The Better Planet Guide

Responding to the news that oil prices have reached a 22 year high, Jenny Jones, said:

"It is time for people to get real about their addiction to oil. The smart move for any consumer and any large city is to start switching to green technologies and cut out the waste and excess. If you need a car, then dump the 4*4 and either go electric or buy a small one. If you are moving home, then ask about its energy rating. The current rise in oil prices is just a warning of the bigger crisis to come. With oil production being overtaken by oil consumption for the first time in history, the only future worth living has to be a green one"

I don't believe in climate changeii

Technology will fix it

It’s the government and the Americans fault

Who are you to tell me what to do?

It’s not my problem

There’s nothing I can do

How I run my lie is my own business

There are other more urgent problems to tackle

At least I’m doing something

We’re already making progress

In the UK, some 25,000 households are members of organic box schemes;

In the US, there are 2400 farmers' marketis involving 20,000 farmers as vendors; each week one million people visit these marketis, which turnover $1 billion per year;

A farmers marketi is an opportunity for farmers to sell their produce directly to the public. A key feature is that those who try to sell their goods at such marketis should be members of the local community where the marketi is being held - this is essentially therefore a marketi for local farmers and local people.

The Idea of a Local Economy by Wendell Berry - extract

UNSURPRISINGLY, AMONG PEOPLE WHO WISH to preserve things other than money - for instance, every region's native capacity to produce essential goods - there is a growing perception that the global "free marketii" economy is inherently an enemy to the natural world, to human health and freedom, to industrial workers, and to farmers and others in the land-use economies; and furthermore, that it is inherently an enemy to good work and good economic practice. I believe that this perception is correct and that it can be shown to be correct merely by listing the assumptions implicit in the idea that corporations should be "free" to buy low and sell high in the world at large. These assumptions, so far as I can make them out, are as follows:

Monday 01 August 2005

Greenpeace launched a stinging attack on the recently revealed Asia-Pacific climate changeii programme, calling it ‘absurd’ and ‘nothing more than a trade agreement’. The influential NGOii’s criticism follows similar responses from other environmental groups after the unexpected announcement of the scheme last week.

The six-nation programme, which involves the US, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, aims to improve co-operation on development and deployment of energy efficient technologies. The scheme has been viewed as a final snub by the US to the Kyoto Protocol, which it has defiantly refused to ratify on economic grounds.