and
ground water purified for use with ingenious eco-filtration techniques.
I attended a few workshops that were running in
a couple of the tents, like the Plane Stupid discussion on next steps to oppose
building of the third
runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow. What I found was that although there
were speakers for these workshops, there wasn't any official leader. The
philosophy behind the workshops is to open them up for discussion without
having a chain of command dominating them, which I found liberating.
By mid-afternoon
I found myself playing Frisbee with some of the campers and singing along to songs
someone was playing on her guitar. Children played freely and were blissfully
unaware of the police helicopter that landed nearby. I also visited the stand-off point on
the farm where police raided the camp at dawn on Monday.
It was
evening, and time for me to go (after being frisked again) as I had to be in to write this blog today. On my way back to London, I pondered on what's made the government go backwards on energy technology, when the
future so clearly lies in renewables. I guess when E.On says jump, the government jumps.
Get involved: Give coal the boot!
August 8, 2008
We urgently need you to be a part of a growing movement across the UK urging Gordon Brown to give coal the boot. Get involved!
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Climate actions in Gatwick, Essex and... Legoland?
August 8, 2008
The Lego replica of Kingsnorth power station complete with 'Stop Climate Change' banner © Hans Bricks
Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:
Campers made their way this morning to a biofuel depot in Essex to take part in a blockade. According to news reports, people created a barrier in the road to prevent lorries gaining access to the depot, while others were chained to a fuel storage tanker. And this on the day that a government report finds that supposedly sustainable biofuels might not be so sustainable after all.
Meanwhile campers of the Plane Stupid variety headed to Gatwick Airport, where they occupied the roof above the train station and the arrivals lounge with banners unfurled with aplomb. Others provided leaflets about the climate impacts of aviation to passengers and staff.
Elsewhere, with an example of what is perhaps the smallest banner ever seen, Legoland in Windsor experienced its own visitation. The miniature replica of Kingsnorth power station (who'd have thought there'd be one in the first place?) was decorated with a teeny tiny banner reading 'Stop Climate Change'.
Follow events at Climate Camp via Twitter here and here.
Biofuels failing 'green' standards
August 7, 2008
From today's Guardian: "Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show. "The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way." But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation: "The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."
Carry on camping for the climate
August 6, 2008
See all Climate Camp updates.
While I've been stuck at my desk following the debates about Climate Camp police tactics, activists’
intentions and whether environmentalists are mostly ‘filthy
adulterers’ (Julie Burchill, bless), the Climate Campers have been busy
turning a quiet field into a living/working space powered by renewable energy,
and debating the future of coal, the climate change movement and the planet.
Despite the police raids and arrests,
all is apparently well at climate camp. Workshops are underway covering
everything from The EU Emissions Trading Scheme and achieving 90 per cent
emissions reductions to legal rights and off-grid renewables.
Nathan, our head nuclear
campaigner who held a workshop at the camp yesterday, reports that "after
a slow and meticulous search and screening by the Essex
police - somewhat out of their jurisdiction but seemingly enjoying the overtime
- I made it up to the camp. The atmosphere was positively charged but very
serene, with everyone focusing on getting on with their tasks at hand."
The goal of this year's
camp is to build a movement that can stop the new coal rush in the UK. And, as
Monbiot writes, the
Climate Camp must succeed; “Everything now hinges on stopping coal. Whether
we prevent runaway climate change largely depends on whether we keep using the
most carbon-intensive fossil fuel."
The problem is that Britain’s
biggest CO2 emitter (E.On) is dictating
our government's energy policy. E.On wants to build a new coal plant at
Kingsnorth, and, privately, the government is making promises
to the energy giant which make a mockery of its public rhetoric on climate
change.
To win this campaign, we
need to make it more politically damaging for the government to support new
coal plants than not to. That means a mass movement to stop coal, and it all
begins at Climate Camp.
If you can go along,
please do. If, like me, you can't make it, the wonders of technology and the Indymedia centre
mean you’ll be able to keep up with all the goings on at the camp. There are
Twitter feeds for protest news, general bulletins and weather forecasts, regular posts
on Indymedia,
a radio station, a host of blogs, photos on Flickr and videos
on YouTube.
Update from Climate Camp
August 4, 2008
See all Climate Camp updates.
In
a pleasant grazing meadow outside Strood, the Climate Camp is open for business and
I'm here for a couple of days to see what's going on, cover it for the blog
and, more importantly, get involved.
It's
difficult to talk about the camp without touching on some of fractious actions
of the police. Fortunately, nothing much happened and, after a frustrating period when we could all have been doing
something more constructive, the police withdrew.
Now, everyone seems keen to get on with the aims of the camp - discussion,
education, building on a social movement for climate action and working to stop
a new coal plant from being built at Kingsnorth, whose emissions would equal
that of the 30 lowest emitting countries in the world combined - rather than
spending too much time debating how to handle the police.
One
of the sessions that did take place was a debate with Arthur Scargill - yes, that Arthur Scargill –
about what he and others in the National Union of Miners perceive as a lack of
thought given by environmentalists to
the social
impacts of a reduced or non-existent coal industry. Unsurprisingly, he
wouldn't be too pleased to see the proposed new stations ditched but what was
interesting was his vision that, ultimately, solar power would be providing our
electricity. It's a bit unlikely but at least he acknowledges we can't burn
fossil fuels forever, even if his tub-thumping delivery brought on a severely
unpleasant Eighties flashback.
Tuesday
should see everything back on track. Several sessions have caught my eye (all
scheduled at the same time of course) and I'm down to help in the 'What the
hell next...?' tent, providing suggestions for post-camp activism. Plus I have
some more podcast interviews to do, so hopefully there'll be no more rude
awakenings.
We'll be posting regular Climate Camp updates on our site (see all), and keep checking the Climate Camp website for the latest news.
Deep Green: peak oil changes everything
August 4, 2008
Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.
As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.
Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.
World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of “trillions of barrels” of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago.
Meanwhile economies everywhere want to grow, so demand for oil soars worldwide. The gap between this surging demand and flat or declining production will drive price increases and shortages. That’s peak oil.
Peak experience
Peak oil is not a theory, but rather a simple observation of a common natural occurrence. Peak oil is only one symptom of an exponentially growing population, with exponentially growing demands, reaching worldwide limits of all resources.
“Peak oil has long been a reality for the oil industry,” says Anita M Burke, former Shell International senior advisor on Climate Change and Sustainability. “To believe anything else belies the facts of science.” In 2007, Dr James Schlesinger, former US Defense and Energy Secretary stated flatly, “if you talk to industry leaders, they concede … we are facing a decline in liquid fuels. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”
Global warming, caused primarily by forest destruction and the burning of fossil fuels, now aggravates natural limits and the human turmoil that these limits provoke. One might think that peak oil will solve global warming because less oil means less carbon emissions. Sadly, this is not so because humanity took the best, cheapest, and easiest oil first, leaving dirty, acidic, expensive oil in marginal reserves that require vast amounts of energy to recover. In the 1930s, 100 barrels of oil cost about 1 barrel in equivalent energy to extract. That ratio is now about 20:1 and sinking fast. The Canadian tar sands produce barely 1:1 net energy. By the time someone burns tar sands oil in his or her vehicle, the industry has burned nearly an equal amount retrieving it.
When we account for the net energy left after production, and population growth, we discover that the world peak for net-oil per-capita occurred three decades ago, in 1979. Many oil suppliers – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and others – recognizing the limits of the resource, are now keeping more of their oil for domestic use, and saving it for future growth. Regardless of energy alternatives – ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal – humanity will never again enjoy the current consumption rates of cheap, convenient fuels. This fact changes everything.
We witness the impact in the increasing scarcity and cost of food and other critical resources that rely on oil. Most trucking firms now add a fuel surcharge to hedge against fuel price increases. As fuel prices soar, airlines cancel flights or simply close down. In many cities, police add a gas charge to traffic tickets because police departments have already spent their annual fuel budget on high-priced gasoline.
The post-peak oil era will require new human development patterns and strategies that cope with limits to growth. Humanity has no new continents to exploit or planets to occupy. Frantic industrial nations may drill in the Arctic and dig into dirty tar sands, but none of this will increase or even match the past abundance of cheap liquid fuel that we have already squandered. Nevertheless, the actual moment that world oil production peaks is less relevant than our preparation for the impact.
Relocalization
Well-financed voices promoting global industrialization claim our economies can grow
“forever,” or “for the foreseeable future,” but these voices cry out against the evidence before our eyes. Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.
The dream of a globalized world marketplace linked by airplanes and trucks will not endure. Monolithic superstores that rely on liquid fuels to ship cheap goods around the world will become the relics of the cheap oil era. These massive chain stores also undermine the local enterprise that communities will need to survive.
“The current solutions being bantered about are inadequate to the conditions we are faced with,” says Anita Burke, after decades inside the oil industry. “We must embrace adaptation strategies that immediately create whole new ways of being in relationship to each other and the planet. Buy local, get off of hydrocarbons in every aspect of your life, gather in community, and espouse only love - your grandchildren’s lives depend on it.”
Communities addicted to cheap oil, especially suburban environments without public transport, will become untenable. Regions that still build highways for cars are simply designing their own demise. Smart communities will design light, convenient public transport to run efficiently on the most locally available energy source.
The post-peak oil era will require that we re-establish local manufacturing and food production, and refurbish economies that have been gutted by globalization. Smart urban designers are now planning for the end of cheap energy, global warming, and the human migration that these changes will set in motion. Smart neighbourhood and regional planners are preparing communities for the inevitable transition from escalating consumption to conserver societies, built on a human scale and linked to social services and the natural cycles that sustain them.
Building communities in nature
I recently walked through an abandoned industrial section of Vancouver, where I live. The empty, poorly designed, decaying buildings seemed depressing, but I noticed how much actual green space flourished with wild plants. Squatters with gardening skills, I kept thinking, could make a life for themselves here.
Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and women’s rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.
Relocalize: The end of cheap oil means less products arriving from around the world and less jobs making junk to sell elsewhere. Globalization is literally running out of gas. As fuel prices soar, communities will have to supply more food, water, and vital resources locally. If you are thinking of earning a degree in international finance, it might be smart to take some permaculture courses as well.
Preserve Farmland: Wise communities will preserve agricultural land, support farmers, provide local food for local consumption, compost all ...
Keeping the lights on - without new coal
August 1, 2008
Keeping the lights on - without new coal
"[U]nless we want to risk our security of supply and face greater cost
burdens, stations such as Kingsnorth must be part of the energy mix."
"Britain led the way to an agreement that by 2020 one fifth of all Europe's energy should come from renewables - a near three-fold increase. The UK worked hard to get agreement to this target. And let me make it absolutely clear: we are completely committed to meeting our share." As a result, Malcolm Wicks resorted this morning to snide comments about people who oppose new coal plants: Mr Wicks said a “lay person” might think energy policy was “about windmills”. But “the rather boring fact is that the world is going to be burning lots of coal”. I have to wonder what the UK's former Chief Scientist and the world's leading climate change scientist make of that make of that justification for the Kingsnorth plant proposed by EON. You can read the full report here.
Day out with the Climate Camp Caravan
August 1, 2008
See all Climate Camp updates.
Yesterday I joined the Climate Camp Caravan on
their East London leg - from Tower Bridge to Greenwich
Park. Unlike last year,
when activists simply descended upon Heathrow
to protest against airport expansion, this year protesters are walking from
Heathrow to Kingsnorth
coal plant in Kent.
So yesterday morning I walked under Tower Bridge and joined the
Caravan on the green opposite City Hall.
I knew I was at the right
place at the right time when I heard music blaring from speakers. In amongst
the carnival atmosphere of the caravan, police mingled and people came out into
the street to watch us pass by. Activists had converted recumbent bicycles into
pirate ships made of cardboard, and one climate camper had brought her kids
along to enjoy the summer holidays in a carriage hooked to her bike.
I held a banner
announcing the Climate Caravan to oncoming traffic who honked in approval - and
didn't seem to mind us taking up a whole lane to draw attention to climate
change. When we came across a Shell petrol station, we stayed for a little
longer, making our arguments against Shell's
greenwash attempts heard.
I think a Caravan to the
Climate Camp is an excellent way to meet people along the way and raise
awareness about climate change. This year, the focus is on asking the
government to call off plans to build a coal
fired power station in Kingsnorth, which will add vast quantities of carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere. If it succeeds, the government's aggressive pursuit
of coal for energy will
mean the chances are that we’ll miss climate change targets, and renewable
energy won’t be given the priority it should have.
