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Hostile police tactics at the Kingsnorth and G20 camps has not put protesters off as climate camp goes global.
It was a different kind of protest. Instead of turning up at the latest G8 summit or AGM of a multinational and waving the banners of opposition, the protesters chose their own location.
They set up camp in the shadow of a controversial carbon emitter – such as Drax coal-fired power station – living as sustainably as possible before making a high-profile demonstration.
Drax, Heathrow and Kingsnorth are now synonymous with climate change, in part due to the success of the protest camps of the past three years. But where did this powerful new movement come from?
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Activists gather outside business secretary’s London home in ‘act of solidarity’ for 625 workers set to lose their jobs at the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight.
Police officers arrive as Climate Rush protestors chain themselves to the fence of the business secretary’s home. Photograph: Johnny Green/PA.
Protesters against the closure of a wind turbine factory chained themselves to Lord Mandelson’s home today as the business secretary jetted back from Corfu to take control of the day-to-day business of government.
Members of the Climate Rush campaign group gathered outside Mandelson’s two-storey property in Regent’s Park, north London, in an “act of solidarity” with 625 workers who are set to lose their jobs at the Vestas factory in Newport, Isle of Wight.
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A Canadian group called Greenscroll hopes to get website owners to support renewable energy with their wallets. Are you convinced?
I’ve written a lot before about the environmental costs of using the web, and it’s a subject that is only going to get more important as our lives tend towards the digital. So I was interested to get wind of a Canadian organisation that wants people to help people mitigate the affects of their online activities.
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A supercritical diesel engine could increase efficiency and cut emissions.
Researchers in New York have demonstrated a supercritical diesel fuel-injection system that can reduce engine emissions by 80 percent and increase overall efficiency by 10 percent.
Going supercritical: This laboratory equipment is being used to study supercritical diesel fuel.
Credit: George Anitescu, Syracuse University.
Diesel engines tend to be more efficient than gasoline, but the trade-off is that they are usually more polluting. Because diesel is heavy, viscose, and less volatile than gasoline, not all the fuel is burned during combustion, resulting in carbon compounds being released as harmful particulate soot. The higher combustion temperatures required to burn diesel also lead to increased nitrogen oxides emissions.
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Time is running short to agree a new treaty on global warming amid deep divisions over key issues, according to the UN’s top climate official.
Speaking at the start of the latest round of UN discussions, Yvo de Boer said the political signals were positive, but progress still too slow.
About 1,000 officials are meeting in Bonn for a week of informal talks.
The aim is to clear the way for the adoption of a new UN climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.
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EDF Energy welcomes the decision by the Office of Fair Trading to give merger clearance to the anticipated acquisition by Centrica from EDF Group of a 20% interest in British Energy. The OFT has concluded the transaction will not have an adverse effect on competition in any UK market.
The OFT decision is a key step in completing the proposed transaction but there are still other conditions that need to be met before we can finalise the deal.
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Energy companies have been told by their regulator, Ofgem, that they must calculate their customers’ direct debit payments more accurately.
The regulator has responded to widespread complaints that energy firms have been setting direct debit bills too high.
Cash surpluses built up by customers eventually offset subsequent bills.
But consumer organisations have accused energy firms of using excessive direct debit income as an interest-free loan.
“Ofgem reviewed the direct debit arrangements of the six major suppliers after customers complained about significant increases in amounts they were being asked to pay”, the regulator said.
“The new condition in suppliers’ licences would mean they must ensure payment levels are clearly and accurately explained and based on the best available information.
“Suppliers will also need to be able to justify why they are holding onto credit surpluses built up by a customer,” the regulator added.
Better explanation
The curbs on excessive direct debit bills will come into force this winter.
They will affect the bills of the 40% of energy users who pay their bills this way.
In March this year, Ofgem published an initial report on its investigation into the direct debit complaints it had been receiving.
These first emerged last autumn.
Peter Luff, MP for Mid Worcestershire, accused firms of raising direct debit payments even when their customers’ accounts were in credit.
The consumers’ association Which? subsequently accused energy firms of milking their direct debit customer base.
But Ofgem concluded that there was no evidence that gas and electricity firms had been systematically setting their direct debit charges too high.
Instead, the regulator said that firms should make better efforts to explain their billing calculations to customers.
A spokeswoman said this was still its view and there had been no change in its policy.
But after a consultation exercise it wanted to change formally the licences of the energy firms so that if there were any problems in the future it could take swift action.
“We will be watching the situation very closely,” said the spokeswoman.
They sound like ideas from a Jules Verne novel, but giant engineering schemes designed to alter the climate offer the cheapest way of avoiding catastrophic global warming, according to a growing number of scientists and green-minded entrepreneurs.
Most of the schemes have been dismissed as impossibly expensive or impractical, such as the proposal to create a space sunshade by using rockets to deploy millions of mirrors in the stratosphere.
One relatively cheap solution, however, is gaining favour among many different groups and is endorsed today by an independent study that compares the costs and benefits of all the main ideas. A wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships would criss-cross the oceans, sucking up sea water and spraying it from the top of tall funnels to create vast white clouds.
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Should the world pay Ecuador not to extract oil? President Rafael Correa’s argument makes perfect economic sense.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa is often dismissed as a radical leftist. Such has been the response to his proposal that the world pay him not to extract oil from Yasuni National Park in the western Amazon.
Yasuni is home to almost 850 million barrels of oil, or 20% of Ecuador’s reserves.
A closer look at Correa’s proposal reveals that it comes straight out of an economics textbook, and makes perfect sense.
Ecuador has a national income of $7,500 in purchasing power terms, and the top 20% of Ecuadorans have more than half that income. More than half of Ecuador lives on less than $2 per day.
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You don’t have to dig deep to avoid investing in companies that degrade the planet or displace indigenous people, says Lucy Siegle.
Despite frequent “assurances” of more self-regulatory initiatives than you could use to fill a redundant deep-cast gold mine, the resource-extraction industries continue to represent an epic blot on the landscape. And humankind largely continues to turn a blind eye to a charge sheet that includes dispossession of local inhabitants from their land, the degradation of soil and water, and the loss of biodiversity.
The irreversible loss of “genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats” is said by the great biologist Edward Wilson to be “the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for”.
