News
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
A few years ago on Radio 4 you may have heard a fascinating interview with a designer who was working on computer controlled sails for cargo ships. Already the design is now being put into practice, with the maiden voyage of the ship Beluga which set sail from Germany for Venezuela on 22 January. This ship has a relatively small sail, but the long term plan is to develop large sails for huge tankers, with the possibility of cutting fuel consumption by 20 percent. The sail flies like a kite hundreds of meters above the ship.
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Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Transition Bristol is masterminding a virtual orchard for 2008 - thousands of fruit trees planted in gardens across Bristol. You can order your tree through the Transition Bristol online shop (use Redland if we are your nearest pick up point) and then your tree can be collected on Saturday 16 Feb at the Farmers Market. when you pick it up there will be people to explain how to plant it and care for it.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
We can expect much debate about the Government’s proposals for new nuclear power. Past programmes of nuclear power were predicted to make electricity so cheap it would not need metering, but proved to be astronomically expensive and the long term disposal of the waste has still not been dealt with. The BBC has some fairly comprehensive coverage.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
A report by Oxford academic Dieter Helm and colleagues shows that although it appears that the UK has reduced its CO2 emissions this is something of an illusion. The reason for the reported drop is the ‘dash to gas’, and the export of manufacturing to China. If our consumption is actually taken account of, including the embodied energy in products we import, and our use of aviation and shipping, then our actual climate change contribution may have increased by as much as 19% since 1990.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
At Bali an agreement was signed up to by many local government leaders. You can find out more about it here.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
A most unusual thing happened recently. A planning proposal last June for a redevelopment on Welsh Back included the felling of a mature London Plane Tree. Lots of people wrote to the planners pointing out the value of urban trees (they cleanse the air, cool the City, improve drainage and reduce flood risk, absorb CO2, provide a habitat for wildlife, and they are beautiful). This resulted in the developers withdrawing the application, saying that now that their attention had been drawn to the impact of the tree felling not just for local residents but also for the wider community they were going to reconsider their plans. They have now resubmitted their plans, with the tree remaining unharmed.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Bristol City Council has allocated extra funds over three years to improve the local train service, mainly thanks to campaigning by Friends of Suburban Railways and many local residents. The promised changes have now been delayed to May 2008 but morning trains have had a slight increase in frequency from December. Please keep you MPs and Councillors aware of the value of this very popular service.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Worries that the leveling off of rates of oil production will drive greater use of even more climate-damaging coal seem to be well founded. A major new open cast coal mine is planned in Wales, badged as environment-enhancing land reclamation. Here’s what George Monbiot had to say about it The New Coal Age.
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Sunday, December 16th, 2007
At an official reception launching Bristol Museum’s hosting of the Shell-sponsored wildlife photography competition, Bristol dignitaries heard a speech from ‘Derrick Leavussum’ of Shell thanking them for helping Shell to divert public attention from their anti-enviroment activites. “We prefer not to see the melting of the icecaps as a threat to human society, we see it as a business opportunity.” It took listeners a while to realise that Derrick was of course a spoof and that although everything he said was true it was not the greenwashed version of truth that Shell likes to make public.
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Friday, December 14th, 2007
Local Choice Milk is on sale in Tesco’s. This is genuinely sourced from local dairy farms in South Gloucestershire, which given the pressure UK diary farmers have been under due to supermarkets driving prices down, has got to be good news. So, whilst this might be a bit of clever greenwashing for Tesco’s, if you are in the store this is definitely a good choice to consider. Maybe in due course we’ll get local milk as doorstep delivery - even better.
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