Fixing everything, really slowly

“You can drink your flask of weak lemon drink now or save it for later!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwEVzOegqzw

Keen readers will recall this posting from last year about the petition to “levy a tax on energy inefficient light bulbs so that their long term financial and environmental cost is visible in their retail price”. I’ve just got an email telling me of the governments response: (my comments in line)

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has written the following message exclusively for people who recently signed petitions on the No10 website about climate change.

Why not share it more widely Hilary?

Mr Benn highlights the UK Government’s commitment to seeking international agreement on a post-2012 climate change framework, and encourages petitioners, their families, and friends, to use the new CO2 Calculator.

Message from Hilary Benn

I understand that you recently signed a petition on the No10 website about climate change.

As Government, business, and the public, we all need to work closely together to tackle climate change. Climate change poses the most urgent challenge to humankind - a challenge that threatens not only the environment but international peace and security, prosperity and development.

That is why the UK Government is committed to seeking international agreement on a post-2012 climate change framework and is showing leadership on how we can build the low carbon economy that such an agreement will promote. Our Climate Change Bill, for example, will make the UK the first country in the world to put our commitment to reduce emissions by at least 60% on the statute book. And the Prime Minister recently announced that we will ask the Climate Change Committee, once it is established, to review this target to see if it should be even higher.

I hope you will feel that the Bill demonstrates that the UK takes its responsibilities for reducing global emissions seriously. This challenge is for all of us as individuals too. That is why the Government is helping people to act on reducing CO2 emissions. Given your interest in this issue, I thought I would bring to your attention the Act on CO2 Calculator that is now available on Directgov: www.direct.gov.uk/ActOnCO2 (new window)

You can use the calculator to work out your own carbon footprint, and to obtain recommendations about how you can help tackle climate change.

I hope you will find this useful and that you might think about recommending it to your family and friends. As the carbon calculator has recently been launched, we would also appreciate your comments, using the feedback link on the site itself.

Finally, we are looking at ways in which we can keep people up to date with developments on climate change, and would like to do more using the web and e-mail. If you would like to receive e-mail messages and alerts on the issue in future, please click here and complete the form (if you cannot access this link, please type https://qbaseprojects.co.uk/defra/survey.asp?id=7 into your browser).

If you do provide your details, they will be used sparingly and solely for the purposes of communicating with you about climate change.

Thank you for your interest in this vital issue.

Best wishes

Hilary Benn

Secretary of State, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs

Ok, Hilary thanks for the message, it seems like you’ve ignored the request of the petition and simply used this an a chance to market your online CO2 calculator. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for the mesaures you’ve highlighted, but you haven’t acknoledged the subject of the petition or explanined whether you think it is a good or bad idea, whether you think it is feasable etc.

Thanks for nothing!

Well I’ve not posted here since May I think its about time I started again. In case you care I’ve not changed electricity providers yet, but it is now on one of several todo lists.

Quite what will happen here next I’m not sure, but I hope I’ll more motivated to write stuff here.

Right, I’m off to make a new todo list …

Melanie’s Bean Sprouts blog makes for interesting reading if you are interested in practical things to help the environment. Having changed our electricity supplier last year to npower’s Juice tarif I had assumed I was buying electricity from 100% renewable sources. It turns out I’m not …

Bean Sprouts - Melanie Rimmer

[..]

… The electricity companies’ implication is that if you’re on a green tarriff, they input as much extra renewable energy into the grid as you use (making your use effectively “green”). But this isn’t the case. In reality, the companies generate as much power as they can sell to the grid at any given time, period. So your decision to go on a “green” tarriff makes no difference to the power generated - it’s still 4.2% renewable, and nothing has changed unless the supplier is bringing new renewable plant onstream with your money. And there’s the key; most of the companies offering “green” tarriffs aren’t doing that.

[..]

It’s not all doom and gloom though …

… if you want to change your electricity supplier because you’re concerned about climate change, it’s important to choose a supplier which invests in new renewable energy projects.

Fortunately there is a website to help you do just that. It is http://www.whichgreen.org/. I have included the latest figures from them as the image in the top left of this article. As you can see, Ecotricity comes top of the league by a long way.

[..]

Like Melanie I’m currently using npower, which actually wasn’t too bad a few years back, but now sucks. I just wish I didn’t have to fill in a load of forms and talk to people to switch suppliers.

Pretty low I know, but …

BBC - Man cuts off penis in restaurant

A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London restaurant. Police were forced to use CS gas to restrain the man when they entered the Zizzi restaurant in The Strand on Sunday evening.

[…]

It continues

EMI have announced today that will sell non-DRM protected music through iTunes. This is fantastic news for the consumer and shows that the music industry is finally begining to understand what people (I) want and what they (me) are prepared to pay for.

According to the BBC Eric Nicoli boss of EMI said today:

“We have to trust our consumers,” he said. “We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient.”

Finally! Someone gets it! I just wish they had simplified the offering further:

bbc.co.uk

The higher price will apply only to single tracks that customers download. On iTunes EMI tracks free of digital rights management (DRM) software will cost $1.29 (99p).

Itunes users will be able to upgrade previously purchased EMI songs and albums for 30 cents (20p) a track.

[…]

All EMI albums will now be free of DRM and at the higher quality with no increase in price.

[…]

I hope they realise that charging more for the same content as an individual track, but not as an album serves only to confuse and irritate their customers. Also, why not offer existing customers a free update to the “premium” quality versions of tracks they have already bought? Why charge more for DRM free content? What makes EMI content more special than any other labels content?

I’ll be very interested to see how the other labels and music stores react to this announcement. I really hope they all follow suit and quickly. Then we can worry about the real issue in the music business: cutting out the middle man and giving musicians and consumers a fair deal. Something tells me the major labels wont be so keen to let that happen!

Aaron Cohen

[…]
Following on from Australia’s pledge to phase out the usage of incandescent bulbs, the 27 leaders of the European Union have decided that all member states will have to use energy efficient lighting before 2010 (yes, that’s just 3 years away). The switchover, which will affect all of the EU’s 470 million+ citizens, was developed with the aim of meeting targets to reduce energy usage by 20 percent by 2020: to that end, a commission will be accepting proposals for enabling the switchover “for office and street lighting to be adopted by 2008 and on incandescent lamps and other forms of lighting in private households by 2009.”

[…]

Great to see that the low hanging fruit is finally being plucked. Aaron’s blog is well worth reading if you are interested in the enviroment and a perspective of what my employer (Sun Microsystems) is doing about energy efficiency.

Guardian
At the high court earlier today, Mr Justice Sullivan granted the environmental group Greenpeace an order quashing the government’s decision to build new nuclear power stations.

Greenpeace had accused the government of reneging on its promise to carry out “the fullest consultation” before making its decision.

It said the government failed to present clear proposals and information on key issues surrounding a new generation of nuclear plants, such as the disposal of radioactive waste and the financial costs of building new plants.

Mr Justice Sullivan said the consultation document gave every appearance of being simply an “issues paper”.

It contained no actual proposals and, even if it had, the information given to consultees was “wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent response”.

The information given on waste was “not merely inadequate but also misleading”.

Sarah North, the head of Greenpeace’s nuclear campaign, said: “The government’s so-called consultation on nuclear power was obviously a sham, and we’re pleased that the judge has agreed with us … They’ve now been forced back to the drawing board to conduct a proper and lengthy review.”

I’m opposed to Nuclear power. Working day to day with computer systems I know that if technology can go wrong, it will. If that technology is inheriantly dangerous and there are safer alternatives we shouldn’t use them. Moreover if the safer technologies need improvements before they are efficient at larger scales then lets spend government money on improving them and selling them to the rest of the world!

I went to a really good event on Tuesday night to launch the results from Forum for the Future’s Future leaders survey. I met several great people. One of whom, Sebastian Wood, told me about his new startup business Better Generation which advises on saving energy and generating electricity at home. They have a shop which sells energy saving light bulbs and the power saving plug I mentioned a while ago.

Great to meet people who understand there is a good business to be made from saving energy and the environment.

If like me you are always missing out on seeing your favorite bands becuase you only hear about the gig then it is in the news for selling out in 15 minutes then you need tourfilter. You give it a list of bands you like and where you live, it emails you when they tickets are on sale. It works really really well (provided you live in a city that is supported).

Check out the ical feed which lets you see the gigs in your own calendar if it supports it (try using sunbird/lightning if you don’t use iCal on Mac).