Take to the fields

Posted on Thursday 1 February 2007 at 12:14 am by Charlotte Webster

The tipping point of global oil production will be accompanied by a dire energy shock, and we will have to redefine the concept of farming. On Friday and Saturday last week, a potentially historic meeting took place in the rather unpromising location of the CIA, otherwise known as the Cardiff International Arena. Britain's organic farming community gathered en masse for the annual meeting...

He pulled his punches

Posted on Wednesday 24 January 2007 at 09:29 pm by Charlotte Webster

David Attenborough's special TV programme on the impact of climate change on Britain was deeply disappointing. The first 50 minutes of Sir David Attenborough's prime-time 60-minute special floated us gently through the soft problems of minimal global warming, assuming no feedback amplifiers or wild cards like collapsing ice sheets. Our Victorian drains will be a little hard pressed no...

Time to declare war on warming

Posted on Wednesday 24 January 2007 at 09:27 pm by Charlotte Webster

In 2004, scientists warned that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during 2003 had been unusually high for the second year running. They were becoming worried about runaway warming, they said. Runaway warming is a horror story wherein carbon dioxide emissions are stimulated at a faster rate from an overheating natural world than they can be reduced by society cutting fossil-fuel...

What a (nuclear) waste

Posted on Monday 15 January 2007 at 11:03 pm by Jeremy Leggett

I have belatedly found time to scan the government's energy review, published earlier this month. The experience was not good for my blood pressure. The review joins a growing list of dodgy dossiers published by the Blair government in support of its growing catalogue of policy misjudgments. The government's dodgy dossier on energy represents missed opportunities on a scale that is hard to un...