EcoWarriorMe

That's a fact? According to environment secretary Owen Patterson, the time is right for GM crops and it is the duty of the British Government to convince the public that this is the case. He then said that GM crops are probably  safer than conventional crops and seven million children have gone blind or died over the past decade because attempts to grow a strain of GM rice ( Golden Rice ) commercially have been thwarted (implying, perhaps, by anti-GM campaigners and that there are no other solutions to malnutrition). The minister went on to back a scientific approach: "We need evidence-based regulation and decision-making in the EU. Consumers need accurate information in order to make informed choices. The market should then decide if a GM product is viable,"  A rigorous and transparent scientific evidence-based approach is to be welcomed,  although this goes a bit further than Mr Patterson's statement. Assuming that the evidence based regulation allows only GM...

A book and a wind-up torch. During Earth Hour, I learned the following: The origin of apples; A little about the last few months of Leon Trotsky’s life before being exiled; That I can still read a book in the dark with a torch (like I did as a child, under the blanket after bed time); And, thanks to @glasgow_kat, that petrochemical candles have much higher emissions than an electric light. Earth Hour is a fantastic way to highlight the problem of climate change in solidarity with people across the globe but it is not enough on its own. Switching the lights off on landmarks from Sidney Opera House to the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building for one hour is purely symbolic. Even switching them off permanently would be insignificant. The kind of reduction in fossil fuel use that we need to achieve would be more like everyone everywhere turning off the lights, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, computers, televisions - everything for an hour. Not just once a year...

We are told not to buy counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags or DVDs from down the Barras or from e-bay because they fund criminal gangs  that are often involved in other unsavoury activities such as human trafficking and drug smuggling.  What we aren't told is that is we keep on the straight and narrow using legitimate brands and widely respected retailers we could still unwittingly fund the same criminal gangs.  As the story of the horse meat sold as beef scandal  develops it is becoming clearer that that is what is happenning: Polish and Italian criminal gangs using intimidation to get the horse meat signed off as beef before exporting to traders in Cyprus and the Netherlands before reaching producers in France which then process it before finally sending it to the UK.   On reflection, it is not a surprising outcome of the way the food system works: a combination of globalisation, long supply chains and a constant pressure to reduce costs.  The big f...

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...

"@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?

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.

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...

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...

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  -...

Click here to sign the petition and save this species, ban that chemical or raise the other issue. But do they really make a difference? A friend recently created a petition to stop the use of Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the oil spill (it is not very good for wildlife - probably better than oil but still not good) and he was disheartened by the lack of response. " Another petition .. that needs to be closed as no one cares, what the hell am I even doing on here."  Truth is, there are too many petitions. A search on  http://www.thepetitionsite.com  for Corexit comes up with a dozen petitions covering the same issue, not including the ones closed down already.  For this type of online petition to have any real impact it needs to be a single concentrated effort to get the message across, but even then, the ease with which petitions can be created, marketed and signed greatly devalues them.  Taking a random 10 minute period on a Sunday mornin...