Life’s twists and turns

A couple of days ago, my mum-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. She’d had breast cancer 4.5 years ago and had been fine since then, but a persistent pain in her back gave her doctor cause for concern and she had a blood test and eventually a scan. She has some breast cancer cells in her bones.

Naturally, we are devastated with this news and are keen to hear of the treatment regime the hospital will put in place for her.

Although nothing is certain, we (and the doctors) are fairly sure they knew what caused the original cancer (all to do with an HRT treatment given in the 1970’s, but that’s another story). More

Vegans, Iraq & Human Sheilds

Way back in February 2007, I attended a meeting of Birmingham Vegetarians and Vegans. The guest speaker was a lady called Helen Asea, who, in 2004 had travelled to Iraq to become a ‘human shield’. 

Thinking that this could be an interesting talk, I recorded it on my second-hand (ebay bargain) minidisc recorder and have finally got round to editing it and uploading it for everyone to enjoy as a PodCast!

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Where does the wood for wood burning stoves come from?

There is something very special about wood-burning stoves – mention them in conversation and people tend to ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ as they dream up romantic images of cuddling up by their warmth and glow on a cold, dark wintery night.

I know someone who distributes wood-burning stoves here in the UK. Over the past six months, they have had a surge of interest and sales due in the main part to the rising price of gas, and partly because burning wood in a proper wood-burning stove is seen as environmentally ‘right on’.

Orion Stove from ACR Heat Products

Rethinking Economics

Most adults in the UK, and I guess the ‘developed’ world are aware of the economic recession that is in progress, along with some of the unprecedented actions that governments are taking to ease us out of this situation (but hopefully not back into the one that created the problem in the first place).

David Korten

David Korten, a psychologist, presents a different view on economics, specifically in relation to ‘Peak Oil’ (ie the fact that oil production has or is about to peak, and from this point onwards oil will become increasingly more expensive). More

Climate Camp 2008

Sunday August 3rd is the official start of Climate Camp 2008 at Kingsnorth in Kent. I wish I was able to go but work and other commitments means I can’t, which is a shame ;-(

On Wednesday afternoon, a hundred climate campers secretly converged and occupied the site for this year’s Camp for Climate Action, a kilometer away Kingnorth power station.

Dozens of marquees were slowly put up, neighbourhoods arrived from all over the country, solar panels popped up, a central kitchen dished out three delicious meals a day and compost toilets were being built. A vision of a sustainable self- managed world is being put together piece by piece in a field in Kent, less than 45 minutes from London. All are welcome to come down as soon as they can to join in with the creation of Climate Camp 2008, in preparation for the opening on Sunday, 3rd August, when hundreds more will come and begin the week of workshops and action preparations. More

Show the forests some love

Greenpeace has made a wonderfully suggestive video and asked everyone to show forests some love! Those who are rather prudish should realise that everything is ’suggested’ and if you are offended it’s because you have joined the dots – they have not been joined for you! More

Food miles, and miles, and miles

The New York Times reported on some startling examples of silly food miles. All made possible because of (relatively) cheap oil/transportations costs and lower wages in some parts of the world. Unfortunately whilst this may keep some people in work in china or wherever, it does mean that the local people who used to do the job are out of work, and all in the name of cheap food…

Here are some of the silly examples:

• Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale
• Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground
• Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya
• Britain imports -and exports- 15,000 tons of waffles every yea

Fuel used for international transport is tax-free, thanks to a treaty signed in 1944 to help the airline industry – so who is paying for the pollution and carbon dumped into the atmosphere? It’s about time that the governments of the world got together and put forward a unified ‘polluter pays’ policy that would help see an end to this ridiculous practice.

Hat tip to TreeHugger for reporting on the above article.

Food miles don’t feed climate change – meat does

That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer’s carbon footprint.

Visit the NewScientist website for the full article.

Modbury – the first plastic bag free town in the UK

Modbury is a small market town in Devon, UK. Although there is seasonal (holiday) trade, many of the local shops serve and rely on the local community. In May 2007, Modbury became the first town in the UK to stop issuing plastic bags when goods are purchased.

Every single trader in Modbury has signed up for it (which is pretty amazing in itself) and they encourage their customers to use their own shopping bags, or where this is not possible, the shops offer reusable and environmentally friendly carrier bags.

Some plastic bag facts:

• A person uses a plastic carrier bag on average for only 12 minutes
• A plastic bag can take between 500 to 1000 years to break down in the environment.
• In the UK at least 200 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks ever year.
• When a plastic bag enters the ocean it becomes a harmful piece of litter. Many marine animals mistake plastic bags for food and swallow them, with painful and often fatal consequences.

One of the many interesting aspects to the campaign within Modbury has been the spin-off benefits and the depth and breadth at which people have looked into. Rather than just replacing the plastic carrier bags with a bio-degradable bag, or a paper bag, they asked the question “what is the cost (to the earth) of producing that paper bag in the first place” in other words, they looked in detail at the current alternatives to plastic to see whether they were in fact better or worse. They also looked at where and how the alternatives where made ie where jute bags made in sweatshops, was the glue used environmentally benign and so on.

A year on, Modbury has thrived on being plastic bag free and the whole experience has made people take a wider look at their impact on the environment, both locally and farther afield.

The Modbury Plastic Bag Free website is packed with great information on the reasons why, their community, the transition, facts on bags, the alternatives, suppliers and so on. Well worth a visit.

Modbury Plastic Bag Free website

EPA – turning the other cheek on farm pollution

In the USA, the organisation responsible for implementing and checking on pollution etc is the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). The following report on TreeHugger throws things in a different light:

EPA Doesn’t Want To Know About Factory Farm Pollution

Some people think that EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency; for the Bush Administration, it might be Evidence of Pollution is Annoying. Right now a factory farm has to report to federal, state and local officials when ammonia emissions exceed a hundred pounds per day, which in 2004 the EPA said could irritate the respiratory tract, eyes and mucus membranes for a few days. Hydrogen sulfide at that level could have the same but longer-lasting effects accompanied by memory problems, headaches and dizziness, and have to be reported as well.

But there are no limits or rules on this, so the EPA says that the reports create an unnecessary burden on the giant factory farms like the one in Oregon that puts out 15,500 pounds per day. Said a spokesman: “It is…consistent with the agency’s goal to reduce reporting burden where there would likely be no federal, state or local emergency response to such release reports” Because we know the EPA is there to save paper and energy, don’t we.

According to Erica Werner in the Associated Press:

There are no federal laws or regulations capping release of these substances from animal waste so EPA critics argue that the reporting requirements are the only way for communities to know what they’re being exposed to.

“If the public doesn’t know that the emissions in their area are hazardous to their health how are they going to find out unless the sources are required to report?” asked Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Becker said the reports are used by some states to respond to local concerns about farm pollution.

Of course the cattle people disagree. “In the end what we’re talking about here is not a hazardous substance,” said spokeswoman Karen Batra. “It’s not toxic sludge or a chemical spill. It’s cow manure.”