EcoWarriorMe

I took my 6 year old daughter Christmas shopping the other week. We went to Lush , the hand made cosmetics company, looking for a gift for her mother. She was in heaven: the bright colours, the smells, the glitter and the pretty shapes of the soaps and bath bombs. There was no difficulty in choosing a gift for mother (especially one she might share), the only problem was deciding to stop!

A message from Tiger Time: Dear TigerTime Supporter Thanks to you, our petition calling on China to ban the tiger trade has rocketed past 26,000 signatures in just a few days – and it’s still climbing!  So often this year we’ve seen ‘people power’ achieving real change in so many walks of life.  We are absolutely committed to ending the tiger trade and to saving the tiger in the wild.  It’s your support that will make this possible and we greatly appreciate it. Today in a leading British Newspaper (The Daily Express) this article (pictured) about Tiger Farms was published.  To read it in more detail  click here . Our message is spreading and thanks to you we are making inroads. Thanks so much for your support – it means the world to us.   A lot of people have asked what more they can do to help in this vital battle.

Are wind farms a blot on the landscape? What are those white things over there? Oh, they're sheep.

Earlier this week EdF Energy announced the preferred bidder for the £100 million contract for site preparation works at one of the first sites for a new nuclear power station: Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The work is subject to satisfying planning conditions but includes site preparation, excavation and installation of construction site infrastructure to allow main construction to begin. They also announced an agreement with AREVA in relation to the early design work for the main reactor systems, which will allow AREVA to begin the work in January. The following day they welcomed decisions by the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to issue an Interim Design Acceptance Confirmation, and the Environment Agency to issue an Interim Statement of Design Acceptability, for the EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. This is the same basic reactor design that has proven problematic at Flamanville in France.The new reactor at Flamanville is estimated to be about 4 years late and almost double the o...

I had a discussion on rising sea levels this afternoon and I was given a link to a article by an accredited scientist based on actual observations ( http://tinyurl.com/yztgfap ).  This sounds promising I thought, he appears well placed to comment on this topic, lots of experience and involvement with the sea level commision of an international resaerch union, the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. But all is not as it seems.  Despite the INQUA credentials quoted, INQUA do not agree with Mörner's findings, in fact they tend to agree that sea levels are rising, from their web pa...

At seven o'clock this morning around 100 tonnes of debris fell on to the A83 near the Rest and be Thankful in Argyll.  The alternative route is between 30 and 50 miles longer depending on how much you need to double back at either end.  Similar landslips have happened on the A83 before but only recently, in 2007 , 2009 and now in 2011 , all preceded by periods of prolonged heavy rain.

Chinese Tiger Farm China is allowing people to ‘farm’ tigers in ‘battery hen’ like conditions and to trade their skins and body parts. I find this totally unacceptable and have signed the petition at www.bantigertrade.com which is part of the TigerTime campaign. www.tigertime.info .

Over the past month I've tweeted frequently and blogged on water and sanitation , conservation of rhinoceros and tigers and solar electricity feed-in-tariffs , all of which are important issues in themselves but perhaps more important are the links between them. China is now the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels as a direct result of our drive to reduce carbon emissions, for example by using subsidies such as the UK's feed-in-tariff system. This is part of the exponential growth in manufacturing in China and south east Asia to satisfy our demand for cheaply  manufactured products with off-shore carbon footprints. This growth has created many wealthy individuals, some of whom are using their newly found disposable income for the purchase of  traditional   medicines  such as rhino horn and tiger parts . Of course such remedies do not work, but that knowledge hasn't stemmed demand. Crossing the Indian Ocean to Africa and we find many people trapped...

I’ve just spent a few seconds signing up to a vital petition that will help save the last 3,200 wild tigers on earth. Will you help the cause by doing the same? When I first heard that there are only 3,200 wild tigers left, I was totally shocked. To put it in perspective, it means that all the wild tigers left on earth could all fit on just one soccer pitch. Added to this, we are losing them to poachers at a rate that means they will become extinct within a very few years. The TigerTime campaign team need your help to save them. The Chinese trade in tiger parts is one of the most serious threats to the wild tiger. The Chinese government says that it is committed to saving the wild tiger. However, it is continuing to allow the trade in tiger parts and skins from tigers bred in so called ‘tiger farms’. We think that the practice of ‘farming tigers’ is barbaric and should be stopped. Additionally, this trade is the perfect smokescreen for the continued poac...

WaterAid charity says global efforts to increase access to clean water ignore those most in need Sanitation leads to cleaner, healthier water, leads to less disease and pollution, leads to less medical aid and vibrant self-sustaining communities, leads to better quality of life and a more just society. We can't be having that can we? No. We need to give the aid to countries that can afford to improve their own sewerage systems. That way they can use their money to buy goods and services supplied by more developed countries such as those in Europe and the US, to help stimulate the economy. We will probably ask them to use the aid money to buy design and construction services from the donor country. And let's face it: we don't want to be sending our people into countries that don't even have running water, do we?

"@EcoWarriorMe Is it time to give up on tigers and pandas? http://t.co/QgrWaAx0 > I hope not." According to an article in this morning's Independent, " A majority of professional conservationists believe it is time to consider shifting efforts away from some of the world's most famous species, such as the panda, to concentrate on others which have a greater chance of success. "  Should we be more selective in our efforts? What animals should we choose? By what measure will we evaluate which lives and which dies out?

"Homeowners will have to spend more to qualify - http://t.co/VMFcsHrc - but we do need to prioritise." @EcoWarriorMe The recent announcement by the government to cut feed-in tariffs for solar electricity generated by householders has quite rightly faced heavy criticism. Installation of solar panels under the scheme has led to significant growth in the sector, creating employment as well as green electricity. Changing the goal posts at short notice jeopardises this genuinely sustainable economic growth but it also undermines confidence in any future initiatives. Another part of the changes to the feed-in tariff is to restrict the scheme to homes that are already energy efficient but this is not necessarily a bad thing. "Some 86% of the UK’s homes do not meet the ‘C’ energy rating standard that properties will need to qualify for the feed- in tariff"  The Guardian In homes with a poor energy rating, it is cheaper to implement energy saving measures than to overa...

There has been a lot of discussion recently about rising domestic energy prices and competition failures in the market, most recently the figures published by Ofgem on the profit made per customer by the big six energy suppliers. While these snapshot figures may not be particularly helpful in telling the whole story, they certainly reveal enough to raise the issue to the top of the agenda. The market is poorly functioning and there is too much complexity, lengthy tie-ins on the best deals and better deals for new customers.  This is an inevitable consequence of different suppliers selling essentially an identical product, with price being the only comparison.  The lights aren't brighter with electricity from one supplier compared with another, only cheaper or dearer.

It is that time of year where spiders start migrating indoors, getting themselves stuck in the bath, climbing the wall or running across the bedroom ceiling. Do they creep you out or do you like them? They are one of nature's helpers fulfilling a valuable role in managing the population of common pests in the garden during the summer so lets not be too hard on them when the seek sanctuary. Legend has it that a spider was the unlikely inspiration for Robert the Bruce seven centuries ago while hiding in a cave in exile.

Coal plan legal challenge fails A legal challenge to plans for a new coal fired power station in the Ayrshire coast has been rejected. The challenge regarded the national planning framework that defined a need for a power station, which effectively means that planning permission can not be rejected by the local planning department. In reality, all that the local planners can do is attach conditions to that permission. There are other, better ways of reducing our emissions such that we wouldn't need this power station but it is hard to make profit from them and our politicians don't want to be on duty when the lights go out. The proposal does talk of carbon capture and storage as part of the scheme but, unfortunately, it is surrounded by weasel words - "if that technology can be proven". Given the burden of proof for climate change and the fact that CCS has not been attempted at full scale, and recent developments at Longannet cast doubt on whether it can be prov...

The following has been taken in its entirety from the government e-petition site: Banish the Plastic Bags Responsible department: Department for  Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 17 billion plastic bags a year are given to British consumers. The average Briton accepts 5 times a weeks. 200 million tonnes of plastic is produced worldwide and 10 % ends up in the ocean. When plastic bags get into the ocean they can entangle, suffocate and even kill marine animals. Plastic doesn't biodegrade, it just breaks up into smaller pieces . The number of plastic bags issued by UK supermarkets in the past year has risen by 333 million. Plastic bags are becoming a big problem and there are better solutions! Instead we should have reusable cotton bags/ recyclable paper bags/biodegradable starch based bags. Banish the bags and go with reusable/ biodegradable ones instead! If we want to cut the amount of waste sent to landfill this is the big step forward.. . If you are a UK cit...

Despite the austerity measures we currently face, the government has miraculously found £250 million to encourage local authorities to reinstate weekly refuse collections in England. There is, apparently, a huge public outcry about the change to fortnightly collections. Certain parts of the press have been stirring up scare stories about rubbish piling up on our streets for weeks, giving off bad smells and attracting vermin. Not only is a concern, it is also an election issue according to the Daily Mail. Many years ago, our council changed from twice weekly collections to weekly collections and similar stories were spun but were never realised. At that time the bins were changed from small metal bins that the bin men carried to the truck and emptied to larger bins with single use removable liners, starting a trend of producing plastic bags with a single use-putting it in the bin. I don't know the details of individual fortnightly bin collections around England, but the new f...

Over the past couple of I weeks I've been asking new followers what they perceive as the biggest challenges we face. There has been a spread of topics reflecting the diverse range of interests in the environment including: Human stupidity/politics/corruption Pollution Water shortages Food shortages Floods & unpredictable weather Global Warming Population Methane Poor urban environments Thanks to all of you who contributed, posts are below in acknowledgement.  If you would like to add your thoughts on the biggest challenges faced by humanity and planet earth, the please either tweet me @EcoWarriorMe or comment below. In my opinion, there have been a couple of omissions so far: energy and poverty.  Are they too obvious, or not really that important? T rinityTrove_HR Global warming, landfill toxins, water shortages, and Congress. designal exable The biggest challenge is human stupidity. Man regularly makes horrible mistakes, from ...

Why is it so hard to get people motivated on climate change? When it came to the hole in the ozone layer, people stopped buying deodorant with CFCs, manufacturers changed to less harmful propellants, international agreements were signed and now the chemicals most detrimental to atmospheric ozone have been effectively consigned to the history books.  By stopping CFCs entering the atmosphere, further increases in the size of the ozone hole are prevented, the atmospheric CFCs are relatively short lived and the results can be measured. When out became apparent that the trade in ivory posed a very real threat to the survival of elephants and rhinoceros, campaigns to end the trade led to formation of CITES and a significant international effort to prevent poaching. It is still not a perfect system but out has made a significant difference and there is a much greater awareness of the consequence of buying produce derived from endangered species. By reducing demand through education a...

Further to  EcoWarriorMe: Why can't we recycle more? :   Recycle for Glasgow - YouTube :   Also in the Evening Times:  All change on bins as city aims to boost recycling - Evening Times | News | Editor's Picks : Spot the cynical comment at the bottom...

Do you take milk? We do. And we recently came across a new way to buy it and to save the environment. No more plastic bottles or Tetra-Paks...

This is why we need to reduce the amount of plastic we use and then to recycle ALL our waste plastic, not just the limited few .

I began writing this a couple of weeks ago, about Glasgow City Council's inability to implement a half decent recycling scheme but didn't quite get around to finishing and posting it.  Since then, there have been signs of improvement, which I'll come on to after outlining the situation in the recent past. HISTORICAL SITUATION Glasgow likes to think of itself as the ‘Dear Green Place’ but it is unfortunately far from Green. Although the city is being promoted as a hub for renewable energy with both Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy locating their renewable energy divisions in the city, the city recycles less than 16% of domestic waste. An assessment of the UKs twenty largest cities,shown below, ranked Glasgow as the 19th most sustainable city overall and 20th in terms of recycling, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that is last place.  With the UK being one of the poorest nations in Europe at recycling, the comparison is grim.

In a recent post to the renewable-energy Yahoo group, a post compared the production of aircraft during World War II with the manufacture of wind turbines in order to achieve 100% renewable energy in the US.  It is a fitting comparison since the threat from global warming is every bit as serious a threat to our way of life as Hitler was.  If only it was as visible as a line of tanks crushing everything before them as they trundled through Europe then the powers that be would be motivated to take action rather than talk around the issue.  The same media that denies global warming would support measures to tackle it for fear of being unpatriotic and thus motivate mass participation in carbon reduction programmes. Back to the original quote:

It is so obvious nobody will talk seriously about it.  If the global population continues to grow at current rates, food shortages will be more common , food prices will rise steeply and there will be greater pressure on the few remaining wildernesses to be cleared for agricultural use.  The United Nations have raised their concerns with current fertility rates, indicating that fertility rates need to drop below replacement levels. In the UK, the population is growing at its fastest rate since the post war baby boom. In recent years there have been recommendations by organisations such as the General Registrars Office in Scotland for pronatalist policies to increase fertility in order alleviate future problems of an aging population.  If developed nations, which already consume much more than their fare share of global resources can't slow down, what hope is there elsewhere?

The West of Scotland has seen one of the wettest Mays on record, with over double the average rainfall , and June looks to be heading the same way. Not a good omen for hiking and camping in Argyll with children but we persevered. To a point. Our first ambition was to climb the second lowest Munros, Ben Vane, which at 915m just makes it onto the list of Scotland's 3000 ft mountains.  We started out from the National Park's Visitor Centre at Inveruglas and hiked up access track leading to the hydro electric dam at Loch Sloy before starting up the mountain itself.  After a total of two hours walking in persistently heavy rain, with little prospect of improvement or of a view at the top we had enough of nature and turned back. While the outcome for the day was disappointing, it did show why this is such a good place for a hydro-electric scheme.  It is no surprise that over a third of Scotland's renewable electricity comes from hydro schemes, some dating bac...

Once the 4th largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea has reduced to only 10% of its original size in under 50 years due to over abstraction of water in the rivers which feed the sea.  The world's newest desert, the Aralkum, has formed as a consequence, leaving fishing villages many miles from the coast and fishing boats stranded in the desert.  The once thriving fishing industry is gone, along with twenty out of twenty four indigenous species. Dust, sand and salt from the now exposed sea bed are stirred up by the wind, causing high levels of respiratory illness. The images paint a very powerful picture of the impact that we can have on nature. ARAL SEA from Romain A on Vimeo . The decision to abstract water for irrigation from the two principle rivers which feed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, was well intentioned - part of the Soviet era campaign to turn nature to mankind's use and to provide an opportunity to develop agriculture on an industr...

Nor any drop to drink... On Tuesday 7 June WaterAid will be hosting a non-stop tweetathon – hashtagged #WaterAid24 - to show supporters exactly what an international charity does over a 24-hour period. The important issue of water use, conservation and availability is often overshadowed by the battle to cut carbon emissions.  To highlight the issues, here are a selection of statistics from WaterAid's website : 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF) 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF) 1.4 million children die every year from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation - 4,000 child deaths a day or one child every 20 seconds . This equates to 160 infant school classrooms lost every single day to an entirely preventable public health crisis. Diarrhoea kills ...

Adam Corner's Guardian article " When energy-saving does not mean saving energy " looks at rebound effects: "But a newly published paper in the journal Energy Policy shows that even straightforward carbon-saving activities such as home insulation are not always quite what they seem. The problem is that making one change around the house leaves the door open for other changes – which might include 'rebound effects' that undermine the carbon savings. If a driver who replaces their car with a fuel-efficient model takes advantage of the cheaper running costs and drives further and more often, then the amount of carbon saved is clearly reduced." In the current economic climate that really should not be the case as 10-20% energy saving will only result in a cost "saving" that will offset rising energy prices, a trend that is likely to continue.  The global economy is still growing relatively slowly but when this growth accelerates, demand for ener...

After a relaxing weekend by the seaside, away from television and internet, I have returned to find a busy News weekend and here is a round up of the stories catching my attention: BBC News - Global carbon emissions reach record, says IEA  - disappointing, but if the global economy is to grow using the established economic models, it is inevitable. This highlights the enormity of the changes that are required to decouple our economy and prosperity from carbon. BBC News - Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022  - bold decision, but how will the industrial bedrock of Germany's economy cope with increasing reliance on renewable energy? The country has limited coastline for marine renewables so will be limited to wind energy, or solar in the south.  Will fossil fuel use increase as nuclear is phased out, or will the German grid simply import nuclear base load from France? BBC News - France expands nuclear power plans despite Fukushima  -...