Monday 28 May 2012

True fossils!

A dinosaur feeding dinosaurs!!!
Short termism at its very best, max the return before we all fry, how clever!
RBS is state owned, since it last proved it was truly a dinosaur by trying to become extinct.
It is now kept in stasis by our taxes and mediocre management, surely we cannot support continued lending, just maintain business as usual (especially when that model will ensure the current breed goes extinct)!
As tax payers we should demand a better portfolio and some more enlightened management.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/28/rbs-loans-40bn-fossil-fuel-companies?intcmp=122

Saturday 26 May 2012

A trillion tonnes to destiny.

Scientists generally agree about the fact that man made climate change is taking place, but they they don't always agree over their models on how much and how quickly, or which is the best way to limit both the risk and potential impacts.

My gut feeling is that the models are generally behind the actual, or real time rate because of the nature of data collection and processing. The political perception lags behind that and always represented as a moderated scenario, so as to gain the widest possible acceptance. If this is the case, then we should expect to see acceleration in the drivers for climate change as we release more of these cumulative gases into the atmosphere (biosphere).

We should be really concerned about this, because waiting around for political solutions or market solutions will most likely take too long to stave off the worst effects by keeping the change to below 2 degrees.

Some scientists are saying that we can keep on using carbon so long as we sequester an appropriate amount to offset the difference between where we are now and two degrees. Not impossible by all accounts, it would though, require a different approach; including global regulation of energy and fuel producers. We wouldn't actually notice that much difference, because taxation regimes could also be changed to reflect the costs of sequestering carbon as opposed to just raising revenue.

The weird thing about this is that all the angst over personal footprints and carbon budgets is really supporting the business as usual mode, which wont produce the required level of change and may see us all in for some serious climate change. Check the figures at this site to see the scale of what we need to do.
http://trillionthtonne.org/

Personally I still think we need to feel good about doing something to reduce our impacts and being energy efficient is probably the best way. In fact reducing overall consumption may buy us valuable time, but you still can't get away from the fact that we need to move a lot of carbon from the atmosphere to back in the ground with possibly the worst economic and political model with which to do it!

Thursday 24 May 2012

Federal rule?

Whilst voters around Europe agonise over tighter fiscal controls and closer unity, global corporations and the banking system already operate a federal system, shunting jobs, investments and money around, with barely a flicker of the needle in the democratic oversight box!

Maybe we are all better off biting the bullet and going federal, in order to benefit from equal protections and to be able to exercise democratic rights (people power) at the same level of scale as the giant corporations and financial institutions.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Alternative revenue.

Many think tanks have come to similar conclusions about taxation in recent years, however the mainstream of thought within governments does not seem to have been sufficiently influenced.

This might have much to do with the fact that fossil fuel companies are very close to all of the major administrations, through well funded lobby groups, donations and powerful political allies.

The G8 are meeting next week and this presents an opportunity for the leaders to honour promises to reduce tax payers subsidy to big coal and oil. In fact, if they can make this step, it is not a giant leap further to change the taxation system as well.

There are numerous benefits to taxing energy as opposed to labour, not least it raises money without as much drag on the economy and would make renewable energy more competitive, see the linked report:

As global citizens, we can influence the G8 leaders and ask them to drop subsidies to fossil fuel producers, I chose Avaaz as a means to voice me feelings on this and other issues of sustainability and social justice, check them out:

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Climate unwrapped.

Hey, call me lazy, but as a lot of research has already been done and someone has bothered to write it up, I'm just going to give you a link.

Before that though, I think it is worth saying that these climate fact sheets, produced by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) are easy to dip in and out of and well written. They are all also fully referenced, which makes the information credible.

I hope you find these informative.
http://pirc.info/Climate_Factsheets_PIRC.pdf

Monday 14 May 2012

Hello, good evening and welcome!

Hello World and welcome to my blog.I hope this will get better as I go along.
I guess I will get on here and either rant at  something that has set me going in the news or, I will be trying to get over my own views on managing our waste and resource issues.