http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:33:59 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Globalism & Regionalism" is all about. It pulls no punches. The ideological fundamentalism that has shaped the last two decades is at last in retreat, but it will take a long time to repair the massive damage caused. We desperately need some new – and honest – thinking to create a more equitable, resilient and sustainable model of globalisation. Whatever some people may say, it’s not too late. There’s still time to turn things around. But every year we press ahead – unheedingly, it would seem – with our current model of globalisation, it makes it that much harder to bring forward the necessary alternatives. Globalism and Regionalism Edge Futures Paperback, 19.0 x 14.0 cm, 96 pages UK £7.99 Globalism and Regionalism considers the impact that dwindling resources and restricted travel will have on global competitiveness and regional identity. Competition between countries is likely to increase. Whilst this may lead to conflict it could also facilitate greater creativity. This in turn will put a premium on technological advancement and on our ability to respond rapidly to change. Simultaneously, regionalism will develop and localities could become more distinctive and potentially aggressive. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/globalism_regionalism.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/globalism_regionalism.html Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:33:59 +0000 E.ON at Kingsnorth would usher in a new and utterly disastrous lease of life for coal in the UK. There may be up to eight further coal-fired power stations in the pipeline. The fact that BERR would appear to be minded to go ahead with such a proposal tells you all you need to know about the Government’s head-long retreat from what we now know to have been the high point of sustainable energy thinking in the 2003 Energy White Paper. Disagreement: as George says, a horror story. But does one’s horror at one horror story justify turning a blind eye to another – equally horrifying – horror story? "Yes", says George, because our every sinew must now be strained to combat the threat of resurgent coal. "No", say I, because a resurgent nuclear industry constitutes (almost) as grave a threat to the emergence of truly sustainable energy strategies as coal does. I am putting the 'almost' in there to build a bridge back to George's startlingly irresponsible and throw-away 'green light' for nuclear. As you can see, he is trying to hedge that improbable endorsement with a few conditions that both he and I would agree are all but impossible for the nuclear industry to comply with. But a communicator as astute and clever as George should (and surely does) know the difference between a 'Yes … If' position and a 'No … Unless' position. Does all this mean an irrevocable split in the Green Movement? Yes and No. Yes, because there are indeed widely diverging views about the potential contribution that nuclear might make to a low-carbon world. No, because there always have been such diverging views, and we are all (for the most part!) united in our anger and disgust at the sheer stupidity of something like Kingsnorth. So please do check out the Climate Camp 08 website. It's excellent. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/coal_verses_nuclear_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/coal_verses_nuclear_1.html Energy Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:39:23 +0000 Food Matters' recognised that dilemma, and seeks all sorts of different ways of finessing it. For instance, it proposes a new "Healthier Food Mark" to promote healthier, "low-impact" food in the public sector – without quite spelling out that low-impact must (presumably?) mean less meat-intensive. Good idea, but if it's promoted with the same laissez-faire spinelessness as the current Public Sector Food Procurement initiative, it will achieve precisely nothing. Hence the excellent recommendation from the Green Alliance (in its timely and very accessible new paper "Cutting Our Carbs: Food and the Environment") that the Government should make compliance with the Healthier Food Mark compulsory for all public sector bodies by 2012. For once, this would mean leading by example and by clear, unambiguous regulation. And if you're still uncertain why that would be such a good thing, do please check out Compassion in World Farming’s website for details of its brilliant 'Eat Less Meat' campaign. PS By the way, I am keen to round out my troika of inherently unsustainable numbers (ie 9 billion humans, 120 billion animals) by investigating the number of pets in the world today – and exactly how fast that number is growing, with what sort of impacts on food supplies and the environment. Does anybody know where I might unearth that kind of data? ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/low_impact_food_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/08/low_impact_food_1.html Sustainable Food Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:56:23 +0000 The Green New Deal report, published last week by the new economics foundation) are in no doubt: "we expect that the sub-prime debt crisis (in the US) will soon come to be seen as just the first domino to fall in a line of adjacent dominoes, threatening a systemic crisis. This will lead to a massive wave of corporate defaults. Because their profitability is too low to repay costly debts, these companies will likely default, tipping their lenders-banks and institutions such as Hedge Funds – into crisis." Right or wrong, their analysis of how we’ve got into this mess is devastating: irresponsible deregulation of the financial services sector, leading to unethical, greedy and even fraudulent behaviour; a deliberately induced credit crunch, with financiers borrowing and lending almost without limit, leading to totally unsustainable asset inflation – particularly in housing markets; and a total failure to crack down on tax havens and dodgy accounting systems that allow corporates and the ultra-rich to prosper at the expense of the vast majority of citizens today. As Nicholas Sarkozy has said: "we have to put a stop to this financial system which is out of its mind and which has lost sight of its purpose." The credit crunch is the first of three "crunches" that "The New Green Deal" brings together, the others comprising much more familiar territory around climate change and soaring energy prices driven primarily by an encroaching peak in oil production. Each of these crises could of course be addressed separately, but it is precisely their "perfect storm" convergence that renders contemporary capitalist economies so unprecedentedly vulnerable. It’s also this convergence that makes the proposed solutions so compelling. Drawing deeply on the analogy with President Roosevelt’s New Deal in the early 1930s, when he dragged America out of the worst impacts of the Great Depression, the Green New Deal depends on two essential thrusts: re-regulation of financial services (including the reasserting of government control over credit and interest rates), and the re-flation of the economy through a £50 billion a year crash programme, over 10 years to reduce – dramatically reduce! – both emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases and our chronic dependency on fossil fuels. A new "carbon army" will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, "make every building a power station", eliminate forever the scourge of fuel poverty and severely curtail the worst activities of profiteering energy companies. Crazy stuff? Possibly. But its worth bearing in mind that’s exactly what all the usual vested interests kept telling President Roosevelt as his New Deal set about rescuing the United States from one of the worst periods in its history.]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/how_bad_is_the_economic_downtu.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/how_bad_is_the_economic_downtu.html Economics Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:31:51 +0000 BERR (and indeed by investors). A month ago, for instance, Greenpeace published a fascinating report on industrial CHP which it commissioned from Poyry Energy Consulting which really should make the civil servants in BERR totally rethink their heat strategy (in so far as a heat strategy can be said to exist at all). The report shows that at just nine industrial sites, the installation of mega CHP schemes would provide between 13,000 MW and 16,000 MW of electricity in providing the heat needed by the companies on those sites. 13,000 MW is the equivalent of eight new nuclear power stations. And guess what? Lots of real jobs projected, no particular planning issues, no complex design challenges, no particular security risks and no legacy of nuclear waste to trouble future generations for thousands of years to come. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/energy_as_an_employer.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/energy_as_an_employer.html Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:42:24 +0000 Protecting the Rainforests), there is a great buzz at the moment about REDD – Reducing Emissions (of CO2 ) from Deforestation and Degradation. This is great, and getting something sorted on this before the Copenhagen Conference at the end of 2009 is going to be crucial. But people are weird. Just because policy-makers are focused for the first time on reducing emissions from cutting down existing trees doesn’t mean that taking up emissions from planting new trees has suddenly become completely irrelevant! Or boring even. OK, so there are indeed a number of dodgy tree-planting schemes being done as carbon offsets, and it is now widely accepted that forestry-based offsets need to be treated with a great deal of caution. But that absolutely doesn’t mean that all tree-planting has ceased to be important. I was powerfully reminded of this last week when the official report of the Billion Tree Campaign dropped through my letterbox. If anyone reading this piece RIGHT NOW is feeling a little bit depressed, then RIGHT NOW you should check this out http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign. It’s an astonishing story. Back in 2005, the wonderful Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize (the first environmentalist ever to win) started campaigning around the idea of planting a billion trees. This was taken up by UNEP and a constellation of organisations all around the world, and duly launched in November 2006. I must say, I did wonder at the ambition level – that’s one hell of a lot of people out there planting one hell of a lot of trees. I needn’t have worried. Since the launch, not just one billion, not just one and half billion, but more than two billion trees have been planted! The overall impact of this must be extraordinary – in terms of biodiversity, soil protection, watershed management, sustainable livelihoods and so on. And that doesn’t even include the CO₂ benefits: depending on the location and size of its trees, one hectare of forest can absorb approximately six tonnes of CO₂ a year. The Report is stuffed full of brilliant case studies, drawn from all over the world, involving every sector and every conceivable kind of organisation – particularly young people. You can just feel the spirit of Wangari Maathai behind all of this. She was over in the UK a month ago to present the Awards of the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy – itself an amazing organisation (of which – to declare an interest – I’m a Trustee) with its own amazing portfolio of inspirational award winners – this year from Ethiopia, Tanzania, India, Uganda, Brazil and China, as well as Mid Wales, Cornwall, Sussex, Yorkshire, Ayrshire and Oxford! So if the Billion Trees haven’t done it for you, then check them out too at www.ashdenawards.org “No one can attend an event like the Ashden Awards and fail to be inspired……these Awards have told us how to illuminate the path to a sustainable future together” (Al Gore) ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/one_billion_trees_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/one_billion_trees_1.html Climate change Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:45:48 +0000 "Food Matters". And that’s a shame – as it provides a really important contribution to an increasingly important (and urgent) debate about food. In fact, this is the first crack at an integrated food policy that we have seen in the UK since the middle of the last century. In a world dominated by the Common Agricultural Policy, the World Trade Organisation and global food chains, politicians of every political persuasion have felt under no obligation to worry much about an integrated approach here in the UK. Pretty stupid really, as generations of food and environmental campaigners kept pointing out – to no avail. But multiple shocks in the global food system over the last 18 months or more have jolted politicians out of their near-comatose state of complacency on food policy. Albeit in catch-up mode, there is a lot of really good stuff in "Food Matters", including a number of critical pointers for the future – a new Foresight study to look at the full impacts of accelerating climate change on food consumption and production, and a new (and very welcome) push on sustainable food procurement across the public sector – with a new "Healthier Food Mark" scheme. Having said all that, observers of the current debate about "sustainable development as add-on to business-as-usual as opposed to "sustainable development as a wholesale transformation of our dominant model of progress", will find "Food Matters" particularly fascinating. There is a deep, hugely damaging fault-line running all the way through it, captured in a brave but ultimately forlorn attempt to hold both "business-as-usual" and "business transformed" within the same policy framework. For example, the report just takes it as a "given" that the World Bank’s estimates that cereal production "must" increase by 50%, and meat production by 80% by 2030 is some kind of higher-order imperative. If you start from that kind of "predict and provide" point of view, almost regardless of the impacts of climate change, the impact of oil at around $150 a barrel, the impact on the rural poor, the continuing degradation of productive land, over-exploitation of water resources and loss of biodiversity, then you are not likely to end up with anything even vaguely resembling sustainability. And from my perspective, as a keen supporter of Compassion in World Farming’s "Eat Less Meat" campaign, simply projecting year on year increases in meat production because there is a demand for it out there is ecologically insane. The business-as-usual mindset in "Food Matters" still dominates. Food markets will apparently become even more globalised, high-tech breakthroughs (including GM) will apparently allow huge increases in yields, and intensive mono-cropping of commodity crops will dominate supply chains even more than they already do. There is no empirical basis to justify such manic assertions, but you can at least see exactly where they’re coming from. After all, wouldn’t it be wonderful, as Hilary Benn was arguing the other day, if we could just engineer another "Green Revolution" of the kind that lifted agricultural yields so dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s? Well, no, it wouldn’t – if we continued to ignore every single one of those environmental and social limits referred to above, which we almost certainly would. As you might expect, in that context, the "business transformed" mindset is far less well-developed in "Food Matters", but at least it’s there, peeping out tentatively from behind the report’s "business-as-usual" barriers. And that’s progress of a sort. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/food_and_the_g8.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/07/food_and_the_g8.html Sustainable Food Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:48:45 +0000 Policy Exchange brought out an analysis of all the different targets set by the Government on environmental issues since 1997, and gave them a real pasting on just how far short they have fallen on so many of them. But the implication behind the Report that any target-setting process in the field of environmental policy is largely a waste of time is entirely misplaced. Targets can drive both policy reform and improved outcomes. And there is no bigger target out there at the moment than the EU’s target of providing 20% of all the energy it needs (not just electricity) from renewable resources by 2020. After some lively horse-trading, it was decided earlier on in the year that the UK share of that EU-wide target should be 15% - which means at least 30% (and probably close to 40%) of our electricity will need to come from renewables – it’s just so much tougher doing transport or heating by renewables. Acceptance of this target led to months of the deepest angst inside BERR. On Thursday last week, it eventually delivered itself of a draft Renewable Energy Strategy. And it’s not half bad. Indeed, after a decade of incredibly damaging dithering, BERR Officials have at last begun to think through the reality of meeting energy security and low-carbon objectives through renewables. Part of that new-found purpose is based on the development and deployment of the technologies themselves – particularly offshore wind, which is where we can get the biggest bang for our renewable buck. But the most encouraging thing about this draft Strategy is the recognition that making renewables work depends not so much on the technology bit as on other key aspects of energy policy, namely: energy efficiency (properly accounted for in the Strategy, for the first time since the 2003 Energy White Paper, though even now without a clear plan of action); planning (with really encouraging new emphasis on community and local benefits); grid connections (at long last, BERR is getting tough with Ofgem to get its own act sorted out on low-carbon measures); and even behaviour change – rumour has it that BERR won’t be too upset if their Lordships force the Government to give way on accepting the need for the accelerated introduction of feed-in tariffs – the single most important factor in driving the astonishing renewables success story in Germany and elsewhere. Real breakthroughs – as Greenpeace and others have acknowledged. Still some blindingly obvious blind-spots (doing this in a way that further hammers the fuel-poor in the UK is really not smart), but without doubt the best thing to emerge from BERR over the last five years. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/renewable_energy_strategy.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/renewable_energy_strategy.html Energy Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:52:44 +0000 Greenpeace’s direct action against Unilever as part of its palm oil campaign. I certainly plead guilty to the pot-stirring, but there was nothing phoney about it: the interface between business and NGOs is one that I spend a lot of time reflecting on, and this provides a particularly interesting case study. To say that these things “all come out in the wash” would not just be a cliché, but a rather insulting cliché. However, there is something of a coming-out-in-the-wash effect going on in terms of the ‘working relationship’ between Greenpeace and Unilever. The prize for Greenpeace in taking on Unilever was not just to be sure that the company was doubling and re-doubling its efforts on securing “sustainable palm oil”, but that Unilever would undertake to spearhead a business-led call for an immediate moratorium on further deforestation in Indonesia linked to palm oil cultivation. That’s exactly what Unilever is now doing – with the only bone of contention between them the question as to whether Unilever would have done that without its headquarters being invaded by troops of orang-utan lookalikes. Unilever said it would; Greenpeace says is wouldn’t. Whatever, as some would say. But things move fast these days. A couple of days after Unilever made its announcement (at The Prince of Wales’s May Day Summit on Climate Change) Greenpeace issued its latest report, The Hidden Carbon Liability of Indonesian Palm Oil – the front cover of which has a big tick against Unilever on “support a halt to deforestation”, and a big cross against Nestle, P&G and Kraft. It’s an excellent report (adding a lot more context and specific detail to the earlier report, Burning up Borneo), and key reading for anyone interested in this debate. I’m sure it won’t make Unilever colleagues feel any less uncomfortable about the pressure they’re now under, but they will at least see it as a more ‘level playing field’ in terms of the share of the clod of earth that Greenpeace is now hurling at all the big palm oil players. One really interesting divide emerges. Some time ago, Unilever decided to direct (almost) all its efforts through the RSPO – the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. “It is essential that all those involved sign up to agreed criteria to make sustainability work on the ground – but this is not an easy process, and is taking longer than we would all like. That is why we chair the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil”. Greenpeace thinks the RSPO is a total waste of space: “the organisation’s impact on the ground in terms of halting industry expansion into rainforests and peatlands has been negligible. At present, the RSPO scheme does not prohibit palm oil producers from being involved in forest conversion, and has no assessment of, or limits on, GHG emissions from the development of palm oil plantations. Again, you’ll have to judge for yourself on this one. At the risk of being accused yet again of grotesque bias, I have to say that Unilever really didn’t have much choice here. Unilateral action on its part would have counted for very little – even if it is the world’s biggest consumer of palm oil . And it’s simply not true to say that nothing has happened, In just three years, producers responsible for 40% of total palm oil production have joined the RSPO, have agreed on a Certification Programme for sustainable palm oil (which is more than can be said for most other agricultural commodities in the world today), which includes sanctions against companies that flout the certification standards – and those companies do include expansion onto land of high conservation value. Here’s the fit between Greenpeace’s demands and the RSPO: (1) No new plantings within mapped forest areas (2) No plantations resulting in the degradation of peatlands (3) No plantations post-November 2005 resulting in degradations of High Conservation Value forests (4) No plantations established on indigenous people’s land without Free, Prior and Informed Consent (5) Establish full supply chain traceability. Unilever has pointed out that the first four of these are included in the new standards, and Unilever itself (though not other RSPO members) has committed to (5). As it has to be if it is to achieve its goal of ensuing that all the palm oil it uses is sourced from sustainable producers by 2015. Too slow? Probably. RSPO still pretty dodgy in terms of its membership? Couldn’t agree more. Best way to go in an imperfect world? I think so. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/greenpeace_versus_unilever_rou_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/greenpeace_versus_unilever_rou_1.html Climate change Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:12:44 +0000 A new report published in the Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society shows just how much could be achieved here for just a few billion dollars every year. Very challenging stuff. And that is what Kevin Conrad is now out there doing – building up a growing head of steam around REDD financing. Unfortunately, there was one big black cloud hanging over Kevin’s presentation – namely, the ongoing destruction of Papua New Guinea’s own forest. Using the latest remote sensing techniques, a team of scientists based at Port Moresby University, has calculated that PNG is logging its forests even faster than Brazil is cutting down the Amazon rainforests. In 2007, an astonishing 1.7% of the entire forest base was cut down – if it continues at that rate, a full 50% will have disappeared by 2021. To which there was only one response from his audience. Let’s get this REDD stuff up and running before it’s too late. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/protecting_the_rainforests.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/protecting_the_rainforests.html Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:15:17 +0000 Cheltenham Science Festival. For some time now, I have been reflecting on the way in which the world is responding to the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and continuing high levels of population growth. The UN body responsible for coordinating HIV/AIDS has called for funding to grow to around $22 billion per annum – and it seems probable that governments, donor agencies and big foundations will respond positively. By contrast, funding for family planning peaked some time ago (as a percentage of total expenditures on population-related activities), and is still on a downward curve.

Donor Expenditures	1994	1999	2004
Family Planning Services	55%	37%	9%
Reproductive Health Services	18%	30%	25%
HIV/AIDS Activities	9%	23%	54%
Research & Development	18%	11%	12%
Millions in Current US $	1314	1655	4907

HIV/AIDS kills about 8000 people a month, and there are 5 million new infections every year, so I have no problem about the scale of expenditure in addressing this. However, along with many others, I do have major reservations about the way in which the sums are being invested, especially in terms of the US-driven programmes which are much more ideology-based than evidence-based. But the fact that this year in Kenya (where the rate of population growth is on the rise again) a sum of around 480 million will be spent on HIV/AIDS, compared to just 7.7 million on family planning and reproductive health, is just completely bonkers. What that means is instead of Kenya’s population stabilising at 44 million by 2050, which is what would have happened with the Total Fertility Rate continuing to decline, it could now go as high as 80 million – and god knows how many of that vastly expanded population will have died of HIV/AIDS between now and 2050. The additional suffering that all this imposes on some of the world’s most poorest countries is literally incalculable. Continuing population growth is already having a marked impact on the efforts being made to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development & Reproductive Health put it in 2007: “The evidence is overwhelming: the Millennium Development Goals are difficult or impossible to achieve with the current levels of population growth in the least developed countries and regions.” It’s still the case that most “progressive” development experts think that “addressing poverty first” remains the best response, and that most environmentalists, in a reprehensibly politically-correct way, think it is exclusively about over-consumption in the rich world, than over-population in the poor world. But exactly what kind of world are these people living in? Certainly not in a world where water consumption is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth, where available arable land continues to decline year on year, where many of the world’s biodiversity hotspots are increasingly at risk specifically because of rapid population growth, where oil at $139 a barrel is already having a devastating effect on hundreds of millions of very poor people, and where accelerating climate change and rising sea levels are going to cause havoc over the next 20-30 years. That’s our world – not some make believe cornucopian world that some still dream of, where the number of people on it is of no material significance.]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/population.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/06/population.html Population fertility HIV poverty water Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:25:13 +0000 This all feels very much like one of those periodic crunch moments for the sustainability agenda. Fuel-tax protests. Rebellious backbenchers. The kind of febrile atmosphere we last saw in 2000. The Tory press on the war path. NGOs winding themselves up: “Stay green, Gordon, don’t be yellow”. In 2000, the price of fuel was heading sharply upwards – not as sharply as today, but very uncomfortably. A motley consortium of some of the worst affected citizens (road haulage firms, farmers etc) took to their trucks and their tractors and blockaded key oil facilities in protest against the fuel tax escalator – a Conservative innovation which Labour was quite happily rolling on with. Within a few weeks, the Treasury caved in and agreed to decommission the escalator. On the face of it, a minor blip. But a strong case has been made since then that it was this one setback that put paid to Treasury’s enthusiasm for the sustainability agenda. Ministers blamed both NGOs for not having come to their aid and the media for having hyped the whole thing into a massive crisis. The image of ‘Mondeo Man’, feral and unforgiving, was on display, virtually, the length and breadth of the Treasury’s corridors of impotence. Roll forward eight years. It’s all stacking up again, with campaigns both to defer the projected increase in fuel taxes for the second time, and to reverse decisions announced in the budget on increases and vehicle excise duty. Ministers are ‘listening’; U-turns are widely anticipated. And would that be so awful? Focussing for now on fuel taxes, just stand back for a moment. The essence of using fiscal instruments to change corporate and consumer behaviour relies on three things: transparency (so that people know what’s coming down the track at them); fiscal neutrality (so as not to piss everyone off by using green taxes primarily to increase revenues); and fairness (so that the less well-off in society are not further disadvantaged). On those three counts, given the dramatic increases in the price of petrol and diesel over the last couple of years, everyone has been taken by surprise by the price hikes, apart from ‘Peak Oil’ campaigners (who have been telling us this was about to happen for years). Moreover, the less well-off are being disproportionately hammered, and the hikes in fuel taxes are far from fiscally neutral and never have been. So, economically, socially, ethically, what are the implications of all that? Your thoughts really welcome. As the Government’s official advisers on such matters, what do you think the SDC’s advice should be?]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/fuel_tax_protests_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/fuel_tax_protests_1.html Consumption Transport cars petrol price Fri, 30 May 2008 09:38:50 +0000 London Array project, the largest offshore wind farm (at around 100MW) in the UK. I’ve got a little file on my desk here of all the press releases that the London Array Consortium has put out over the last few years – not least to drum up support from people like me as it wrestled with a recalcitrant Local Authority and other issues in terms of securing planning permission for the facilities required for the London Array. It’s a great scheme. It still is – with or without Shell, whose withdrawal strikes me as a terrible decision. It’s difficult to imagine how companies of this kind come to decisions of that sort. So I was all the more grateful for a windy uplift the day after Shell announced this decision, when I went along to help celebrate the commissioning of the Westmill Wind Farm, just outside Swindon – 5 x 1.3MW turbines, which anyone now using the mainline services into or out of Paddington can observe out of the train window. If ever you need firm confirmation that wind turbines enhance certain landscapes, rather than destroy them, Westmill provides that in all its glory! But what makes Westmill even more special is the fact that it is a co-operative venture, with a large number of individuals (including myself) who bought into the project, and 50% of whom live within a 50 mile radius of the project. This was a great day! Unfortunately, there are only a handful of co-operative wind projects of this kind in the UK – in contrast, for instance, to Denmark. As far as I can discover, there are no more than 5 actually up and running, with a few more in the pipeline. So why does that matter? Who cares whether it is small-scale, local co-operative ventures delivering the Megawatts, or vast great, overhead-heavy multi-nationals? In truth, I will settle for more and more MW of wind wherever it comes from, but I have to say that I would much rather that many more on-shore projects came from Westmill look-alikes, leaving the off-shore mega-projects to the big guys – even if Shell does seem to have lost its bottle. And I can’t help but think that this would make a bigger difference in terms of overcoming the often utterly spurious objections of planning committees than any amount of wordy advisory notes from government. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/london_array_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/london_array_1.html Energy Tue, 13 May 2008 11:34:30 +0000 Forum for the Future is running an event for some of our partners in the built environment almost exactly one year on from this time last year. I’ve just reviewed the stuff we shoved at them a year ago – on climate change, energy security, peak oil, spatial planning, inequality, prospects for economic growth, and so on – and it’s quite mind-boggling to see how much the world has changed in the last year! And because the focus is on the built environment, I didn’t even mention things like food security which has “suddenly” soared up the global agenda. I put ‘suddenly’ in those ironic speech marks simply because one of the most shocking things to have emerged in all the panic calls uttered recently by the UN and others is the degree to which this current crisis has been predicted by experts time after time – as politicians disregarded global food agendas, and research budgets were cut and cut again in the times of plenty. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has now summoned world leaders to an emergency summit in June, and set up a new Taskforce to put forward ways of dealing with the crisis. The World Food Programme has said it needs to find an additional $750 million to cope with the combination of growing numbers of people in need and rapidly rising food prices. So, food security is back on the political agenda. Climate change is omni-present. Peak Oil is rising. The credit crunch is the new player on the block. Resource wars are looming. Rainforest destruction just won’t go away. Species loss is as bad as ever, but no one cares – for now. Water shortages are chronic. But much, much more worrying are the linkages between all these notionally “separate” phenomena. The synergies, feedback loops, interdependencies. At long last, people are starting to make the connections – and are even beginning to link all those separate symptoms back to their root cause: today’s literally insane notion of getting richer by trashing the planet and screwing the poor. Don’t hold your breath, but pretty soon you might even hear one or two of them start talking about population. And then you’ll know revolution is on the way. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/food_security_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/food_security_1.html Sustainable Food Thu, 08 May 2008 11:15:50 +0000 palm oil production. I have to declare an interest here as an adviser to Unilever (on palm oil, amongst other things!) So I’m biased, by definition. But I must say that Unilever is an odd company for Greenpeace to be picking on. It is, of course, a major user of palm oil. But it was instrumental in setting up the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (the principal international body trying to do something about this critical issue), and currently chairs it. It is working closely with NGOs like WWF and independent academics to make faster progress where possible. And most importantly of all, it has been spearheading corporate efforts to alert policy-makers to the insanity of mandating and then subsidising new schemes to increase the production of first generation biofuels. Including biofuels from palm oil. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Unilever didn’t get on top of this particular biofuels challenge before Greenpeace. It wasn’t so long ago that Greenpeace was out there very actively campaigning for the wholesale substitution of biofuels for hydrocarbon fuels, in order to help reduce emissions of C02. It’s gung-ho enthusiasm in those days was entirely unscientific (as in Greenpeace had done no proper life-cycle analysis, and entailed Greenpeace chumming up with some strange players – including Bob Shapiro of Monsanto who once fronted the bill at a Greenpeace Business Conference in 1999 to talk about the benefits of biotechnology. So if you put together an historical ‘public policy balance sheet’ on biofuels, over the last decade or so, it could even turn out to be the case that Greenpeace was indirectly responsible for the deaths of more orang-utans in the Indonesian rainforest than Unilever. Given that public policy tends to be influenced more by Greenpeace than by big companies. That may of course be a little unfair. But if Greenpeace is out there today claiming credit for Unilever’s new commitments on palm oil (announced today, but which have been under consideration for months inside the company and under discussion with its external advisers), then I just have to point out that they deserve no such credit on this particular occasion.]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/greenpeace.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2008/05/greenpeace.html News biofuel greenpeace palm oil unilever Thu, 01 May 2008 16:59:38 +0000