This is brilliant (the video, not the nasty GM gloop):
Please consider signing the Greenpeace petition, before this crap ends up in the Minister’s rice pudding.
Environment
Everything Is Average Nowadays
Another Euro elections leaflet through the letterbox.
We won’t waste money on ID cards, privatisation schemes, new airports, bankers’ bonuses and nuclear bombs. The Green Party wants to create and preserve local jobs now, by securing a ‘Green New Deal’ that will:
- invest in a massive home insulation programme
- invest in renewable energy technologies
- protect your savings and our public services, hospitals and the Post Office
- run public transport as a public service, not a cash cow
Fuck me, it’s almost like social democracy.
I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself
OK, now I’m confused:
Antarctic ice cover ‘increasing due to hole in ozone layer’
Antarctic sea ice is growing rather than shrinking as a result of the hole in the ozone layer, scientists have said.
Aliens exist and UFOs are covered-up by US government, says ex-astronaut
Alien life does exist but the truth is being covered up by the United States government, former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed.
Things The Minister Learnt On His Holiday
1. Paul Heiney (and, by logical deduction, the lovely Libby Purves) takes The Times on a Saturday and returns to the newsagent’s until he finds a copy complete with all the magazines and supplements.
2. The application of custard (green or otherwise) to the right set of chops NEVER gets old or loses its capacity to amuse.
Guacamole, anyone?
3. The BBC still can’t report on the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 with anything like accuracy, impartiality or credibility. (And today’s Guardian editorial is little better. No, I won’t link to it.)
4. Four-day migraines really fuck up 6½ day holidays.
5. The last remaining GP in the Minister’s surgery thinks ACE Inhibitors may help stop the Minister from getting further four-day migraines. But they may also make him faint randomly a few times in the coming days. The hilarity never ends.
Evolution did not end with us growing thumbs – you do know that, right?
How pathetic is this?
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week’s Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”
Almost 15 long years on from the man’s death, it reminds me of something…
Are you still there, Tree People?
There is something terribly endearing about the nature of this protest.
Land earmarked by Heathrow owner BAA to build a third runway has been bought by a group of celebrities, scientists, politicians and green campaigners in an attempt to severely delay the development. The new runway would make Heathrow Britain’s biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Oscar-winning actor Emma Thompson and comedian Alastair McGowan, along with Conservative party green adviser Zac Goldsmith, Greenpeace director John Sauven and others, have signed the deeds for a one acre field on the edge of the village of Sipson, which will have to be demolished to make way for the runway. The plot lies right at the heart of the proposed runway development.
The new owners said that they intended to divide up the acre plot into small parcels and then sell them, without making a profit, to people concerned about climate change all around the world. As many as 4,000 people could end up owning the scrubland, which lies behind the car park of the William IV pub and next to an old gravel quarry.
The government would use its powers to issue compulsory purchase orders for the plots but lawyers said yesterday that the existence of thousands of owners would make this process time-consuming and expensive. Similar tactics have been used successfully to protect tropical forests…
Emma Thompson said: “I don’t understand how any government remotely serious about committing to reversing climate change can even consider these ridiculous plans. It’s laughably hypocritical. That’s why we’ve bought a plot on the runway. We’ll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables.”
Others sharing the ownership of the plot were named yesterday as Labour MP John McDonnell, Conservative front bench transport spokeswoman Justine Greening, Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer and climate scientist Dr Simon Lewis.
“It’s a very good time to enter the property market. If BAA want my patch they will have to negotiate with me – and why would I want to sell it to them?” said Kramer.
McGowan said: “The government is sticking two fingers up to the environment and the people of this world. By giving this runway the go-ahead Gordon Brown is effectively holding a giant blow torch to the polar ice-caps and saying ‘Melt, Melt!’”
At full capacity, an expanded Heathrow would become the biggest single source of C02 emissions in the country. It would emit nearly 27m tonnes of CO2 every year – equivalent to the emissions of 57 of the least polluting countries in the world combined.
Read that last paragraph again.
Sleep well tonight, will you, Mr. Hoon?
The Minister is proud to support the campaign and has put his name down to become one of the beneficial owners of the land in question. He would encourage all right-minded individuals to do the same. They can do that by clicking here.
(And yes, the country is wading knee-deep in a whole big stinking heap of shit when Alastair McGowan becomes the voice of reason.)
De-Press To Play
Two search requests on the internet website Google produce as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle, according to a Harvard University academic.
US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross has conducted research into the environmental impact of “googling”.
Environmental physicists are worried about the environmental impact of information technology.
A recent study estimated the global IT sector generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines put together.
Mr Wissner-Gross’s study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.
If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount, which is the roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle for a cup of tea.
The Harvard academic argues that these carbon emissions stem from the electricity used by the computer terminal and by the power consumed by the large data centres operated by Google around the world.
Although the American search engine is renowned for returning fast results, Mr Wissner-Gross says it can only do so because it uses several data banks at the same time, producing more carbon dioxide than some of its competitors on the net.
Mr Wissner-Gross says for every second we stay connected to the internet, we produce 0.02g of carbon emissions.
This may not sound like a lot but each day an estimated 200 million internet searches are carried out.
You cheat and you lie – it makes me wanna cry
This is one of the most profoundly depressing political stories I’ve read in a long time.
Not because it’s a bad idea – it’s not; it’s precisely the sort of thing for which the country has been crying out for years – but because Arrivederci Gordon’s useless Labour government is allowing the Tories – THE MOTHERFUCKING TORIES! – to claim the moral high ground on environmentalism and public transport.
These are the same people who spent 18 years running the rail network into the ground by refusing to invest in it, and then flogging it off in a recklessly dangerous manner to chancer-carpetbaggers that somehow means taxpayers now pay more to subsidise the railway network than ever before.
These are the same people who, frankly, my dear, gave so little a damn about the environment that they put Nicholas Ridley in charge of it for three years.
And now here’s Posh Boy Dave and The Eton Rifles saying, “Actually, you know, there might be some votes in this after all. Might make sense to stop people flying 150 miles because the train service is so pisspoor it’s usually quicker and cheaper to do so. Might make sense to upgrade the railways if the oil price is about to shoot off the charts for good. Sod the ideology, feel the election night count.”
And where’s our Transport Secretary? (That’ll be The Rt. Hon. Ruth Kelly, New Labour MP for Opus Dei.) She’s packing her fucking boxes instead of battering down the doors to the Channel 4 News and Newsnight studios to decry the hypocrisy of it all.
The Ad Man is going to win. And it’s time to re-investigate those emigration options.
Weak In The Presence Of Beauty
I had another of my surreal days yesterday. The hour between 2pm and 3pm was particularly strange.
While trying unsuccessfully to hook up his computer to a malfunctioning T-Mobile hotspot I found myself discussing American politics with a 52-year-old Californian corporate attorney who looks like Dubya and rides on private jets but is, mercifully, a registered Democrat who invests in eco-friendly businesses.
In Starbucks.
In the City.
Next to her…
…as he walked by…
“Nikki from Big Brother 7” – as I believe she used to be known – is a testament to the abilities of Photoshop (she has appalling skin), reads Jodi Picoult novels and has a picture of a nice black and white collie as the wallpaper on her Nokia N95.
Yes, it seems she really can read.
After she left, I informed my caffeine-imbibing companion that we had been graced by the presence of Celebrity.
“Who was she?”
“She was a Big Brother contestant a couple of years ago.”
“Ha! I take it she didn’t win, then?”
Touche.
Dexter Fletcher, meanwhile, was wearing a very sharp whistle. He looks old, but then he’s always had a face like one of those dogs with all the creases that look like Steven Gerrard.
All this comes four days after almost knocking over Ronald Pickup at a train station. He’s nearly 80: even I would have felt bad about that.
And so to 48 hours of completion. I suspect I’m going to miss out Thursday and Friday and come up grimacing on Saturday.
The Big E (I Won’t Stop Loving You)
We’ve just had Energy Saving Day.
Backed by environmental organisations like Greenpeace and energy suppliers such as E.On, E-Day was designed to get people to conserve a bit more energy by doing nothing more than switching off at the mains socket unnecessarily connected electronic devices.
The [National] Grid’s final figures showed national electricity consumption for the 24 hours (from 1800 Wednesday to 1800 Thursday) was 0.1% above the “business-as-usual” projection.
Despite being a member of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, I was unaware it was happening. Nobody I know seems to have known it was happening.
Perhaps that’s in part because of the BBC:
The E-Day concept started life as Planet Relief, an awareness-raising BBC TV programme with a significant comedy element. But in September the BBC decided to pull the project, saying viewers preferred factual or documentary programmes about climate change.
The BBC dropped the project because of “poor audiences for Live Earth”, an anodyne and soulless concert at Wembley Stadium last July hoping to emulate Live Aid but instead featuring C-list popsters such as Bloc Party and Paolo Nutini.
So because the BBC failed to “entertain” last summer it decided not to bother to “inform” or “educate” yesterday, despite the current media interest in all matters environmental.
Own goals like this lend validity to the argument against the existence of a licence fee-funded Corporation, particularly when last night’s BBC1 line up included programming as unadventurous as EastEnders and Ashes To Ashes, BBC2 offered only Torchwood and Catherine Tate and BBC3 – daringly forsaking a Two Pints Of Lager repeat – broadcast Freaky Eaters and another helping of EastEnders.
It’s a particularly sorry state of affairs when the Daily Mail, of all publications, has led on the environment for three consecutive days this week, today carries an article on the environment from the Prime Minister and is taking the credit for Marks & Spencer’s decision to charge a token amount for carrier bags in its food outlets.
In the immortal words of The Go-Gos: “Has the whole world lost its head or is it just me?”