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
Back in 2006, Ryan bought a big car. He says it’s a “beautiful but totally excessive Range Rover Sport”. A big part of the motivation then was the huge tax write off for heavy SUVs (in the USA), combined with a short commute and weekly trips to go hiking with friends.
Since he moved back to San Francisco, Ryan doesn’t need a car, so he wants to take this SUV off the road for good. More
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
Electric vehicles conjure up different emotions for people - some see them as having no place on the road (people like Jeremy Clarkson, although I think there is no place on the road for Jeremy Clarkson!), others see them as salvation to our modern congested cities.
Video from Danny’s Contentment (link at bottom of post)
They certainly work well in cities where their small size, zero-emissions, and in London, preferential treatment within the congestion charging zone all go in their favour. The most popular vehicle is G-Wiz, sold by GoinGreen and made in India by Reva. Although there has been a couple of recent upgrades (AC-Drive and different battery technology, improved brakes & safety etc) which have improved both the range and performance, in my own opinion, they do look rather quirkly - not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but they invoke memories of those little blue invalid carriages that were around in the 70’s.
One car that didn’t look so bad was the Norwegian developed Think City. Originally the company that developed it was bought by Ford, but shortly before the final development of the ‘Mark II’ version, Ford pulled the plug on the company - see earlier post for more. However, new investors were found and the Think City 2 is now in production.
Looking more like a ‘proper’ car (which helps it gain acceptance amongst the population at large), it has some innovative features.
Built-in Telemetrics - you can text/sms your car to check battery status, pre-heat the interior and pre-start the engine
Lithium Polymer batteries give 120 mile range and 50 mph top speed. The batteries will be permanently leased from the supplier which means they will be automatically changed when performance drops below a certain point.
Fully homogenised - essentially means that it is classed as a proper car rather than a ‘quadracycle’. As such it has undergone crash testing etc like regular mainstream cars
High quality production - it ‘feels’ like a mainstream car rather than a kit car
The new Think City is due in UK in RHD (right-hand drive) towards end of 2008
Danny’s Contentment has some video footage of driving the Think City (plus lots of other great stuff on the life and times of an Electric Vehicle owner in London)
I’m a fan of the video’s produced by PeakMoment on YouTube. They have interviewed loads of interesting people and projects, but the latest one really hit home about the philosophy of extending the environmental and sustainability movement to a broader audience.
They interviewed Alan Seid of Bellingham Co-housing Community (in the USA). You can watch the YouTube video below, under which are some of my highlights.
Alan suggested that the word ’sustainable’ has different meaning to different people. His view is that sustainability is something that would enable man to survive indefinitely, and as such involves looking at the whole environment, but also looking within people and understanding where people are ‘at’.
In order to reach the goal of sustainability, we have to work collectively - creating mutual understanding without coercing people. Human consciousness grows from Ego-Centric to Ethno-Centric to World-Centric (where Ego-Centric is all about ‘me’, Ethno-Centric is about people ‘like me’ and World-Centric is a holistic view of all things and people).
Alan identifies that one of the problems in getting the average person to be aware of sustainability is a psychological one; for example, recycling helps with a small (5-10%) amount of solid waste flow, but helps with 75% of people’s guilt. In other words people feel they have done alot when they haven’t, but telling them this is not easy!
It is therefore important to reach people at the right level to match their own world view. The ‘message’ needs to be framed correctly to match the audience, and in some cases, this means re-framing the same message to target different audiences who are motivated by different factors.
Environmentalists also need to remember that they are not perfect. Everyone needs to be open minded and to learn and progress themselves - it is easy to the ego to take over!
Finally, Alan talks about the importance of information sharing and communication with all interested parties (stakeholders) regarding whatever issue is being discussed.
At a time when the broadcast and print media are full of bad news, especially on the environmental front, it’s really great to hear some good, positive news for a change.
The YouTube video below shows how a project took on 10 acres of flat, hyper-arid desert on the border of Jordan and Israel. The area was 400m below sea level (one of the lowest points on earth), 2km from the Dead Sea and completely salted. With very low rainfall and August temperatures over 50 degrees, the mainstream thought was that the only way to farm was under plastic and with loads of inorganic fertiliser.
They started the project by digging swales that followed the contours of the landscape and enabled water capture over winter, and built up organic debris (mulch) on the banks of the swales. Certain trees were grown on the upper side of the swales that fixed nitrogen, and provided shade from the sun and the wind. The results were amazing and dumbfounded the experts because in the end, they grew things that simply shouldn’t have survived or occured there and managed to reduce the salt levels.
I’ve copied this post from another blog that I was writing for, because what’s mentioned below is still going on and is a crime against the planet. Originally posted on 17th January 2007.
Reading George Monbiot’s latest book, ‘Heat’, he talk about energy options. When referring to coal and nuclear, he says that given the choice between the ‘mountain top removal’ that’s taking place in the Appalachian’s for coal and nuclear, I’d go nuclear. This is not what I thought he’d say, so I looked into what’s happening in the Appalachian mountains in a little more detail.
So far, over 450 mountains have been removed. Yes, REMOVED. They blow them up bit by bit and dump all the debris into the valleys where the coal is extracted from the rock. The toxic slurry left behind causes massive environmental problems in itself, whilst the rock debris causes river flows to change.
This is shocking environmental rape on a scale I have never seen before. Take a few minutes to watch the video for more details.
An inspiring video produced by Kitchen Gardeners International which illustrates the choices in food that we don’t have in the ’supermarkets’ and the global village, but shows the choices we could have…
Thanks to YouTube, you can now see and hear all about the various parts of my Solar PV Experiment. If you have any questions, please use the comment box for this post.
