Except For Viewers In Scotland

It's regular as clockwork.

Every time the clocks change, there are cries of "no fair!" from the UK's more southerly citizens.

Surely we could have more daylight if we changed our whole time system, they argue?

They do have a point. From their perspective, they are losing daylight in the evenings. Surely, they say, it would be better to stumble around in the dark in the early mornings when no one needs the light too much? Surely it would be better to have slightly longer light in the evenings?

Unfortunately, the up-to-now excellent 10:10 campaign has decided to take on this cause. They're linking it to CO₂ emissions. Surely the pollution will reduce with everyone getting more daylight in their lives?

I have my doubts. For a start, the whole thing only benefits those in Southern England. If you move the clocks forward, then Scottish schoolchildren and office workers will still be sitting in the dark at 10am. How does having darkness at 10am reduce CO₂ emissions?

Conversely, in the evening during the winter it will be getting dark at 5pm instead of 4pm. That's not that big a difference, and certainly won't change the habits of those who shuffle home and then plonk themselves in front of the telly with a ready meal for the rest of the evening.

As for road safety, I heard one politician on the radio say with assurance that lighter evenings will mean less road accidents, because people are more alert then.

More alert after work? Surely you jest. And besides, the increase in accidents during the darker mornings doesn't seem to have been taken into account.

So I'm sorry 10:10, but this is one campaign I will not be signing up to.

Trying To Interact With Our Representatives

As a member of Friends Of The Earth Scotland, I occasionally take part in their 'Cyberactions'.

These are very simple emails which you can send to various representatives about items which FoES would like to pressure them on - for example, sending a message to the directors of Ayrshire Power telling them what you think of the proposed Hunterston Coal Power Plant.

FoES give you power over the email too - if you don't like the way they have worded something, or you don't agree with a point they have made, you're free to change it before the email is sent.

I have to say that mostly, I never hear from the people I've emailed through the Cyberactions. So I wasn't holding out much hope when, at the beginning of March, FoES asked us to email the 6 Scottish MEPs to try and put pressure on the EU to increase their climate emissions targets.

Actually, I received a reply within minutes - from the Office Manager of Catherine Stihler MEP (Labour) informing me that she was out of the office due to illness! So, one down and five to go...

Five days after the email I received a reply from the office of George Lyon MEP (LibDem). In it he says:

A 40% reduction across the EU might be theoretically possible; however, it seems to me to be completely pointless for the EU to go any further than 30% without securing a binding agreement on reductions from other Countries.

Completely pointless to reduce emissions???

Another 13 days passed, and the office of Catherine Stihler MEP (Labour) took the time to reply. Unfortunately whoever wrote the email couldn't decide whether they were writing FOR Catherine Stihler or AS Catherine Stihler:

I appreciate your bringing the Friends of the Earth event to our attention, Catherine will do my very best to attend.

The rest of the email didn't say very much at all, and made a point of not committing Catherine Stihler to campaigning for further emissions reductions.

Finally, yesterday, I received another reply, this time from Struan Stevenson MEP (Conservative). I wasn't expecting much - he is a Tory after all! - but blow me. Not only has the oppo who wrote back to me taken the time to write a very well-rounded reply, they've also taken the time to read the report which was linked to in the original Cyberaction email. Something I suspect that none of the other MEP offices did.

While I still won't vote Tory, I have new found respect for Struan Stevenson - he obviously employs people who are happy to interact with the public instead of brushing them aside or giving them standard replies.

As for the other three Scottish MEPs (Ian Hudghton (SNP), David Martin (Labour) and Alyn Smith (SNP)) nothing has been heard from them. I'm obviously not worthy of their time and consideration.

Off The Deep End

Photo by derekGavey

There is a sub-section of American political society that has never really translated well over here. They're epitomised by the likes of Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck - the kind of people who are laughed at and satirised mercilessly by the British media.

Their head-swivelling, projectile-vomit rhetoric doesn't have much of a look-in here, and some would say that's a damn good thing. Their views on climate change, in particular, have set back the chance to tackle it head on by many years.

So it was surprising to read in a Scottish blog yesterday what amounted to a re-spewing of the right-wing accusations which are made frequently on the other side of the Atlantic.

Subrosa claims that the UN is attempting to establish a "global government" within the next two years (the US commentators usually say "global communist government") which will push through a Green World Order, crushing dissenters in their path.

Quite a ludicrous statement to make, particularly when you stand back and think about what that would entail. Is Subrosa seriously suggesting that the UN will dissolve sovereignty in all nations around the world in a matter of months and we'd all willingly go along with it?

She then goes on to lie about climate science (and does so again in the comments later on)and the IPCC, before claiming that green jobs aren't "real" jobs like manufacturing.

Here's some news - someone has to "manufacture" all those wind turbines. That's classified as a "green job". So is the engineer who puts the turbine together. And the engineers who monitor the turbines after they're up and running.

Or is being a welder and an engineer not a "real" job?

Perhaps Subrosa could get herself a copy of yesterday's Sunday Herald* and peruse the business pages, where she'll find a two page report on how turbine manufacture could revitalise our dying ports and manufacturing industry.

Because let's face it, when the oil runs out and there's no fish in the North Sea worth catching, they'll have bugger all else to do.


*I'd link to the report, but the Herald website is incredibly shite since their revamp - and apart from that, the business pages are down at the moment too.

Green In The Media 29th March - 4th April

Monday 29th March

Build a New Life in the Country
On: Five
Time: 09:45 to 10:45
Property and lifestyle show with Charlie Luxton. Lisa and Michael attempt to convert a 400-year-old barn into an eco-friendly family home. The project begins well, but progress is slow thanks to problems with planning permission, bad weather, illness and damp. Will the couple manage to complete the build before another winter arrives?

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1230)
Eco-City Limits.
More and more people live in cities but has the world's first eco-city finally become reality? Tom Heap visits Abu Dhabi to see if oil money can build a green vision.

Tuesday 30th March

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the natural world and our impact on it.

Thursday 1st April

Live Energy and Climate Change Questions
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 10:30 to 11:30 (Also 0100, 0330)
Live coverage of questions in the House of Commons to Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband and his ministerial team.

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1530, 2030, 0130, Sun 0630)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

Saturday 3rd April

Open Country
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 06:07 to 06:30
The rivers of the South Wales coalfields were once so black with mining and industrial waste that in places no fish could survive. But miraculously, salmon have now returned to all of these waterways and rivers such as the Ebbw and the Taff now have fish running up from the sea to spawn. After the closure of the area's coalmines, the physical environment of the valleys of South Wales is very different, and Helen Mark visits them to see how they have changed. She joins keen cyclist Ralph Jones on a bike ride through the beautiful Afan Forest, visits the Glyncorrwg Mountain Bike and Ponds Centre, and meets keen fisherman Tony Rees in Merthyr Tydfil to hear how, nowadays, salmon travel along the Taff from as far away as Cardiff.

Sunday 4th April

Countryfile
On: BBC 1
Time: 17:20 to 18:20
John Craven meets rural campaigners fighting against the invasion of supermarkets but are they local heroes or villains standing in the way of progress?


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

20,000

- number of people receiving compensation this month in the Ivory Coast after toxic waste was dumped from a ship there in 2006. Trafigura denies responsibility #

9.3%

- fall in the sales of cod in the UK #

4°C

- temperature above normal of Canada's winter this year #

3

- countries which rely on the highly polluted Lake Victoria for drinking water #

28%

- growth in air freight this year #

$1.2 million

- amount of money saved by Ford just by turning off computers when they're not in use #

2 miles long & 1½ miles wide

- size of the disputed island in the Bay of Bengal which has now been wiped off the map #

8.6%

- reduction in the UK's greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 #

UK Emissions Fall

I've said in the past that, as much as I can wallow in the pessimistic side of the environmental debate sometimes, we should really celebrate the successes.

Which is why yesterday's announcement of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions falling by 8.6% is great news.

I'm not going to join Friends Of The Earth's moaning that there was only a fall in the pollution because of the recession.

What I'm going to focus on instead is the fact that it's possible. It can be done. And with a little bit more effort, 10% in 2010 - as 10:10 are asking for - is highly possible.

Airport In Greenwashing Shock!

Photo by scot_w_9

My forehead hurts. I've been bouncing it against my desk repeatedly since reading this story on the BBC News website:

Edinburgh Airport has donated £10,000 to a project which will see school pupils plant 500 trees and learn about offsetting their carbon footprints.

And next week, they're going to be teaching all the pupils how to spell the word "Greenwash"

It's Not Sneezy Being Green

Photo by I Don't Know, Maybe

We all have shops which, for one reason or another, we choose not to set foot in. Whether we don't like their corporate philosophy or we don't like their paintwork, we walk on by and use their competitors.

For me, Boots is one of those stores.

Around 7 or 8 years ago, I tried to buy some food in the Boots in Waverley station. They wouldn't let me.

I presented my chosen items at the cash desk, to be met with an icy stare and the words "That's not a meal deal".

To my "Huh?" I was told once again "That's not a meal deal, you can't have that."

The exchange that followed is vague in my memory, but the upshot was that the cashier refused to sell me the food I wanted and insisted that I swap some of the items until she was satisfied. The fact that I didn't want the other stuff held no sway with her - I had to buy a "meal deal" and wasn't allowed anything else, even though I would have been giving Boots more money.

I had a train to catch and no food in my stomach or in my bag, so I acquiesced, but before I'd even left the store I'd vowed never to shop there again.

And I've mostly stuck to that. This week, though, I was dying. Man Flu had taken hold, and I was about to get a lesson in tissues.

I ventured into Boots looking for a wee travel pack of tissues to see me through my shift. I was so gobsmacked by what I found, I almost stopped sneezing for five minutes.

Amongst the normal tissues and the big-girls-blouse aloe vera balm tissues were...antiviral tissues.

These promise to kill 99% of cold and flu viruses within 15 minutes of you using the tissue.

Am I missing something here? Why do we need the virus killed after we've discarded the tissue? I don't recall an epidemic of people sniffing the used tissues discarded by others. Surely once the tissue has been used and then either flushed or put in the bin, no one else is going to go near it? Why would we need to have the tissues themselves taking a whole 15 minutes to kill the germs and make itself "safe"?

Or are we, as consumers, just incredibly gullible?

Do It In The Dark This Weekend

It's Earth Hour again this Saturday, with millions of people around the world turning off their lights for an hour in a symbolic gesture of solidarity.

I have to admit that it is mostly symbolic, but being plunged into darkness for a time can be both exciting and discombobulating. Does it defeat the object of the exercise if I sit and listen to my wind-up radio? Will I just sit and read by candlelight? Or will I take a leaf out of other's books and go for a walk to see which of Edinburgh's landmarks has participated.

Actually, given that I'm used to traversing Princes Street in the wee small hours to and from work, I'm well used to seeing the Castle in darkness - but will the city fathers be turning out the lights on Calton Hill or The Mound?

Here's the official, "inspiring" video for this year's Earth Hour, followed by a slightly more tongue-in-cheek one from Green Thing:

(As usual with videos, if you're reading this via email or some RSS readers then you may have to visit the site to see them)

Dundee To Power Ports With Wind

Photo by Ross2085

There's an optical illusion in Dundee which has fascinated me for a couple of years.

As you approach from the south, over the Tay Bridge, and assuming you can tear your eyes away from the remains of the old bridge and the thought of your imminent death, then you see the city laid out before you.

Being a green sort-of-a-guy, my eyes are always drawn to the two wind turbines above the Michelin tyre factory. To my mind they're breathtakingly beautiful above the city and make a brilliant statement of intent. They've also helped Michelin reduce their emissions by 21% amongst a whole load of other environmental aims that the company has.

Mesmerised by the turbines spinning to the east of the city centre, the train will take you into Dundee Station and then through a 610 yard tunnel (I know these things - I'm a professional railwayman!). Emerging into the dock area of Dundee, you turn to look at the turbines that you should be right on top of...and they're not there.

In fact, from the eastern approach to the city, they're nowhere to be seen.

Instead, you get the dubious pleasure of looking at oil rigs in the dock. In a little over a thousand yards, you go from 21st Century Clean Technology to 1970s Heavy Industry.

The dock owners want to change all that, though, with a plan to build a couple of turbines of their own which will sit right on the docks.

The Courier, of course, has decided to stir up the controversy against them. I've always considered Dundee to look best when you're actually in the city and staring away from it, so these quotes from the anti-turbine brigade actually just made me laugh:

“I think they should investigate other alternatives rather than putting it right on the skyline because we have a beautiful cityscape.”

“This is just another little nail in the coffin. If they get away with this they will ruin Dundee. It’s already been voted the worst place in Scotland to visit."

But then, I'm of the mind that wind turbines are beautiful and majestic. Unlike Dundee itself.

New Look, Same Great Taste

I've slightly refreshed the look of the blog after Blogger released a new set of templates. This means I can now post bigger photos and videos and the whole thing doesn't look and feel so much like a standard Blogger blog.

If you read this via RSS, then why not come and have a peek at my new look?

Green In The Media 22nd - 28th March

There are two highlights to the week and they're both films. The Yes Men Fix The World on Tuesday, although I expect it to be broken again by Wednesday, and the burger-making industry comes under the spotlight in Fast Food Nation on Thursday. I've read the book, so expect to puke.

Monday 22nd March

Past Lives
On: BBC Radio Scotland
Time: 11:30 to 12:00
Mark Stephen goes to Eskdalemuir to find out how 17th century climate change made a village vanish, and why the valley has its famous weather observatory.

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Turbines in the Back Garden.
Can you make money from electricity? New rules are designed to make it profitable for individuals to erect wind turbines and put solar panels on their roofs, using the electricity for their own use and selling the surplus to the grid. Tom Heap is planning a turbine for his home on the windy Isle of Mull. If anyone can make a packet from the wind racket, then surely it's Tom. He crunches the numbers to discover just what kind of income he can expect from his new turbine. Is it reliable, low maintenance and highly profitable? If it stacks up for his home, how do the figures look for urban dwellers? Could we all be giving power rather than taking it? Could we all be making a little pocket money from the sun and the wind?

Tuesday 23rd March

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the natural world and our impact on it.

The Yes Men Fix the World
On: more4
Time: 22:00 to 00:00
After the success of The Yes Men, the group, a New York political action co-operative, are back in action to embarrass and humiliate corporations in equal measure. Largely fronted by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano, they use phony websites and business names to persuade presumably otherwise rational people to accept their ideas. Such as the 'Survivaball', presented as the latest terrorist survival product from Haliburton. It's a human sized beach ball 'suit' meant to protect the individual inside but if they fall over, they can't stand up again and would just roll around. Most famously, they also set up a fake interview, claiming to be executives from Dow Chemical who are finally prepared to make a multi-billion dollar payment to the victims of the 1985 Union Carbide chemical explosion at Bhopal, which killed 8,000. Dow's stock prices tumbled as shareholders sold rather than suffer losses to pay the victims of the explosion.

Wednesday 24th March

Party
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 18:30 to 19:00
Satirical sitcom by Tom Basden about a group of young idealists trying to set up a new political party. The Party clarifies its policies on climate change, while Duncan deals with the aftermath of under-cooked chicken sausages from a BBQ. Before long, murder is committed and the young idealists are placed in a compromising position.

Thursday 25th March

Battlefront Television
On: Channel 4
Time: 04:55 to 05:25
Seventeen-year-old Aimee Nathan from London, a keen coffee drinker with green credentials, feels she has to do something about coffee cup wastage in the UK. Aimee she gets to grips with the capital's coffee consumption and digs around in dirty civic sites, as she develops from a scatty schoolgirl to blossoming campaigner. Aimee organises a flash mob outside a coffee chain to encourage people to bring their own mugs. With the help of Battlefront mentors she even gets celebrity endorsement from Jodie Marsh. But Aimee needs an army of friends to support her stunt: can she get enough friends out of bed early on a half-term morning to support her, and will the press turn up?

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 Peter Hain and his ministerial team.

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1530, 2030, 0130, Sun 0630)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

The Material World
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 16:30 to 17:00
It has been estimated that shipping kills 60,000 people annually through its polluting exhaust fumes. As the Marine Environment Protection Committee meets in London to discuss solutions, Quentin Cooper hears what can be done.

Fast Food Nation
On: BBC 4
Time: 22:00 to 23:50
Drama set in the fast food industry and based on material from Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, a non-fiction exploration of the industry. Marketing exec Don Henderson has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company's top burger. Visiting the immigrant-staffed slaughterhouses, teeming feedlots and cookie cutter strip malls of Middle America, Don discovers a nation of consumers who haven't realised it is they who are being consumed by the industry.


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

28%

- increase in Chinese oil demand in January compared to December #

1.2 million

- worldwide deaths from road accidents per year #

1.2GW

- power from new marine renewable schemes in Scotland #

274

- containers of illegally logged wood cut from a national park in Madagascar which were picked up by ship last week #

100,000

- number of jobs the government reckons will be produced by capturing carbon #

£80 million

- government loan to a steelworks in Sheffield to build nuclear power plant components #

Ol' King Coal: Not So Merry Now

Photo by DrPete

I was in Newcastle when the news came through on twitter: the Scottish Greens had won an amendment in the parliament against coal power stations.

Not just won the amendment, the figures looked mightily like a slam-dunk: 66 to 26, with 10 abstentions.

The source of the ire was the proposed Hunterston Coal Plant in Ayrshire. The company set up to promote it - Ayrshire Energy - thought that all they had to do was utter the magic words "Carbon Capture" and the Government would roll over and get it's belly tickled.

Well, they're actually probably right on that one, but they didn't count on Parliament. And neither did I, quite frankly.

I thought that it would be yet another vote where the "need for jobs" won out over the needs of the environment. I was wrong, and stunningly so.

Of course, this isn't a planning vote. This is just a statement of the Scottish Parliament's position.

But will the government have the balls to ignore Parliament and go ahead with new coal plants anyway?

I hope not.

Epic Fails, Or An Epic Win?

I don't have much time today because of a long shift at work, so I thought I would share this:

see more Epic Fails

And talking about cleaner emissions, keep an eye on the Scottish Parliament today. As Patrick Harvie says:

Bridge On The River Why?

Photo by !Lauriin

Listening to Brian Taylor's Big Debate on Radio Scotland last Friday was quite instructive. A Question Time-style "panel" programme, last week it came from Fife and the topic of the replacement Forth Road Bridge came up.

Unfortunately, panellist after panellist repeated the government mantra that "the bridge is falling down, and even if it isn't business needs a new one".

The lone voice in the audience who was opposed to the bridge was given short shrift when he suggested it was more cost-effective to repair the existing bridge.

"But think of the disruption during the repair works!" was the cry.

Less than a week later, it has emerged that the disruption during the repair works may just amount to four long weekends.

In contrast, building a new bridge will disrupt traffic daily for three and a half years!

If my commute involved the Forth Road Bridge, I know which one I'd rather have.

Wave Hello To A New Industry

There's that phrase again - according to Alex Salmond, Scotland is the "Saudi Arabia of marine power". We have also in the past been dubbed the 'Saudi Arabia of Wind', but funnily enough never the 'Saudi Arabia of Solar'. I wonder if Saudi Arabia ever calls itself "the Scotland of Oil"?

Actually, in this case Salmond is right in his analogy - our geography is perfectly positioned to take advantage of marine energy schemes. The government has announced ten sites today which will see wave and tidal projects produce 1.2 Gigawatts of power.

If you're wondering just how big that is, 1.2 GW is the capacity of Europe's dirtiest coal power station - Cockenzie, just outside Edinburgh.

And the great thing is, that's just the start. Some of the schemes will fare better than others, but it's great to see a nascent industry being encouraged by the government instead of being told to bugger off like Onshore Wind was back in the 1990s.

Now what we need is investment in battery and energy storage solutions so that we don't let energy produced by the marine schemes go to waste when it's not needed.

Sailing Into Idiotic Waters

The MV Hrossey heading out of Lerwick

I've mentioned previously that last summer I holidayed in Shetland, and had a fabulous time.

I took the overnight ferry there from Aberdeen. I could easily have flown the 250 miles from Edinburgh but there were a number of reasons that I didn't.

Firstly, I was on holiday and therefore had no time constraints on my travelling. The one hour flight would have given me more time on Shetland, but I decided to make the ferry journey part of the holiday experience. And apart from that, when you actually travel somewhere you feel like you've been on a journey to get there, and to my mind appreciate it more. I think this is why most foreign holidaymakers treat Spain with contempt and demand the locals speak English and serve "English" food - it is only three hours away by plane so they see it as an extension of Britain.

Secondly, I've never travelled by boat anywhere before. I've had short-hop ferry trips but nothing that lasted more than an hour or so. I wanted the experience of being in the middle of the North Sea at midnight.

Uppermost, of course, I don't believe in flying internally in the UK. Working on the railway, I see daily how easy it is to get from A to B without flying. It might take you that wee bit longer, but really there's no real need to fly from Manchester to Edinburgh.

I do have caveats to that, of course, which is why I said earlier that I had no time constraints on my journey. Flights to the islands can be an essential service, and not everyone has the luxury of taking 24 hours to go from Lerwick to London via ferry and train. Where a viable alternative can be used, then I believe it should be used.

But it's that viable part of the Shetland ferry service which is now under threat. The operators, Northlink Ferries, want to same money (and fuel) by running their fleet with only two engines instead of four. I have to say, they don't exactly put their foot to the floor as it is - they are fairly leisurely in their sailing speed. But reducing to two engines will mean adding an extra hour to the journey times.

What Tom Morton calls "the killer" is the twice-a-week return journey via Orkney, which is the route I came back on. This will now have to leave Lerwick at 4pm. If you're taking your car, then you'll have to be there for 3pm. This means that suddenly the ferry is not a "viable" option for some workers.

Will Northlink's attempt to save fuel (and therefore emissions) actually increase the number of people flying to and from Shetland?

Tom's article ties the decision into politics (it's an SNP conspiracy against the LibDem islands), but I'm seeing it through a green lens - and it looks, if not quite disastrous, then completely stupid.

Green In The Media 15th - 21st march

I mentioned Ian McEwan's new novel Solar on Friday, and starting this week it's Radio 4's Book At Bedtime. So if you don't want to buy it, you can listen to it free.


Monday 15th March

Start the Week
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 09:00 to 09:45 (Also 2130)
Andrew Marr finds out what science can tell us about the human condition. Ian McEwan's new novel pits climate change against human frailty, Patricia Fara charts 4,000 years of scientific endeavour, and Paul Davies, in his search for ET, asks what would it mean if we're not alone in the universe.

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Plants to Pills.
Tom Heap witnesses the international police operation against the trade in endangered species. This month Interpol's Operation Tram has been busy across Europe, seizing traditional medicines suspected of containing endangered species. Tom follows the raids in the UK, uncovering the effects the trade has on the world's plants and animals.

Book at Bedtime
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: Every day this week at 22:45 to 23:00
Solar.
Hugh Bonneville reads from Ian McEwan's new novel. Michael Beard is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him, and now finds that his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

Future of Food
On: BBC 1
Time: 02:35 to 03:35
George Alagiah travels the world in search of solutions to the growing global food crisis. From the two women working to make their Yorkshire market town self-sufficient to the academic who claims it could be better for the environment to ship in lamb from New Zealand, George meets the people who believe they know how we should feed the world as demand doubles by the middle of the century. He also heads out to Havana to find out how they are growing half of their fruit and vegetables right in the heart of the city, investigates the 'land-grabs' trend - where rich countries lease or buy up the land used by poor farmers in Africa - and meets the Indian agriculturalists who have almost trebled their yields over the course of a decade.
(Signed)

Tuesday 16th March

Mavericks
On: BBC Radio Scotland
Time: 11:30 to 12:00 (Also Sat 0600)
Muriel Gray speaks to conservationist and botanist David Bellamy about his controversial views on global warming and what keeps him going in his opposition to a tidal wave of counter-opinion from scientists, politicians and environmentalists.

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the natural world and our impact on it.

Thursday 18th March

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1530, 2030, 0130, Sun 0630)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

The Material World
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 16:30 to 17:00
With more doubts being raised about climate research, Quentin Cooper asks how does science handle the issue of uncertainty? How do different branches of research quantify what they can't be sure of? And what are the rest of us to make of it? The Royal Society is hosting a special meeting - Handling Uncertainty - to discuss these issues, which are at the heart of much of the arguments over the validity of climate change research. Quentin is joined by the meeting's organiser, climate scientist Professor Tim Palmer, to find out how uncertainty will influence our scientific future.

Friday 19th March

Any Questions?
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 20:00 to 20:50 (Also Sat 1310)
Jonathan Dimbleby chairs the topical debate from Leeds. The panellists are Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer, secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls, shadow foreign secretary William Hague and Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP.

Is This the Worst Weather Ever?
On: ITV2
Time: 03:50 to 04:15
Hurricanes.
This series examines the most extreme weather of recent years and asks is this as bad as it gets - or is it only the beginning? Everyone frets about the weather and recently it has given us plenty to get worked up about. Some experts warn of climate meltdown, with every new catastrophe sounding alarm bells courtesy of Mother Nature. This edition features hurricanes, the tropical storms which bring terror and devastation on an epic scale.

Saturday 20th March

Eco Solutions
On: CNN
Time: 22:30 to 23:00
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.


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

500

- registered installers of renewable energy equipment in the whole of the UK #

19%

- proportion of the state's electricity which came from wind power in Texas on 28th February #

253 million tonnes

- CO₂ emissions produced by importing goods into the UK #

42%

- increase in the price of genetically modified Monsanto soybeans in one year #

½ million & counting

- number of seeds in the Arctic seed vault #

75

- number of starlings which fell from the sky in Somerset. I blame aliens #

Ian McEwan Talks Climate Change

I have to admit I can take or leave Ian McEwan's books. I loved Atonement and Saturday, but I hated On Chesil Beach.

Having said that, I've been a tad impatient waiting for his latest, Solar, which has as it's protagonist a nobel prize-winning physicist and climate change activist.

The number of fiction books which mention climate change are starting to increase and that can be no bad thing - I'm sure there are plenty of readers of McEwan who haven't looked into global warming before and take for granted what they read in their biased newspaper or see on their "balanced" TV news report. Getting people to think through fiction opens up another path through which scientists can get their message through to people.

Although I would add a note of caution - authors, like film makers, don't have the luxury of doing the mundane. Therefore they have to enliven a book or film with the spectacular which might be wholly unscientific and lead people away from the realities of the situation. It doesn't sound like McEwan has done that, but I'm sure there are other novelists who wouldn't be so scrupulous with the science.

Here's Ian McEwan talking about the book (out this month) and his views on climate change:

Ooh, Aah, Just A Little Bit

Photo by snappybex

Here's a bit of sleight of hand from the Scottish Government.

To begin with, this report in The Scotsman is all about how Scotland can find itself in prime position when it comes to storing carbon. I actually agree with that part - we've got a lot of real estate in the North Sea and already have the drills to get into the sea bed thanks to the oil industry.

(Did I just thank the oil industry there???)

There's the small matter, of course, that Carbon Capture & Storage does not yet work, and that I see coal-fired power plants as a crime against humanity.

The Scottish Government, meanwhile, sees Nuclear Power plants in much the same way as I see coal power stations - No Way, No How.

But how does it see coal plants with CCS? Here's where the sleight of hand comes in. Buried in all the bluster about how wonderful CCS is, we find this line:

It confirms that any new coal-fired power station would need to demonstrate CCS on at least 300 megawatts of its capacity from the start.

Only 300MW? That's only an eighth of Longannet's current output! It would only reduce the CO₂ emissions of Cockenzie, Europe's dirtiest coal plant, by a quarter.

Are the Scottish Government really saying they will allow a new coal power station even if it only captures an eighth of the pollution it generates?

Trams: Too Big To Fail

I met a friend for a drink on Tuesday and we got talking about the Trams. Actually, I think it's now part of the law that anyone who lives in, visits or just thinks about Edinburgh has to talk about the trams at some point.

He mentioned that a (ahem) German friend of his who has been working on the project said the whole thing was "fucked". Sure enough, one day later the news breaks that budgets and deadlines were being torn up amid dispute and acrimony. It now seems that Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE) and their German contractors Bilfinger Berger are barely speaking to each other. I watched last night's Newsnight Scotland from behind a cushion (you can see their report here, it's the first ten minutes of the programme).

The Scottish newspapers today have been scathing, with the Evening News even floating the possibility that the trams will only run from the airport to Haymarket, despite the tracks already laid down in Princes Street and Leith Walk.

What has become clear from the various news reports is the dichotomy at the heart of delivering the project. The SNP coalition Edinburgh Council is in charge of the whole scheme while the SNP Government at Holyrood actively campaigns against the trams.

The Council/Government relationship has in effect become a mini version of the Holyrood/Westminster relationship - the SNP council can say that they don't like it but they're being forced into doing it by a big boy, in this case the parliament vote to keep the tram project going, in the same way that the Holyrood government campaigns against UK government strategies while following them.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that the same tactics would be used by Labour if they were in power at Holyrood and the Tories formed the UK government.

However, the whole thing just gives the impression that the SNP are gleeful that the project is failing, even though they're in charge of the negotiations to keep it going. They should be more professional than that. We all know you didn't want the trams, but please stop reminding us of that and just get on with the job of saving them like you have been tasked to do.

The project has gone too far and is now too big to allow it to fail.

EU Must Up Its Climate Targets

A new video from Friends Of The Earth Scotland, although it doesn't look much like Porty beach!

EU must up its climate targets from Friends of the Earth Scotland on Vimeo.

Windy Fintry

I'm not saying Stirlingshire's backwards, but they've got things arse over elbow in Fintry.

While every other town and village in the UK has an automatic knee-jerk reaction against any proposed wind farm nearby, the good residents of Fintry (Fintrians? Fintrites?) draw the windmills to their bosom.

Normally the locals will say "No" when the planners say "Yes". In Fintry, the planners said "No" and the locals said "Yes". And the locals got their way. The current Fintry Wind Farm is to be extended.

Of course it's not completely altruistic - the locals get some benefit. When the wind farm was first proposed a few years ago they decided that they wanted in on the action and "bought" one of the turbines. The result was a huge payment for the village - around £200,000 so far. The money has been used to assess and then insulate homes.

I'm sure they have big plans for the money generated in the future, but it's a pity that more villages and towns can't see the good that the turbines have done for Fintry and follow their lead.

Making A Biomass Of It All

I haven't mentioned the proposed biomass power plant in Leith Docks much, mainly because Greener Leith have been all over it (as you would expect).

If you don't know what I'm talking about, a company called Forth Energy are proposing building a biomass plant in Leith and importing the woodchips to power it from America.

Yeah, sounds crazy to me too.

There's an interview with Alastair Tibbitt of Greener Leith on their website which explains all about the scheme and all the up-to-date machinations.

Don't Buy Your DVDs in Sainsbury's...

...something tells me you might get ripped off! I spotted this today:

Never Buy A Winter Coat In Winter

At my age, I should have more common sense.

It was on The Wave march in December that I first noticed it - the zip on my old and trusty winter coat was having some difficulty in, well, zipping. A touch of my natural brute strength solved the problem but it steadily got worse.

Finally in January the zipper decided to break free from it's earth-bound shackles and head for zipper heaven.

Obviously, this was a dilemma. In the middle of the worst winter in a decade I was the not-so-proud owner of a coat which would not close.

Being a frugal, green (and skinflint) sort of chappie, I asked around to see if I knew anyone who could fix it. Well, okay, I asked the one person I know who can sew - the girlfriend's mother - and she said no.

But then I started looking at it, and even though I knew I was falling into a trap I couldn't help myself. The coat was old - horror of horrors, at least 5 years! There was a huge hole in one pocket. It had seen better days.

I deserved a new winter jacket, goddammit!

So the gf and I trotted off to the shops. Let me remind you that this was in the middle of the coldest winter in at least a decade.

Which might explain the jacket I eventually bought. Incredibly warm and snug, it was like having a 50Tog duvet wrapped around you. Perfect for standing at the bus stop at 4am on a January morning.

Which it was. Not only was I snug, I was smug.

There was a problem, though, and it manifested itself that first day I wore it. While, yes, it was perfect for a wintry Edinburgh morning, it wasn't so good for a low-winter-sun Edinburgh afternoon.

That first day, walking along Gorgie Road at 2pm, I thought I was going to become the first person in history to die of overheating on an Edinburgh street in the middle of January.

By the time I got home I was covered in sweat and seriously contemplating jumping into a cold shower. My tongue was knackered as I tried to regulate my body temperature by panting like a dog.

It was quite clear I had made a bad choice. But how to rectify the situation? Surely I was stuck with this quilt-with-pockets until it was warm enough to get the lightweight summer jacket on?

I realised last week that the solution has been staring me in the face. It's the same solution I should have used back when the old coat's zip gave out, and it could have saved me a lot of sweat. Even better, it's right across the road from me:

A tailor's shop.

They can fix the zip on my old coat for £14 (a bargain as far as I'm concerned) and the padded winter duvet can go into the cupboard for the next cold winter in another decade or so.

Or I could lend it to Ranulph Fiennes for his next Arctic Expedition.

Green In The Media 8th March - 14th March

Monday 8th March

Costing the Earth
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30 (Also Thu 1330)
Fusion Future.
For 50 years, nuclear fusion has been touted as the safe, cheap, limitless fuel of the future. In 2010 the future may finally arrive. Tom Heap investigates the real potential of fusion power.

Future of Food
On: BBC 1
Time: 03:10 to 04:10
George Alagiah travels the world to reveal a growing global food crisis. In this episode, George heads out to India to discover how a changing diet in the developing world is putting pressure on the world's limited food resources. He finds out how using crops to produce fuel is impacting on food supplies across the continents. George then meets a farmer in Kent, who is struggling to sell his fruit at a profit, and a British farmer in Kenya who is shipping out tonnes of vegetables for the UK's supermarket shelves. He also examines why so many people are still dying of hunger after decades of food aid. Back in the UK, George challenges the decision-makers with the facts he has uncovered - from Oxfam head of research Duncan Green to Sainsbury's boss Justin King. He finds out why British beef may offer a model for future meat production and how our appetite for fish is stripping the world's seas bare.
(Signed)

Tuesday 9th March

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the natural world and our impact on it.

Wednesday 10th March

Geoengineering the Climate
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 21:00 to 21:30
Mark Whitaker reports from Britain and the USA on the science of geoengineering and the political questions it raises. Putting giant parasols in space, injecting substances into the stratosphere, fertilising the oceans and brightening the clouds are all techniques to cool the earth, by reducing sunlight or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Until recently they were the stuff of science fiction but now they are being taken seriously on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thursday 11th March

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1530, 2030, 0130, Sat 2030, Sun 0630, 2330)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

Sunday 14th March

Countryfile
On: BBC 1
Time: 18:00 to 19:00
Cornwall is the destination for John Craven who's investigating whether fishermen need to radically change the way they do business if they're to save the industry from collapse.


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