Devastation In Ten Seconds

One of the problems with trying to convince people that climate change is a Clear And Present Danger to humanity is that the effects on the planet take their time to appear. Unless it's a hurricane unleashing devastation overnight, the human brain doesn't register the subtle changes to our landscapes, flora and fauna that pollution brings.

Wired magazine has some time-lapse videos of satellite images which have been spliced together to show man's effect on the planet. Here's part of the Brazilian rainforest being deforested :




For the other videos, all of which are only about ten seconds long, then visit Wired. And if that is too downbeat for you, they also have a top ten videos of nature at work, from a lunar eclipse to a rotting apple.

Green In The Media 1st June - 7th June

If this lot fails to inspire you, then take twenty minutes to go and watch Nick Broomfield's new documentary about the Kingsnorth Six, the Greenpeace activists who scaled the chimney at Kingsnorth power station

Monday 1st June

Villages On The Frontline
On: Community Channel
Time: 08:30 to 08:55 (Also Wed 0830, Fri 0830)
Jordan.
A billion people in a million villages live with the threat of their fields and pasture turning to dust. Local reporters go to the front line to find that villagers are fighting back.

Tuesday 2nd June

Villages On The Frontline
On: Community Channel
Time: 08:30 to 08:55 (Also Thu 0830, Sat 0830)
India.
A billion people in a million villages live with the threat of their fields and pasture turning to dust. Local reporters go to the front line to find that villagers are fighting back.

Nature
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 11:00 to 11:30
Seabirds - Canaries On The Cliffs.
Chris Sperring explores declining seabird numbers and asks if it represents a crisis or just a blip. Visit any windy, spray laden seabird colony in the spring and early summer and every sense is fired by the sound, sight and smell of thousands upon thousand of birds flying to and fro with fish to feed their young that are perched precariously on every ledge. Or that is how it should be. In many seabird colonies it is now much quieter and many traditional nesting ledges are empty. Seabird ecologists are increasingly concerned about how many species are fledging young, and in some areas none are successful in raising chicks at all. These worrying signs are increased by looking at the number of birds that are washed up dead on beaches during the winter months.

Thursday 4th June

Live Energy and Climate Change Questions
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 10:30 to 11:30 (Also 0100)
Live coverage of questions in the House of Commons to Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband and his team of ministers.

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:30 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130)
The programme that explores the biggest issues in global development and the environment.

Friday 5th June

In Search of England's Green and Pleasant Land
On: BBC 4
Time: 19:30 to 20:00
Nicholas Crane grew up in Norfolk, and now returns to see if it is possible to swap urban life for a rural dream. He discovers how the countryside has changed and looks for a perfect slice of English country life. Along the way he meets those who have left the city behind for a new life working in north Norfolk, joins a self-sufficient community in Suffolk and finds out how farmer Mark Saggers has restored a piece of working Cambridgeshire countryside back to the ways of the last century.

Sunday 7th June

Countryfile
On: BBC 1
Time: 19:00 to 20:00
John Craven wages a war against waste, and investigates why millions of tons of food, rotting away in our landfill sites, could be used to power our homes instead.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

44billion

- tonnes of CO2 saved if you changed the colours of the surfaces in the world's 100 largest cities

80%

- amount of Europe's energy produced by fossil fuels

80%

- amount of Europe's energy that could be produced by a string of solar thermal plants in North Africa

$550million

- value of the electric sports car company Tesla after Daimler bought a 9% stake

52

- number of UK bird species on the latest RSPB "red list" which are considered under threat

Thinking Outside The Boxcar

Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies have called on the government to run smaller trains outside of peak times. They're using climate change as their rationale for this - smaller trains mean less fuel used mean less CO2 emissions.

Of course, less fuel used would mean more money saved, but let's not mention that!

There is a problem with it though. Back in the 'good old days' when I started on the railway, I was regularly hopping onto the track to attach and detach engines. Splitting trains and changing engines was still practised, but it was a phenomena which was on the wane.

The modern train is a fixed formation. You cannot easily knock out a couple of coaches. For a start, the onboard computers don't like losing limbs! Plus there's the sheer bloody logistical hassle of removing carriages. That's why if your train is 8 coaches long but you only have the passengers to fill two coaches, then that's tough - you have to pull the dead weight.

I don't see that scenario changing. Fixed formation trains are comfier and quieter than the old engine+coaches rolling stock. Outside of the "enthusiast" and day-tripper community, there isn't much call to bring them back.

Government Emissions Reported

Photo by Dave McLear

The Scottish Government published their annual report for 2007-08 on their own environmental performance yesterday (pdf here). These are the emissions targets that the Government has set for itself, not for the country as a whole. For the most part, it makes painful reading. Here are the figures:

Energy Use In Buildings

Target for 2011: 7221 tonnes CO2
Current Performance: 8082 tonnes CO2

Direct fossil fuel use actually rose 15% last year. They'll have to make their buildings 10% more efficient in the next 3 years to make target.

Recycling Office Waste

Target for 2011: 80%
Current Performance: 76%

This looks impressive until you realise that it is the lowest level of recycling since 2004, as Patrick Harvie points out.

Travel Related Emissions

Target for 2011: 2596 tonnes CO2
Current Performance: 3046 tonnes CO2

Rail Travel previous year: 246.5 tonnes CO2
Rail travel this year: 402.1 tonnes CO2

Air travel previous year: 1444.8 tonnes CO2
Air travel this year: 1359.3 tonnes CO2

Travel emissions actually increased by 6% last year. Not surprisingly, air travel makes up the bulk of the emissions. The emissions for rail travel almost doubled, which would have been a good sign if we had seen air travel almost half. But it didn't.

Water Consumption in Buildings

Target for 2020: 5.5 cubic metres per person
Current Performance: 6.84 cubic metres per person

While I'm despairing about the figures, and the lack of progress in some areas, I'm holding on to one thing: at least they're reporting on their emissions and setting targets, instead of just waffling about progress.

Paint It White

Photo by RBerteig

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been promoting the idea of painting the whole world white to combat climate change.

Well okay, maybe not the whole world, just the rooftops.

The theory is that the whitewash will act like the polar icecaps and reflect sunlight instead of buildings absorbing the radiation as they do at the moment.

There's only one slight problem - this does nothing to stop the pollution. You could argue that a white building will need less air conditioning, but outside of the US you don't tend to find many aircon units - certainly not on domestic buildings. Plus, there's the chemical processes involved in making all that paint.

Personally, I'd rather see green roofs. They can insulate a building and reduce the heat island effect in a city. Plus, more flora means less CO2!

News Of The World

You may be surprised to learn that The Times is the newspaper I read the most. It's less surprising if you know that it's the newspaper we give away free on board our trains!

It has actually grown on me over the years, more so since Rupert Murdoch saw the light about climate change - although whether he actually believes it or whether he just saw a bandwagon is open to speculation. Certainly in the UK, The Times, The Sun and Sky News have been making all the right noises in recent years.

It was still a nice surprise this morning to pick up The Times and discover a 20-page supplement called The Climate Challenge: 'The fierce urgency of now'. It was printed to accompany the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, a gathering of Nobel prize winners hosted by Prince Charles to chew over what climate change means for a whole range of sciences.

The supplement was a pleasant enough read, if you can call reading about the End Of Civilisation As We Know It "pleasant". It's nice to consume something produced for a mass readership which takes climate change as a given and doesn't try to present "both sides". If only The Scotsman could learn this lesson, although given the hatred towards environmentalists on the Scotsman letters page and website comments perhaps their regular readers don't want to hear they're on the wrong side of a debate which is over.

If You Don't Have A Dream, How You Gonna Have A Dream Come True?

Photo by Taras Kalapun

I've said before that I see no point in setting goals which are achievable. Whether it is your own personal life goals (I'm sounding like a guru) or a government-mandated target, they should be just out of reach so that you strive more fully trying to fulfil them.

The Scottish Government is trying to set targets in their Climate Change Bill of a reduction in emissions of 80% by 2050, and 34% by 2020. But as the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition points out in a letter to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, if we continue reducing emissions at the rate we are at the moment that would produce a cut of 32% by 2020.

So, government target: 34%. Business as usual: 32%. Meaning the government would actually only have to find a 2% cut.

Now, there's a bit of simplistic maths going on here. The current reduction in emissions has been high because of the closure of heavy industries and increased fuel efficiencies, so it's worthwhile to acknowledge that the "easy" cuts are already out of the way. The government now has to start taking some hard decisions, and forcing the population to take some hard decisions, if it wants to maintain the current level of emissions cuts and easily reach its goals in 2020.

GM Rice

"The German chemical giant Bayer, has genetically manipulated rice to withstand higher doses of a toxic pesticide called glufosinate, which is considered to be so dangerous to humans and the environment that it will soon be banned from Europe. In just a few weeks, the European Union will decide whether or not this GM rice can enter EU countries, appear on supermarket shelves and end up on our dinner plates.”

Green In The Media 25th May - 31st May

It's the return of Springwatch this week, so if you like your wildlife with a cute factor of 11 then you can catch it every weeknight at 8pm on BBC2. Personally, I prefer watching wildlife with lots of teeth and an uncanny ability to bring down a Thomson's Gazelle at 30 miles per hour.

Monday 25th May

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Carteret Island
Tom Heap witnesses the first large scale human evacuation due to climate change. The Carteret Islands are slowly being submerged by the rising sea, forcing the removal of hundreds of islanders to nearby Papua New Guinea.

Tuesday 26th May

Room For Improvement
On: more4
Time: 10:15 to 10:45
Angus and Dave visit Epping where eco-warriors Colin and Petra Huber want to convert their loft in an environmentally friendly way.

Nature
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 11:00 to 11:30 (Also Wed 2100)
Disappearing Songbirds
Brett Westwood searches for the reasons behind the declining numbers of many of our migrant songbirds - including the cuckoo, turtle dove and spotted flycatcher - and where the birds are most vulnerable. Speaking to researchers from the RSPB and British Trust for Ornithology, he explores the dual world of our migrants, like the pied flycatcher which spends its summers in the lush oak woods in the British Isles but winters in west African savannah woods. For some species, such as the cuckoo which evolved in Africa, northern Europe is a treasure trove of habitats and food supplies to be exploited, and many of our successful migrants are birds which originated in Africa but then moved north to cooler areas to breed. Do the reasons for them now being under threat lie here in the UK or south of the Sahara in their winter homes, and will they be able to evolve new wintering or summering areas to compensate for losses?

Party Election Broadcast for the European Elections by the Scottish Green Party
On: BBC 2 Scotland
Time: 17:55 to 18:00 (Also STV 1825, BBC1 1855)

Wednesday 27th May

Britain's Best Drives
On: BBC 2
Time: 19:00 to 19:30
Lake District.
Actor Richard Wilson takes a journey into the past, following routes raved about in motoring guides of 50 years ago. He gets the lowdown on the area from author and resident Hunter Davies and learns how climate change is affecting this delicate landscape.

Unreliable Evidence
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 20:00 to 20:45 (Also Sat 2215)
The Law and Climate Change.
Are our environmental laws robust enough to save the planet for humankind? The Climate Change Act 2008 commits the UK to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, but can this be legally enforced? What law and penalties are available to force industry, individuals and even the government to reduce their carbon footprint?

Thursday 28th May

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:30 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130)
The programme that explores the biggest issues in global development and the environment.

Question Time
On: BBC 1
Time: 22:40 to 23:40
Question Time is in London for a European Election special. The panel includes Green Party leader Caroline Lucas.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

7.8 million

- tonnes of coal extracted from mines approved by the Scottish government since 2007

£6.4 billion

- amount by which the auditors Ernst & Young say the government has underestimated the cost of providing every home in the UK with a "smart meter"

80,000

- advance orders for the new version of the Toyota Prius in Japan

55

- area in square kilometres covered by Europe's largest onshore windfarm at Whitelees, Scotland

Searching For The Sun

Photo: Shetland Sunrise by Tom Jervis

I haven't been away on holiday for 8 years, and I "discovered" last summer that I desperately need one. My holidays last year were in June and I chose not to go anywhere, thinking I would have day trips here and there. At the end of the fortnight I realised that my batteries were in no way recharged and that in fact I felt like I hadn't even been off work.

So I resolved to actually get away this year, but for obvious reasons I didn't want to fly anywhere. I started thinking about places and very quickly got it into my head that a visit to the Shetlands would be just the ticket. I've never been, it's still within Scotland, and I can get a ferry there rather than fly.

I haven't booked anything yet though, mainly through laziness. But if the newspapers are to be believed, I'd better get a move on since most of Britain won't be leaving our shores this year for their holidays. The subsequent downturn in the number of flights can only be good news for the environment.

Turning Me On

Europe's largest onshore wind farm gets officially switched on today. Whitelees boasts 140 turbines generating 300MW of electricity, with Scottish Power wanting to add a further 81 turbines to the mix.

In this video, you can soar like an eagle above them. Just don't try soaring like a bat, because they have a tendency to hit the blades...



(If reading this on an RSS reader or via email, you may have to click through to view the video)

Road Rage

When I wrote this line yesterday:

You've got to wonder about the mentality of people who can't seem to get their head around a road being closed for four hours on a Sunday, once a year.

little did I realise that within hours I was going to be the victim of some road rage myself!

It was late afternoon yesterday, and I was off to work. Normally, I would walk down to Haymarket station and jump on a train to Waverley (free train travel has its advantages sometimes!), but the rain was teeming down so I decided to get the bus instead.

As I turned the corner from my street onto Gorgie Road, I noticed the light was red at the pedestrian crossing I needed to use, although the green man was about to start flashing. So I made a quick dash across the road. There was only one car sitting at the light, so I angled my route to tuck myself in behind that car. I wasn't counting on the other car screeching up behind that one. In all honesty, looking back I don't think the driver was aware of the car in front of him at all. All he was aware of was me crossing the road.

He came to a halt inches from my leg, which was only inches from the back of the car sitting at the crossing already. Leaning out of his window, the driver started shouting abuse at me. I hopped onto the pavement out of his way, and then did something incredibly stupid. Instead of walking away and ignoring the abuse, I bent over so that he could see me through the passenger window...and gave him the finger.

That would be that, I thought. I started walking away, but only got a few yards before I realised there was even louder abuse coming from behind me. The driver had got out of his car and was standing in the middle of the road screaming at me. I did what I should have done the first time, and ignored it and walked away, hoping that he wasn't following me.

By the time I reached the bus stop, all was calm.I fished some change out of my pocket and looked to the bus tracker sign to find out when the next bus was. There was one 3 minutes away. Then I heard the shouting again. The driver had done a U-turn on Gorgie Road and was now sitting in traffic right opposite the bus stop. He was screaming and pointing at me, ending his rant with the ominous words "you're gonna get it!"

I watched as he moved off, and indicated to turn right. I did some quick calculations in my head...he could go round that block and be parked behind the bus stop in about a minute. And the next bus is in 3 minutes. Should I stand there and wait to get beaten up? Should I hell!

I turned tail and ran. Yes, literally ran. The 100 yards or so back to my flat. I grabbed my car keys and rushed back out onto the street, hoping Road Rage man wasn't around to witness it. Jumped in my car and off to work.

I was berating myself the whole way. How incredibly stupid to give the finger to someone who was clearly already very angry and possibly unhinged. How weak of me to run away instead of facing up to him. And, rather bizarrely, how I had let someone with road rage increase my carbon footprint!

So, lesson learned: don't antagonise angry drivers.

The Airport With No Passengers

Let this be a lesson for those clamouring for a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow, and an expanded Edinburgh airport:



(If reading this on an RSS reader or via email, you may have to click through to see the video - the BBC doesn't like sharing too much!)

Cycle Race Falls Flat After Sabotage

Photo by John Spooner

This story is all over the Scottish newspapers today. A major bike race had to be halted after some morons spread carpet tacks all over the road, causing hundreds of punctured tyres.

At first glance, it sounds like a schoolboy prank. Then you start reading the backstory...

This is the only cycling race in Scotland where the roads are closed to the public, for around four hours. Because of this, there has been a long-running dispute with some locals who are opposed to the race and the road closures. So the tacks on the road weren't a schoolboy prank, they were deliberate sabotage.

You've got to wonder about the mentality of people who can't seem to get their head around a road being closed for four hours on a Sunday, once a year. For those four hours, why not do something completely different from your normal Sunday routine - like watch a major cycle race passing your doorstep, for example? Or sit down with a book, or catch up with the kids, or go for a walk in some beautiful countryside. You don't have to be tearing around the lanes at 70mph in your 4x4 to enjoy yourself!

Edinburgh Residents "Greenest"

In another one of these surveys that doesn't mean an awful lot but gives me optimism, the residents of Edinburgh are apparently the greenest in Scotland.

Actually, more accurately, they profess to care about the environment more than any other, with the EH2 postcode topping the list.

Hang on...EH2??? That's Princes Street! No one lives on Princes Street, do they?

Against a sliding scale of greenness, across Scotland as a whole there's 18.5% of the population consider themselves "enthusiastic greens". Which is why I'm optimistic.

Green In The Media 18th May - 24th May

Political debate dominates this week - in the Commons and the Lords, Caroline Lucas is on Any Questions? and Booktalk on BBC Parliament looks at the politics of climate change.

Monday 18th May

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Whose Amazon is It Anyway?.
In negotiations for the global climate change deal due to be sealed at the UN conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, a key issue will be the system of financial incentives to reward developing countries that succeed in reducing the rate of deforestation. This implicitly recognises tropical forests - especially the Amazon, biggest of them all - as part of the common global heritage, and in Brazil this can play into long-standing and widely-believed fears of an international plot to wrest sovereignty of the forest from the Brazilian nation, for financial and strategic ends.

Grand Designs
On: more4
Time: 23:05 to 00:10
Architect Richard Hawkes and his wife Sophie have decided to move out of London to the Kent countryside. For Richard it's an opportunity to build the house of his dreams; one that embraces cutting-edge green technologies and is capable of providing almost all its own energy.

Wednesday 20th May

Room For Improvement
On: more4
Time: 09:45 to 10:15
Angus and Dave visit Sawbridgeworth with Charlotte and Paul Pritchard, who want to extend the kitchen of their modern house in an eco-friendly way on a budget of £10,000.

Battlefront
On: Channel 4
Time: 11:30 to 12:00
Today's episode follows 17 year old Aimee Nathan from London, a keen coffee drinker with green credentials who was so concerned about the amount of coffee cup waste produced in the UK she felt she had to do something about it. Battlefront follows Aimee as she gets to grips with the capital's coffee consumption and digs around in dirty civic sites.

Thursday 21st May

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:30 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130)
The programme that explores the biggest issues in global development and the environment.

Live Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Questions
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 10:30 to 11:30(Also 0100)
Live coverage of questions in the House of Commons to Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Hilary Benn and his team of ministers.

Leading Edge
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30
Geoff Watts with the latest stories from the world of science. He is joined by the government's Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor John Beddington, whose background is in population biology, specialising in fish populations and the effects of fisheries on them. That knowledge has helped Professor Beddington in understanding the economics and sustainable management of renewable resources more generally, equipping him to advise on many of the big scientific issues of our time, from fisheries and food to energy and climate change.

Friday 22nd May

Lords
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 06:00 to 09:00
Climate Change Target.
Recorded coverage of business in the House of Lords on Thursday 21 May, including a debate on the changes required by society to meet the 2050 CO2 emissions reduction target.

Gardeners' Question Time
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:45 (Also Sun 1400)
The third instalment in our sustainable gardening series looks at why a 'green' roof works so effectively.

Any Questions?
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 20:00 to 20:50 (Also Sat 1310)
Jonathan Dimbleby chairs the topical debate in Sheffield. Panellists include Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party.

Sunday 24th May

Booktalk
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 17:45 to 18:00
Mark D'Arcy talks to author Colin Challen about his book Too Little, Too Late: The Politics of Climate Change


Countryfile
On: BBC 1
Time: 19:30 to 20:30
Rural affairs programme. Matt Baker and Julia Bradbury head for Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland to examine why strong tidal currents make it the perfect location for a tidal energy scheme. Elsewhere, John Craven investigates whether the latest scientific technology could help us feed ourselves if we had to become more self-sufficient in food production.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

41,000,000

- Number of batteries used in Scotland every year.

40%

- Extent of coral loss in the Indonesian "Coral Triangle".

£2 Billion

- Cost of building the London Array offshore wind farm.

155,000

- Number of passengers predicted to use the new Alloa rail link when it opened a year ago.

400,000

- Number of actual passengers who use the link. Proving that consultants know nothing!

Shake & VOC

Photo by malias

I spent all last night and this morning with a headache, and I've just discovered the source - my downstairs neighbour is painting his flat.

I couldn't smell the paint yesterday, so it was a mystery to me why the back of my throat felt "gloopy" and my head was pounding. This morning, the smell is unmistakeable and I'm having to sit next to an open window which is not much fun with today's weather. There are "holes" between the chimney breasts running up the building, so I assume the paint fumes are coming up the chimney into my flat as well as coming up the stairwell.

Actually, the phrase "paint fumes" makes it sound like it's just a smell which will dissipate after a while. Paint contains what is known as VOCs - Volatile Organic Compounds - which become a gas at room temperature. The VOC gases are then breathed in by anyone in close proximity to the source. They also react with nitrogen oxides to produce ozone, which irritates the mucous membranes in our respiratory systems - hence my "gloopy" throat. A government commissioned report reckons that 12,500 people a year die prematurely as a result of exposure to air tainted by ground-level ozone*

As for the paint itself, it is manufactured using chlorine, cadmium, titanium dioxide and sulphuric dioxide, which can all be hazardous to the environment if dumped or poured down the drain.

I really don't know how people who decorate for a living can stand to be near these fumes all day every day. There are Low VOC or VOC-free paints on the market, but I'd like to see them become standard. There's just one problem, which is something us greenies come up against regularly with "alternatives" - they're not as easy to use as "normal" paint, needing primers and two or three coats in some cases.

Still, I wish my neighbour was willing to take longer with the painting in order to spare me this headache.

*Sources for the information on VOCs and paints are FoES's Green Home Handbook and FoE's Save Cash & Save The Planet.

Nothing To Grouse About

Illustration by Edward Lear

Occasionally - and unfortunately it does seem very occasionally - conservation works.

The RSPB have designated the Black Grouse as having "Red Status", highly endangered. So five years ago, they began efforts to protect reserves where the Black Grouse live.

Those efforts appear to have paid off. Numbers of Black Grouse are up 50% in those five years. Unfortunately, the actual numbers of birds still seems incredibly small to my unprofessional eye - just 172 displaying males across the whole of the UK.

Hopefully, the growth in population will begin to increase now there are more males around.

Also hopefully, I'll be able to get the tune from the Famous Grouse adverts out of my head within the hour!

Working The Soil

I'd like to say that growing up, The Good Life turned me on to sustainable living and made me the environmental, ahem, warrior that I am today.

I'd like to say that, but I can't. For me, there was one reason and one reason alone that I watched The Good Life. And that was Felicity Kendal's arse.

(Okay, so I wasn't yet a teenager when I discovered her posterior, but you're talking about a guy who fancied Floella Benjamin before he was 5 years old!)

For those of us of a certain age, thinking of growing your own veggies and keeping your own pigs brings to mind the TV series that brought Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal into our living rooms, so it's something of a coup for Greenpeace to get Briers to join them planting vegetables on the plot of land that they bought to stop the third runway at Heathrow. The plan is to send the veg to members of the cabinet:

Smart Meters For Everyone By 2020

This is good news. The government is planning to put a "smart meter" into every home in the UK so that householders will have the chance to see their energy consumption.

There has been plenty of studies showing that people with smart meters tend to reduce their energy use, with anecdotal evidence of some users becoming obsessed! Which is all good for the environment - telling people they'll save money produces better results than telling them they'll save the planet!

Hopefully the government will see sense and make sure the smart meters are future-proof and will be able to handle micro-generation and smart appliances putting energy back into the National Grid.

If you've never seen a smart meter in action, here's the BBC news report:

World's Highest Ski Run (Deceased)

At 17,388 feet, Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia boasted the world's highest ski run.

Eco Worldly has a series of pictures from 1940 to the present day, which will take your breath away.

Green In The Media 11th May - 17th May

The most interesting stuff happens on the radio this week. As it does most weeks, to be honest!

Monday 11th May

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Tom Heap examines the carbon footprint of older people. This age group are said to be heavy consumers, but they could also play an important part in preparing for climate change in an ageing society.

Thursday 14th May

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:30 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130, Sat 2035)
The programme that explores the biggest issues in global development and the environment.

The Landfill Designers
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30
Journalist and designer John Thackara investigates why scientists and designers are deliberately planning for failure. Many products and scientific advancements are now deliberately given a short shelf life. John asks what impact the 'landfill designers' are having on scientific progress, the environment and our expectations of the technology we use every day. The term 'planned obsolescence' was coined in the 1950s but has never been more relevant. John explores how, paradoxically, this focus on a throw-away society is helping science to advance in unexpected ways. Our desire to have the latest style can mean more in landfill, more children in China and India sifting through toxic waste, but it can also mean an innovative approach to new technologies and reusable materials.

Friday 15th May

Local Government Today
On: Community Channel
Time: 06:30 to 07:00 (Also Sat 0630, Sun 0630)
Local Government Today goes green in this special on climate change and what local government is doing to fight it.

Ted Hughes: Eco Warrior
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 11:00 to 11:30
Poet Simon Armitage examines how Ted Hughes became a committed campaigner for the environment. Hughes's private life is as well documented as his literary output, but his active campaigning for the environment was largely unknown. His passion for fishing led him to see at first hand the extent of the damage that pollution was doing to the rivers he loved and their animal populations. He took up the cause with a vengeance, using his position as Poet Laureate to petition politicians including the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher. Simon visits Devon to speak with fellow campaigners about the rivers trust that Hughes helped to form, and also about the day he brought down the house as chief witness at a public inquiry. It reveals a new side to a man that so many people thought they already knew.

Saturday 16th May

Our World
On: BBC News
Time: 05:30 to 06:00 (Also 2130, 0330, Sun 1030, 1430, 2330)
Poisoned Seas.
Many creatures will be threatened as carbon dioxide makes the oceans increasingly acidic. Some species may already have been harmed. As Roger Harrabin finds out, scientists fear we may be heading for a huge extinction in the seas.

Between the Ears
On: BBC Radio Three
Time: 21:30 to 22:00
Empty Ocean.
Islanders from Fair Isle, Britain's most remote inhabited island, talk about the loss of fishing and seabird colonies caused through over-fishing by trawlers and global warming. They also speak about the loss of traditions that bind the community together and have been handed down from generation to generation. With music by composer Damian Montagu and Fair Isle musicians, including his collaboration with singer Lise Sinclair on the song Empty Ocean, setting Paul Rich's poem The Halibut Fisher's Saturday Night, about the great hauls of the past compared to today, where the ocean is empty of fish and the seabed smooth from over-fishing. There is also Sinclair's poem Silent, portraying the disappearance of seabirds from the skies because of the lack of sandeels for feeding.

Eco Solutions
On: CNN
Time: 23:30 to 00:00
Eco Solutions gives the viewer a unique peek into the situations that plague our planet and proposes real solutions to help us understand why we should make a change.

Sunday 17th May

Rain
On: BBC 4
Time: 20:30 to 21:30
Documentary series about the weather. This programme uncovers the true shape of a raindrop, shows how and why rain falls and tells stories of how we have adapted or succumbed to this elemental force of nature, such as James Glaisher's hot-air balloon ascent in 1862. The Victorians believed that they could master the rain, but today climate change threatens us with rain that is wilder and more unpredictable than ever.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

34%

- reduction in emissions by 2020 proposed by the Scottish Government in their Climate Change Bill.

100

- number of extra acres of land Donald Trump is demanding to build his golf course in Aberdeenshire, after promising last year he didn't need any more.

80 Billion

- estimated power use in kWh of computer data centres in the US this year.

73 Million

- tons of e-waste the US will produce by 2015

38

- the age I turn today.

18

- the age I wish I was turning today!

Plants For Sale

Here's a quick shout out for Crafty Green Poet's Water of Leith Conservation Trust which is having a plant sale on Saturday morning. Full details on her website.

And yes, I'm well aware that my incredibly bad grammar has just given CGP full ownership of the Water of Leith!

Burger Me

Something's been bugging me since I posted that video of Prince Charles waxing lyrical about saving the rainforests. Like many green blogs and environmental news sites, I posted it without much criticism. In fact, I posted it without much comment at all.

If you actually click through to the Prince's RainforestSOS website, you'll find that he has some "corporate partners" - companies jumping onto Charlie's coattails hoping that some good will rub off on them. Some of these do try to do good - Google springs to mind through Google.org - but the first time I looked at the site I was confronted by a large McDonald's logo.

Before the world discovered Palm Oil and other biofuels, the number one reason for rainforest destruction was for grazing land for cattle. The cattle were needed to supply the burger industry.

Quite why the Prince of Wales feels he has to lever "corporate partners" into his rainforest project is unclear, other than to give them some greenwash publicity. Surely RainforestSOS can be run without business?

Rainforest SOS

Here's the next King starring in a video along with his father and brother...

What, you don't seriously expect Lizzie to hand over to Charlie, do you???

Yet Another Incinerator Proposal For Edinburgh

Photo by Ole Poulsen via Wikimedia Commons

Maybe the council think the good citizens of Edinburgh have an extremely short memory. No sooner has one plan for an incinerator been defeated than another is proposed. This time, the plan is for a waste-to-energy incinerator at Millerhill, even closer to the city than the previously planned incinerator at Dunbar.

Of course the Council are only talking up the good parts of converting waste to energy, and ignoring the bad parts - like the 15 mile fallout zone.

If they've got their heart set on producing energy from the city's waste, then surely anaerobic digestion is the smart way to go?

Shite Awareness Week

Last week, the girlfriend started talking crap. Not much different from normal, someone with bigger balls than me might say...

But by crap, I mean she started talking compost. She'd heard that you can get either free or cheap compost bins from somewhere in her area and was going to look into it. And maybe try planting some wildflowers in her garden as well, to attract bees and insects.

No, I've no idea what got into her. Maybe my greenery is finally rubbing off.

It just so happens to be Compost Awareness Week this week as well. If you want a cheap subsidised bin, then they'll tell you where to get one - for Scotland, their most popular is only £10 against the RRP of £49.

Green In The Media 4th May - 10th May

If the worst comes to the worst, you can always watch The Da Vinci Code next week. Oh, yeah, you're right. That would be the worst!

Monday 4th May

Farm to Pharma: The Rise And Rise Of Food Science
On: BBC 4
Time: 19:30 to 20:30
Documentary which explores the history of British food science, taking a voyage through over a century of petri-dishes, vitamins and E-numbers. By the 1930s, George Orwell was complaining about the chemical by-products in food, but when war gave scientists a chance to remake the British diet the improvement in the nation's health was extraordinary. We meet the food scientist who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors and discover how Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis.

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Raising a Stink.
Tom Heap investigates the potential savings available by harnessing the power of sewage through anaerobic digestion and the fertilisation of farms using human waste. Some experts believe that millions of pounds could be saved if we could overcome fecophobia, a fear of human waste. Each flush of the toilet chain sends upto 13 litres of purified drinking water racing down the u-bend into the vast, largely Victorian sewage system that comprises of 300,000km of sewers that serve 9,000 wastewater treatment plants that receive 10 billion litres of sewage every single day. With the UK producing approximately 25 million tonnes of wet sewage sludge each year, Dr Stephen Smith, director of the Centre for Environmental Control and Waste Management at Imperial College, London, estimates that the nitrogen and phosphorus content of digested sewage sludge could be worth 20 million pounds in terms of the artificial farm fertilisers it would replace.

Thursday 7th May

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:30 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130, Sat 2035)
The programme that explores the biggest issues in global development and the environment.

Saturday 9th May

The Estuary
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 05:45 to 06:00
Peter France narrates an extraordinary story of life on the Wash as the tides and the seasons change, set against a backdrop of sounds recorded on location by Chris Watson. How might climate change and rising sea levels affect this wild, desolate and beautiful landscape?

Sunday 10th May

Countryfile
On: BBC 1
Time: 19:30 to 20:30
John Craven investigates why our dairy industry has one of the worst animal welfare records in Europe.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

Apologies for the silent running this week, my shifts have left me little time to myself.

So here's a new feature, not ripped off from a newspaper at all... Hopefully I'll run it every Saturday, we'll see how it goes over the next couple of weeks.

85%

- Cut in plastic bag use by Marks & Spencer customers since they started charging for bags.

£200

- Price of carbon needed per tonne to reach the UK government's target of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050.

£13

- Price of carbon today.

41%

- Number of concerned consumers who believe that carbon offsetting is "purely a gesture".

£1000

- Cost of a set of "ethical" bagpipes, made from sustainable wood.