“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to an end. We are entering a period of consequences.” Winston Churchill, 1936.

Website being pruned and updated - work in progress.

Minehead-Aberthaw Tidal Energy Support   We are delighted with plans from Rupert Armstrong-Evans, for a "tidal energy reef" to operate between Minehead and Aberthaw.

This is something the Trust has been discussing for a while, as we believe strongly in a project that will not only harvest tidal energy, but will also provide a line of defence. The Minehead-Aberthaw line of defence would protect Burnham-on-Sea and the Somerset levels against sea level rises or storm surges, whereas the Weston-Cardiff location does not protect the levels and could in fact make them more vulnerable.

The Minehead-Aberthaw "reef" has several additional strong advantages over other projects.

* As it would rise and fall with the tide, it is a far lighter construction altogether, and therefore both cheaper and quicker to construct.
* Harvesting both incoming and outgoing tides, the reef system works for a far longer period of time each day than the barrage, thus avoiding the need for massive backup supplies.
* The reef harvests sustainable energy, unlike nuclear power stations which only have a 30-year working life and would have huge decommissioning and rebuilding costs - and uranium resources are finite and likely to "peak" soon.
* Small turbines means speedier construction, more competition, and far more efficient maintenance.
* The pylons are already in place, close to both Minehead and Aberthaw.

What Global Warming? - the graph here is plain evidence that the planet has not been warming for the last ten years, despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels. There is a possibility of more cooling to come - if the sunspots continue to remain absent - and if history is anything to go by, cooling brings far greater hardship than warming. Evidence from many places suggests that carbon dioxide was not, and could not have been, the cause of the warming from 1970 to 2000. There is a lot of evidence of bad science, influenced by money and politics, promoting "global warming" while accusing the "deniers" of bad science. It is easy to see that "scare" stories sell better. Read Real Climate Change to start to wake up to the implications of this, and Curious about Climate Science to clearly grasp the scientific, political and psychological issues.

Bees - colonies are dying or disappearing worldwide - threatening sustainable agriculture. Amongst UK beekeepers there is widespread faith in what the Government "should" do regarding research. However, there is little awareness of "backyard" research that can offset the official non-support. A century ago Rudolf Steiner predicted this would happen to bees bred for commercialism, just as he predicted mad cow disease. But now, a few beekeepers are experimenting with "Top Bar" beehives, paying attention to the bees' own needs and signals, and some very interesting positive results are appearing. Visit Barefoot Beekeeper and join the best natural beekeeping forum on the web!

Local Eyes - A pilot project that is being very well-received, that uses a very creatively dynamic website to strengthen local communities by creating useful "help wanted / help offered" lists and opportunities for local enterprise and share in local decision-making. It is also a Social Enterprise, specifically targeting disadvantaged groups and areas of exclusion. One joins by one's postcode. See pdf and "beta" testing version. LocalEyes is being piloted in The Havens community in Pembrokeshire. Over 100 people (approx 1/6th of all adults in the community) registered on LocalEyes within the first week of promotion.

A Vision for Somerset as a Sustainable Community (pdf) is a strategic outline proposal that has just been produced by South Somerset Climate Action. Like the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, this is a local project that deserves to be developed as a national (UK) model, if not more. This was done in response to the current UK "Local Area Agreements" which though supposed to set the direction for several years ahead, still fail utterly to grasp the urgency and severity of global issues and the need to completely rewrite such political proposals in the light of the real issues. See Forum

Hinkley Point is targeted by our UK Government to build one of a new generation of nuclear reactors for energy, as a palliative to the coming threat of energy shortage. However, there are doubts and problems, both economic, scientific and social, and a widespread feeling that the Government are taking insufficiently-considered action, flouting crucial advice of scientists regarding high future decommissioning costs, the need to replace power stations every 30 years, the likelihood of curtailment of, and limits to, uranium supplies, and other issues. See local pages.

Global economy depends on oil: Recession could be here to stay (Independent, 22 Jan). If global oil supplies are limited, and other forms of cheap energy are not forthcoming, recession is inevitable. We would then have no option but to plan to live in a very different, straitened economy. In a world with limited resources and declining non-renewable resources, an economy of "perpetual growth" is a dangerous delusion. People need to grasp the basic principles of sustainable economics based on harvesting of sustainable resources, as well as living on less, as well as limiting population to the planetary carrying capacity. At present we seriously exceed this capacity, and we are living off our heritage, our "capital". Most of this can be represented by our over-consumption of oil.

Government Ministers flying high, I came across an interesting statement in the press recently which was attempting to encourage the reader to be more aware of what they can do to assist in the effort to combat global warming, it read : If you live in an average size house and you fit Low Energy Bulbs in to all of your lights, in a year, you will offset the Carbon Footprint which is produced by one seat/passenger on a flight from London to New York. By extrapolation therefore it must be true to say that it takes in excess of 300 houses, all using low energy bulbs for a year to offset the carbon footprint of one aircraft flying from London to New York and another 300 to offset the return journey.
Multiply this by the number of long-haul flights that take place every day all over the world and it becomes obvious that even if the entire world fitted low energy bulbs, one day’s flying would wipe out their effect. The UK government is urging us to fit low energy bulbs to help fight global warming, at the same time they have just approved a forward plan that will allow the number of flights to double over the next 20 years. Surely they should be looking at plans to reduce air-travel since that will have a far greater effect than all of the domestic measures put together.

The UK Government need to practise what they preach regarding energy conservation. As it states in the preceding article, the government are currently persuading us that we should reduce our energy demands by fitting low-energy bulbs and turning our heating down by one or two degrees and we totally agree with this, however, doesn't it seem strange that whilst we (the people) are doing so, all over the country there are office blocks, factories and shops (which have no-one in them from 6 at night until 6 in the morning) with the heating on and all the lights on. This constitutes a huge waste of energy and contributes significantly to Global Warming. There are also huge stretches of Motorways that are illuminated, particularly at junctions, and innumerable monuments, public buildings and churches that are floodlit for several hours each day.

Useability of local recycling centres: To assist us with our ongoing research, we would be grateful for your experiences. What things have you found satisfactory/unsatisfactory? Have you been encouraged/discouraged from using them? Any thoughts on how to stop the brilliant FUNCTIONING South Molton recycling scheme being closed down? Please post your replies on our forum.

Peak Oil - the single most important piece of information... Now even Wall Street admits...

Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production November 19, 2007
A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.... The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty of energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled competition for fuel. The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased.
The new adherents -- who range from senior Western oil-company executives to current and former officials of the major world exporting countries -- share the belief that a global production ceiling is coming .... This will create a global production plateau, not a peak, they contend, with oil output remaining relatively constant rather than rising or falling. The emergence of a production ceiling would mark a monumental shift in the energy world. Oil production has averaged a 2.3% annual growth rate since 1965, according to statistics compiled by British oil giant BP PLC. This expanding pool of oil, most of it priced cheaply by today's standards, fueled the post-World War II global economic expansion....

Some more topics, coming presently...

Recycling issues, getting beyond greenwash

Hidden effects of the Litigation Culture and the Nanny State

Modbury Without Plastic Bags - visit their website here.