The Better Planet Guide - Planetary Citizenship

'Oil price rise is good for us', say Greens

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 11:32:36 -0700

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"

subsidies

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:50:33 -0700

In the uk for every £1 that the goverment gives to support renewables it gives £6-7 to the fossil fuel industry.

top ten reasons not to act

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:48:32 -0700

I don't believe in climate changei i

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

New economies

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:43:06 -0700

Our enterprises owe a large part of their efficiencies and profitability to economies of scale and replicated structures.

We have shaped the world and ordered it's resources to meet these needs, and so far we have had relatively few problems.

We have however, been ignoring the externalities that do not appear on the balance sheet - environmental and social factors.

These place more finite limits on our activities than our bankers and financiers. Water or power shortages, civil unrest and an unpredictable climate can play havoc with the most carefully planned supply chain.

2050 scenarios

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:18:03 -0700

current predictions are for a rise of 20% not the 60-80% reduction that is required.

new markets: farmer to consumer

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 11:18:48 -0700

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

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:53:37 -0700

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 marketi i" 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:

five principles for local sustainable development

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:49:16 -0700

There are five principles for sustainablei development in local economies:

Plug the leaks by using local renewable resources rather than externally-sourced.

Recycle financial resources within the system by buying local goods and services.

Add value to local produce before it is exported.

Connect up local stakeholders (people and institutions) to create trust, new linkages and more efficient exchanges.

Climate plan dismissed as ‘trade agreement’

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 07:40:53 -0700

Monday 01 August 2005

Greenpeace launched a stinging attack on the recently revealed Asia-Pacific climate changei i programme, calling it ‘absurd’ and ‘nothing more than a trade agreement’. The influential NGOi i’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.

Economics of fear

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:14:48 -0700

In the developed world we are relatively prosperous, and although many of us live on the breadline, we are sheltered from the risk of starvation, infectious disease and most natural disasters.

Once you have a roof over your head and can feed clothe and educate your family, everything else is an option not a necessity. Vast amounts of money, time and resources go into keeping up with the Jones’s - a kind of competitive race to consume as much as possible.

Airline madness

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:40:46 -0700

Cheap flights are an illusion. The airline industry gets tax breaks of nearly 7BN a year, and the average taxpayer pays an extra £500 a year more tax, whether they fly or not. Airlines don’t pay for the damage they do to our environment, but we all feel the effects.

If subsidies were ended and a 'congestion charge' brought in on airlines, the chancellor would have £9bn to invest in better public and sustainablei transporti

Subvert Suburbia

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:05:34 -0700

Want to overthrow the established order in the western world?

Forget the nominal centres of power like governments and multi-national corporations - strike a blow where it will really count, where it can spread across the industrialized world - in suburbia.

The pinnacle of urban excess, conspicuous consumerism, where the SUVs roam in untamed herds. This is where the sheer magnitude of consumption means that even apparently small beneficial changes can be increased into massive benefits because of simple leverage. It's just like that urban bane, mass merchandising; small margins at huge volumes still makes a big difference on the bottom line. For example, it may not seem like much to save a litre of water (a simple flush of the toilet may use 10's of litres of water). But if 100,000,000 households each save a litre of water each day, that's a small lake each day (and a good sized lake in a month). It may not seem like much to get a household to reduce it's electrical consumption by 1 kWh, but if 100,000,000 households could do it each day, it would eliminate the need for a couple of major electrical generating stations.

World Bank to Take Lead in New Climate Change Plan

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:59:45 -0700

Reuters USA: July 21, 2005

WASHINGTON - The World Bank wants to bring together nations split over the Kyoto Protocol to work out a new plan that would remain effective long beyond the 2012 expiration of the climate changei i treaty.

Ian Johnson, the World Bank's top environment official, said global divisions over climate changei i offer an opportunity for the bank to take a more prominent role on international policies.

Key questions

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:46:13 -0700

Is it possible to stop climate changei i without changing the way we work? If not what sacrifices will we have to make?

Current business models force us to live on borrowed time and resources. Our current profits are often at the expense of future revenues - investors demanding high rates of growth and fast exits, the encouragement of aggressive plundering by directors and shareholders, and the payment of large salaries and bonuses. Could we have to pay all of this back in the future? Have we reached the point where we can be held both morally and financially liable for the effects our activities have on the climate? Will our insurers and underwriters start getting twitchy? Now it has happened to tobacco, could it happen to us?

Speech part 2: The Evolution of The Consumer

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:15:50 -0700

I don’t believe we should stand quietly by and let governments and corporations do whatever they please. However, I honestly feel that the powers that be have gone a little deaf to the longhairs shouting in the streets. Our western civilisation only really listens when money talks. So, if we want to be heard, we have to start talking in the language of money.

Within our society, individual humans have been relegated to the role of “consumer”. Others produce, we pay, consume, repeat. The consumer however is not a powerless entity; in fact, the whole free marketi i system exists to serve them. Unfortunately, until recently, the consumer has looked something like this: