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Tuesday 6th July 2010

Organisation Update

We know, it seems we've been quiet recently but we've been working on the next phase of our development! So what have we been up to?... We now have charitable status, making it easier to access funding for our plans. Our registered charity no. is 1093682. Organisational changes sees Alex Robinson become Chair and David Yates is now Secretary. We are currently seeking a new volunteer to take over Treasurer duties. Please contact the Secretary if you would like to offer your services.

Other initiatives to be announced soon include a Community Growing Project, energy-saving retro-fitting of houses in Scarborough, a Green Market for Coastival 2011, film shows and many other events, training and projects!

Friday 18th September 2009

Eat Sustainably

How can you make sustainable choices on a budget? What about climate change? A series of workshops to explore these are being held across Yorkshire . They are being run by Leeds Permaculture Network, supported by Co-operative Membership and the Permaculture Association. Sustainable Scarborough is hosting one of them at Central Library, Vernon Road , Scarborough on 22nd October, 6.30 for 7.00pm . Admission is free. Click here for a poster. Please print it out and distribute as widely as possible.

The Age of Stupid

The most apt name I have heard for these times. Scarborough Renaissance is costing us, the tax-payers, a cool ?1.24 million a year just to come up with their wonderful visions for Scarborough .
The Futurist theatre has been in the news frequently. Part of it is owned by the local authority, the rest is leased out on a 999 year lease to a number of other people. In order to upgrade the building the council must first buy back those leases before they can even draw up any plans. A large sum of money will be involved. Then it will tendered out to private enterprise to come up with a suitable use for the site – which may or may not incorporate a theatre. Project costing is still to be agreed. So tax-payer’s money will be used to enable private enterprise to make a profit! Am I missing something?
Further Renaissance uses for our money –
?1 million to re-build the Open Air Theatre, which was part of the conditions of the Sands development, to create a 6,000 seat theatre. Free umbrellas which each ticket?
?2.5 million for Scarborough Hub. This an idea that has worked extremely well for Bristol . A space shared by all manner of voluntary organisations (including Transition Bristol), and innovative start up businesses giving them the space and opportunity to help and work with each other.
Also on the plan for the future is the demolition of the mainly empty concrete carbuncle opposite Boyes. Once demolished the plan is to develop it as a Market Square . A brilliant concept, but once again the council doesn’t own it, so it will either depend on the generosity of the owners (!!!!) or a vast sum of tax-payers money to purchase it. And then, in all probability handed back to developers, as with just about every other project in Scarborough

Don’t forget the film Age of Stupid – with a rather more serious message – at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on Friday 25th Sept, 6.30 for 7.00pm start. Admission free but your donations will be appreciated to cover costs.

The rush is on to find more oil

As it becomes more apparent that output on nearly existing oil fields is declining the major oil companies are scouring the world to find more oil.
Chevron and Mitsui Oil are beavering away in Cambodia , British company Tullow Exploration has applied for rights in Uganda , China is investing $16 billion in Venezuela , Mexico is fighting the US for rights to oil exploration, Norway is being raided for natural gas by Total.

Demand for oil is on the increase again. It was only in July 2008 that world production was unable to demand and that triggered the present economic situation. Are we on our way back there again?

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states between them are producing some 4 million barrels of oil a day. (One barrel = approx 158 litres or 42 US Gallons) And yet, by some strange miracle, their stated oil reserves have increased in leaps and bounds every year for the past twenty years. Do they have a magic supply that the more you draw out the more it increases? The actual figures are “State Secrets” so nobody is able to prove or disprove the figures. What is proven is that individual oil wells in the area are actually declining in production and it is estimated that over 80% of all Saudi Arabia ’s wells have now peaked.

In Town Without My Car

From 16th to 22nd of September every year it is In Town Without My Car Week. He first event was event was in La Rochelle in France , and the following year events were held across France . It soon spread to Switzerland and then to several other European countries. This year local authorities in around 60 towns across the UK have joined in, reclaiming the streets for pedestrians and cyclists and persuading car drivers to leave their cars at home.

Monday 24th August

*Don't forget the monthly social evening at Tap & Spile, Falsgrave this Tuesday 25th Aug from 8pm*

*Organic Fortnight 5th - 20h September.* See the Soil Associations page on “Buying organic on a budget”

*York Green Festival Sun 6 Sept *11am-5pm Rowntree Park, York Free, all ages. Music, workshops, kids activities, stalls, including York in Transition Stall.

After the August break we are back to our regular schedule of meetings in September. All meetings at Green Planet, 4a Hanover Road, unless otherwise stated.

*Executive Committee *- Weds 2nd Sept at 7.30 pm (and on the first Wednesday of each month) This is the small group that coordinates all the various activities of Sustainable Scarborough and comprises the coordinators of the various focus groups, plus the chairman, treasurer and secretary, plus other seconded members. If you wish to join this committee please contact me.

*Transport Group *– Weds 9th Sept at 7.30 pm (and on the second Wednesday of each month) Looking at transport issues in Scarborough with a view to sustainability. Our current projects are bus maps and bus information, a 20 mph speed limit on all residential roads in Scarborough, better cycle facilities and cycle training. This is an open group and anybody is welcome to join in. Just come along.

*Food Group *– Weds 16th Sep at 7.00 pm (normally on the 17th of each month regardless of day) looking at food security and food education. This is part of the Scarborough Local Food Group. Our current projects are a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme working with local farmers, raising awareness of local food , support for Landshare – matching landowners with those that need land to grow food on.

*Energy Group *– meets as needed. Working on making widely available the wealth of information on energy saving and grants available that is applicable to Scarborough and district. Contact Steve Parker for further details steve@cred.ltd.uk or telephone 01723 353642

Transition is about the whole community and its activities. If you belong to a group that would like to get involved or you have a particular interest that you think we should be tackling, please contact me.

We also like to have a bit of fun. On the last Tuesday of each month there is a social evening at the Tap & Spile in Falsgrave from 8 pm.

Food Dilemmas

Local? Fair trade? Organic? Cheap? How can you make sustainable choices on a budget Are you concerned about climate change? Wondering what you can do about it?
Then come along to a free 2 hour workshop to explore positive solutions for a life with enjoyable abundant food - Thursday 22nd October, 6.30 for a 7.0 pm start, Scarborough Central Library, Vernon Road.
Presented by Leeds Permaculture Network in partnership with Cooperative Membership and Sustainable Scarborough. Contact Suzi High for further details tel: 0777 6253743 or email: suzi_cherrytree@yahoo.com

Training for Transition

3rd - 4th October in Scarborough.
This two day workshop is both a practical and informative introduction to Transition and a powerful personal journey to greater personal resilience. It weaves together practice and theory, information and experiential, our inner Transition with our outer Transition, and personal and community Transition. The feedback from participants indicates that this two day journey holds for many key insights, understanding, and awarenesses to help them to contribute to the most important journey of our times; the journey to a peaceful and resilient world.
This will be the first workshop run by the team in the north of England. The venue is the modern and well-equipped Falsgrave Community Resource Centre in Seamer Road (near B&Q). There will be four sessions per day, spread over two eight hour days. Training will be done by Transition Network trainers who are based at Totnes.

See http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TrainingforTransition for full details.

This is open to members of Transition groups across the north of England. The full fee is £100 per person. A place is secured by a £40 deposit. Cheques made payable to Sustainable Scarborough please. The cost of running it is high but some bursaries may be available, dependent on the number of people paying full price.

Oil

“Oil is found in minds of men” is a Saudi saying. Never a truer word spoken. OPEC oil reserves have magically trebled since 1980, and since the current downturn, have increased again. At the beginning of 2008 OPEC announced that they had 939 billion barrels of proven reserves - 78% of the world's total reserves. They have now just announced that they have 1.02 trillion barrels of proven reserves representing 79.3% of the world's oil reserves. All this despite the fact that they claim to be producing 12 million barrels a day or 4.3 billion barrels a year. In 1980 they could only account for 368 billion barrels!
The trouble is that all the data that goes to make up those figures are state secrets so nobody knows the actual figures or can disprove their “porky pies”.
OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) comprises Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.

Oil demand

The International Energy Agency based in Paris has warned that increased oil prices have led to an increase in demand. With 80% of the world's oil wells peaked (unable to increase production) we could be heading for a very difficult time in 2010. It was the inability to meet world demand that caused prices to escalate out of control in 2008, which in turn knocked a very unstable economic system off its pedestal.

Coal

Coal production in the UK has risen by 16 million tonnes (a 10% increase) over the past year and is expected to rise another 15 million tonnes in the next twelve months as more open cast mines are given permission. Our imports of coal have also increased by 13% in the past twelve months. This is further proof that the government's claims to have the strictest carbon reduction programme in the world is nothing more than just a lot of hot air.

Electric cars

Most major manufacturers are set to hit the market with electric cars within the next two years. This raises one huge question mark. Where are people going to be able to charge them up? If you live in a house with a garage or a drive, fine. What about the majority, who live in terraced houses? They will not be able to dangle flexes across the pavement for eight hours at a time, even assuming they were able to park immediately outside their home. It is possible to give a six minute boost at a filling station, if facilities are installed, but a full charge still takes eight hours. Parking bays with charging points? Where do you put them? Parking is already at a premium. We are fast reaching a point where there is physically insufficient road space within urban areas to safely park the number of vehicles that need to park and still allow satisfactory traffic movement.
There is also a fear that the rush to produce electric vehicles is sidelining research into other possible alternatives. However, hydrogen vehicles, as the most likely alternative at present, also produce fuelling problems.
Yes, it would be great to get people out of their cars and onto public transport but this isn't likely to happen for as long as there is a desire to be mobile. Personal transport has been since the beginning of history, and always will be, the preferred option for those able to afford it. Thus there will continue to be, for the forseeable future, a need for some form of self-propelled personal transport – which will need a means of propulsion.

From Drumbeat, the regular news page at The Oil Drum

Discussions of survival tactics in a post-oil world can be categorized in many ways: pessimistic and optimistic, pacific and militaristic, technophobic and technophilic. But a curious dividing line can be seen between older and younger speakers. The old tend to think of little more than their bank accounts, often to the point of dismissing all else with the comment, "Well, anyway, I'll probably be dead before much happens." The young, on the other hand, expect to be entering a strange new world - if they think anything at all. The difference can be seen in terms of whether one expects to be living mainly before or after the end of the money economy.
We stand on the peak between the rise and the fall of the Oil Age, and descriptions of the future may be either scientific analysis or science fiction, the latter serving a useful temporary role when the former is insufficient. The many studies of oil depletion seem to indicate that the peak itself was around 2008, and that by about 2030 oil production will be about half the peak rate. An older person of today might not have to worry about that 50-percent decline in production. A 20-year-old of today, on the other hand, will be 40 years old at that time, still planning to live for another few decades.
See the blog http://theblogattheendoftheworld.blogspot.com/

Thursday 6th August

Meeting of Renaissance Town Team/Forum for Tourism at Royal Hotel

Forty plus people attended a presentation by the Borough Council officials followed by a very lively discussion.

The full document is available for download on the front page of the council's website. I will only pick out the salient points here.

The two presenters contradicted each other several times.
“No food retail will be allowed on this development”
“There is no scope within the planning guidelines for a fourth supermarket”
“We will not allow large open spaces, such as car parking!”
And then we were told:
“The central part of this development is for a major supermarket”

A number of key facts have emerged.

Our elected councillors had not been informed of these plans until a presentation was given to them on 8th July. Even then they have been given no opportunity to make fair comment or suggest changes. Janet Jefferson (local councillor for the area) specifically asked what plans were being drawn up a couple of months ago and was told that no such plans existed!

The existing Tesco store is suffering from subsidence!

Tesco, and their developers Caddick, have been leaning heavily on the council for some considerable time.

Tesco have made no secret of the fact that the Westwood store does not fit their present trading requirements. (I would go so far as to suggest that they let the Balmoral site go in order to force the issue.)

Caddick have already approached a number of properties in the surrounding area during the past year asking them sell. At least two other developers have done the same.

Assura, present owners of the St Mary's hospital site, have been asked to hold back on their plans until the council has finalised its planning brief.

The council only owns the area currently used as a depot and the adjoining prison building - less than a quarter of the area encompassed by the brief. Assura own about a half. The remainder is split between a number of private owners running viable businesses. Most have suggested that they do not wish to sell.

Castle Road has been included in the area described as “Town Centre” in order to comply with government regulations: PPS6 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6
“That growth should be accommodated by more efficient use of land within existing centres...Where growth cannot be accommodated...and if there is a NEED for additional retail provision...(authorities) should plan for the extension of the town centre...These should be carefully integrated with the existing town centre...to allow easy access on foot,”
To comply with the last part, a part of BJ Fitness Studios will have to demolished to make way for a walkway (planners are referring to it as a “green route”) from Clifton Street through to the site.
PPS6 paragraph 2.6 also goes on to say:
“Larger stores may deliver benefits for consumers...authorities should make provision for them...and seek to identify, designate and assemble larger sites adjoining the primary shopping area.”

Hence, this Planning Brief.

The presenters tried to say that it would be up to developers what went on the site – it might not be a supermarket!!! Who are they kidding! The whole brief is planned around the concept of a major supermarket.

The conclusion. The whole plan is built around the premise that Tesco will be re-locating. Under the present local guidelines (the 2007 Retail Survey) there is no scope for ASDA or anyone else to muscle in. There is only scope for re-location of existing stores. In fact, if Sainsbury is allowed to enlarge, under current guidelines it may scupper Tesco's plans because it will then only allow for a store the same size that Tesco already have!

Asked for a show of hands, only person was in favour of a supermarket development. Without exception, everyone else was against. The hotelliers in Columbus Ravine a very concerned about their future since any development on the site will increase traffic flows, potentially affect their customer's ability to park near to their premises, and potentially cost them custom.
Members of the tourism group were concerned that no plans had been formulated for tourism use of the former prison. It is being left up to developers to suggest a commercial use for the building.

Following considerable protest, the timetable has now been altered. The display will remain in the Town Hall until 28th August and this will now be the deadline for comments on the proposal. The planners will then consider any amendments and present the revised brief to Planning & Development Committee (our elected councillors) at their meeting in October (either 1st or 22nd). It will then to the full council in November (17th?)

Watch this space very closely.

No further public meetings are planned and there will be no other opportunity for “public consultation” until such time as developers submit a final planning application. Once that happens time is very tight for any public input. It is now up to us to get as many people as possible to make as much noise as possible, for as long as possible, to let our council know that the majority of thinking people in Scarborough do not wish to see our town centre destroyed for the sake of minority commercial gain.

Write to the paper, Robert Goodwill MP, local and county councillors, local radio and television stations, Friends of the Earth, Tescoploy, Civic Society, and anybody else you are connected with. It is the wrong development in the wrong place. Housing and tourism might not generate the same income, or look so good on the council's balance sheets, but it is what Scarborough needs.

Friday 24th July

Railroad council! Click here to download

The Scarborough Borough Council Planning & Development Committee met today (Thursday 23rd). Item 10 on the agenda was “To approve the contents of the consultation draft of the Dean Road Development Brief for consultation purposes, having regard to the resolution of Cabinet on 21 July 2009 relating to this matter. The recommendation to Cabinet was; firstly to note the contents of this draft version of the Development Brief and approve the principle of publication of a brief for purposes of public consultation; and secondly to delegate to the Leader authority to review the responses to consultation upon the brief and make recommendations in connection therewith to the meeting of Full Council on 7 September 2009. ”
It was stressed to the committee that this Planning Brief was required quickly and that it could not wait for the Local Development Framework. It was also stressed that it was only a 'consultation document'. However, it emerged that results of the 'public consultation' (from 24th July to 17th August) would be sent Cllr Tom Fox (leader of the council) “in lieu of a Cabinet Meeting”!! and that it would come back to Planning & Development Committee on the 4th September for discussion, two days after the agenda had been set for the full Cabinet to approve it in its final form. Four councillors asked searching questions about the time scale, that it did not allow time for adequate discussion by the Committee, and as a result it was explained by council officials (sorry didn't get names!) that Planning & Development Committee would be able to do some “minor tweaking”. Anything more would throw the timetable into chaos. In other words, the so-called “Consultation Brief” is pretty close to what will be given to developers. The Committee reluctantly accepted the Brief.
This clearly is yet another case of council officials, hand-in-hand with developers, riding roughshod over our elected members. The Planning & Development committee have not so far been given any opportunity to discus this very important issue. It has been presented to them as a faît acomplit. Their only role will be to look at planning applications when they come but they will then be tied to this Planning Brief.
It is no secret that Caddick Developments of Wakefield http://www.caddickdevelopments.co.uk/ are acting on behalf of Tesco with aspirations to develop the Council Depot site, since it was announced some two years ago that it would be coming onto the market. My suspicion is that they have been leaning heavily on the council to make a decision – and may even have given them a deadline to work to. It is also a known fact that Assura http://www.assuragroup.co.uk/, who currently own the St Mary's Hospital site, are wanting to sell. It was rumoured some two or three months ago that they were going to apply for a change to retail use for the site to help them realise a better price. It is also hardly a secret that the Council would like to 'encourage' Tesco to move from their present Westwood site. It would simplify, even make possible, their plans to build a transport interchange at Westwood.
A big thank you to everybody that wrote to the councillors. It was noted that “a lot of emails were received”. We need to keep up the pressure and we need this publicised as widely as possible. The non-elected staff of the council must be made to realise that they are paid by the people of Scarborough and are therefore public servants. Please make sure that everybody you know knows the facts and goes along to the town hall to express their views.

More allotments

On Tuesday the Council's Cabinet approved a report by the Allotment Task Group, which I had instigated and sat on. The report called for 150 new allotments plots to be established in the Scarborough town area to address the escalating waiting lists.
Their approval means that Council officers have now been tasked to identify land within the Council's ownership which can be used for the new plots. Within the year I'm hopeful that we will see the necessary moves towards getting these new allotments in place.
Jonathan Dixon

In the national interest

Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), is Bolivia's state-owned oil and gas company. It underwent partial privatization under the presidency of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in the 1990s. On 21st July it completed the final stage of re-nationalising the country's oil and gas industry with the acquisition of natural gas supplier in Cochabamba. Bolivia has the second largest reserves of natural gas in Latin America after Venezuela.

Water

“With global temperatures on the rise, scientists expect water shortages, like those now in California and China, to spread across the globe and become even more severe. The consequences for our already reeling global economy will be profound. A diversity of businesses — from electronics manufacturers and power producers to apparel and food companies — can expect water bills to rise, allotments to decrease, and water quality regulations to tighten.
“Water is one of our most critical raw materials — even more important than oil, for there are no alternatives. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestlé, put it starkly in The Economist: ‘I am convinced that, under present conditions and with the way water is being managed, we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel.”
“For example, silicon chips, the backbone of our information economy, require huge amounts of highly purified water to produce. Yet, 11 of the 14 largest semiconductor factories in the world are located in the Asia-Pacific region where water shortages, and water quality risks, are already squeezing industry.”

“Seventy percent of global water is used by agriculture, and water scarcity is forcing up the cost of food. Rice prices soared last year when a six-year drought caused rice production in Australia to plummet 98 percent. The global rice shortage sparked hording and riots in African and Asian nations dependent on the staple.”
“Despite water’s importance, few companies are thinking strategically about the profound business risks they will face in a world where climate change is likely to exacerbate already-diminishing water supplies”

Extracted from General Electric's 'Community Report'. The report went to urge all companies to look closely at how they use water and do everything possible to limit its use and to limit the amount of contamination caused to water supplies.

Oil prices

As predicted a couple of months back, oil prices continue to fluctuate wildly. From a high of $72 a barrel a month ago, they have dropped back to $68 a barrel or £0.26 a litre at the well-head. Transportation costs, middle-man's profits and taxes go on top of that figure. When prices fluctuate widely the variations tend to be smoothed out along the way and only a prolonged drop in prices will be seen at the petrol pump. The general trend is still up.

Washing up

“Washing dishes has been much simplified.
Initially families needed little crockery and a set of 6 plates would have been sufficient for most. Washing up liquid was soap based and it was a daily ritual in which women cooked a meal and quite often men would help their wives do the drying of the dishes. At that time, some conversation would take place about all kinds of subjects after which the adults would sit in the main sitting room, he with a book, listening to the wireless etc.
Washing up liquid became a detergent and with it harsher on hands. It was effective and to make hands softer when doing the dishes, someone invented rubber gloves to enable the lady of the house not to have to touch the dishes or water or detergent. As television became more popular, and washing up became a chore, someone invented a machine that would do the dishes instead. Good plan, thereby cutting out the gruesome chore of washing up. With it however came the need for electricity, a more intensive chemical product to wash the dishes and more crockery.
Not using the dishwasher has resulted in savings of rubber gloves, dishwashing tablets, electricity and maintenance on dishwasher. Strangely it feels liberating.....”
From Anne Howe's 'Downshifting Path'
Anne Howe has ME, keeps a home going, and runs a business. Her website is a blog of how she is managing to downshift her life and live with less. Very inspiring.
Another website worth dipping in to is Margaret Swedish's 'Spirituality and Ecological Hope' American, and deep thinking.

Monday 13th July

Safer roads?

The Department for Transport is consulting on its vision to make Britain's roads the safest in the world. But pro-speed and motoring groups have succeeded in getting their members to flood the consultation with calls to oppose lower speed limits. Labour has back-pedalled on a reduction of the national speed limit, while the Conservatives are calling for speed limits for lorries to be raised, on the basis that most break the law already.
If you have just a minute before 14 July, the day the consultation ends, please click on the link below and add your voice for a safer way: http://tiny.cc/saferway
WHY SHOULD I BOTHER?
* Widespread public support for lower speed limits risks being drowned out by a vocal lobby: this is one consultation where your views really can make a difference.
* Getting lower speed limits in rural and urban areas will not just make everyone safer, it will encourage physically active travel like walking and cycling, reducing obesity and congestion while improving quality of life.
* Reducing speed limits has been identified by the Climate Change Committee as one of the best 'quick wins' for the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
WHY FOCUS ON SPEED LIMITS?
Reducing speed limits is the single most important but also controversial proposal. But there are other important things which are being called for, such as changing the law to better protect vulnerable road users and moving away from a 'one size fits all' approach to road and street design (where all highways are simply treated as conduits for motor vehicles) to one that emphasises sense of place.
WHO'S BEHIND THIS CALL OUT?
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is one of the country's oldest environmental groups and its president is author Bill Bryson. CPRE has long called for lower speed limits, less signage clutter and safer roads that are less intimidating for those on foot, cycle, horseback or using mobility aids.
CPRE has been working closely with a wide range of environmental, transport and health groups. It is part of the Take Action on Active Travel alliance that now includes over 100 organisations calling, amongst other things, for lower speed limits:
www.adsph.org.uk/downloads/policies/Take_action_on_active_travel_2009.pdf
CPRE has carried out a detailed analysis of the consultation and how road safety plans, including lower speed limits work in other countries, in particular the Netherlands, before coming up with proposals:
www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/transport/rural-transport/safer-roads
Sustainable Scarborough is pushing for a 20 mph speed limit on all residential roads in Scarborough. Contact your local councillor and ask them to help implement it

Flat owners urged to grow veg

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090710/tuk-flat-owners-urged-to-grow-veg-6323e80.html
People living in the UK's five million flats are being urged to get gardening and grow their own veg - on their windowsills.
According to the National Trust, there are some 600 acres of space for window boxes across the country, making it possible for householders with no garden or allotment to join the current trend for "growing your own".
The available windowsill space - equivalent to 344 football pitches - could be used for vegetables and herbs including tomatoes, lettuce, beetroot, chard and rosemary.
Just two window boxes provide enough space to grow cheap - and very local - food for a meal, the organisation said.
The Window Food campaign is backed by Gizzi Erskine, chef and food writer, who is creating recipes which use ingredients grown on her East London windowsill.
She said: "I love cooking with fresh ingredients - it makes all the difference to the taste of the food and you can't get fresher than picking straight from your own windowsill.
"Living in a flat, I never thought I could grow so much without a garden but my windowsills look pretty and are really productive. Hopefully I'll never find a soggy supermarket bag of leftover lettuce at the bottom of my fridge again - everyone should give window food a go."
Just proves that you don't need a garden

One in the eye to the pro-nuclear people

France is being forced to import electricity from Britain to cope with a summer heatwave that has helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action.
With temperatures across much of France surging above 30C at the beginning of July, EDF’s reactors are generating the lowest level of electricity in six years, forcing the state-owned utility to turn to Britain for additional capacity.
Fourteen of France’s 19 nuclear power stations are located inland and use river water rather than seawater for cooling. When water temperatures rise, EDF is forced to shut down the reactors to prevent their casings from exceeding 50C.
On 2nd July demand exceeded 4,000MW over a thirteen hours period and nuclear reactors were unable to cope with the high temperatures. And this on top of a 20% hike in electricity prices by EDF in France. www.lemonde.fr

The ultimate in downsizing

A growing number of people are downsizing their lives and one of the fastest growing groups is the Small House Movement. Members live in the smallest space that is comfortable to them, mostly under 500 sq ft in floor plan – the size of a caravan but permanent.
I wonder how Scarborough planners would react if enough people wanted to build them? In many states in USA you don't even need planning permission for such buildings and owners are not even charged housing tax because they are not considered to be “houses”.
http://www.resourcesforlife.com/small-house-society The whole Resources for Life website is worth delving in to.

Can we get away from the car?

Possibly not. Over the past 100 years they have become embedded in our culture. Hungarian vehicle development company Antro have come up with what could be the ultimate in urban vehicles – a solar powered 2-3 seat vehicle which you can pedal when the battery runs low or revert to low-powered diesel engine if all else fails. They hope to go into full production in 2012 with a price tag of around £12,000.
http://www.solo-duo.hu/

A date to remember

On July 11th 2008 crude oil prices hit the highest ever at $147.29 a barrel (one barrel = 42 US gallons) and triggered the biggest collapse the financial world has ever known. It then dropped to below $33 a barrel as the market collapsed. After nearly three months at around that price it has been creeping up steadily. In the past two months the price has doubled to just over $70. By July 11th however it had dropped back to $59.75 a barrel, but it is predicted to creep back up again.
All this bears no relation to the cost of production or indeed availability of oil. Production remains some 1.5 million barrels a day below what it was on July 11th last year and is unlikely to increase in the immediate future.
It goes to highlight the absolute folly of relying on the market price for just about everything we buy. The only winners are the speculators, and like all gamblers their time will come eventually.

Latest edition of Rolling Stone magazine gives a great insight into how the US mega bankers Goldman Sachs are controlling and manipulating markets that control not only what prices we pay but also what is available on the world markets. In just about every recent market high (bubble), from housing, to oil, to wheat, the name of Goldman Sachs has been at the fore.

Read the text, watch the videos http://tinyurl.com/ldkafv

Monday 1st June

There has been some discussion on Rob Hopkins blog about an escalation of the present economic situation and the general state of world unrest and the implications for Transition Towns. Richard Heinberg feels that Peak Oil, whilst still very much with us, has now become irrelevant and the rapid collapse of the world's economy and social structure is far more urgent.
See the full blog at http://tinyurl.com/nxa9r7. There's a lot of it!

One response, that I feel is very relevant to us in Scarborough, is from a market gardener - below.

Should this be where we focus ourselves, in particular with the Food Group?

"Just taking the question of food, and vegetables in particular, there is so much to consider in emergency planning if we assume that there is a reasonable probability that normal business to business transactions may break down as a result of the economic crash. As a veg grower providing food for approx 350 people per week via a box scheme, at this ‘hungry gap’ time of the year most of what we supply has to be imported, mostly from Europe, so at this time of year we’re particularly vulnerable. From July to April we can grow a substantial percentage of the veg we supply to those 350 people.

But, if the main food distribution networks fell apart, we could have the whole population of our area turning to the handful of veg growers in this region looking for food – say 300,000 people looking to local growers with a total capacity of perhaps 2,000 people. Result? Instant chaos.

Let’s assume that somehow we got around that problem, currently we rely completely on buying in seed to grow the veg from a variety of UK-based companies, and so far as I know this is absolutely standard amongst UK veg growers. Several of those seed companies buy in their seed from elsewhere in the world where it’s cheaper/quicker to grow plants for seeds. Once again, if we believe that seed may no longer be available in a crisis, we’ve got to prepare for this now - to learn how to grow plants for seed, to hold back a percentage of the plants we’d normally harvest before seeding, so we can collect and safely store the seed in preparation for the following growing season.

Just to complicate things a little more, the veg seed companies are rapidly being bought out by the multinationals such as Monsanto (now the largest owner of veg seed I believe) who are producing more and more F1 seeds, and quickly reducing the number of ‘open-pollinated’ varieties in their catalogues. Great for building profits for the seed companies. Terrible if we suddenly need to ‘save our seed’ since the F1 seed will produce plants that won’t come true.

So we need to rapidly build local capacity to get some resilience – but how to gently alert the population to the fact that they can’t rely on the just-in-time Tesco model if there’s an emergency? I took a good look at the ‘crash course’ questionnaire while at the conference, and it quickly focussed my mind on how vulnerable modern living has made us in so many different ways. So I think we do need to find a way to expose the vulnerabilities of our current way of life to motivate people to rapidly “be the change” while at the same time avoiding panicking the population. The trick will be to find the words and the tone that fits the bill"

Monday 25th May

Why not a bike scrappage scheme?

The Verkehrsclub Deutschland (/Transport Club Germany/) is an environmental organization working towards environmentally friendly and socially sustainable mobility. They are demanding that the government's car scrappage scheme should be extended to allow people to claim the €2500 for trading in an old car for a bicycle or public transport season ticket.

A number of German cities are developing the idea by offering subsidies for people to buy new bicycles.

The city of Mannheim made €5000 available to pay 100 people €50 to exchange an old bicycle for a new one, and Witten budgeted €1000 for 20 such incentives.

There are now 11 countries offering some form of car scrappage payments, and last month Germany increased its available funds from €1.5 billion to €5bn because demand is so great. Nothing to do with encouraging sustainable motoring but everything to do with propping up “The Economy”

A new report from the oil industry shows a league table of the least secure, least sustainable oil consumers, in terms of supply. Top is United States, followed by the Netherlands, with France, Spain and Germany not far behind. Surprisingly UK is number 18, behind Canada.

Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester have dramatically reduced people's dependency on cars, in a government project to promote sustainable transport.
£10 million in DfT funding, promote more frequent walking, cycling and public transport use and cut single-occupancy car trips.

At the end of the initiative, car use had fallen by almost nine per cent across the three towns. This is equivalent to 85 million kilometres of car travel taken off the road and annual savings of more than 17,000 tonnes of carbon.

There was a 12 per cent rise in cycling in Peterborough and a 19 per cent increase in Worcester. Darlington, which received extra government cash to improve cycling facilities, saw levels of bike use more than double over the same period.

A similar scheme was tried in York earlier this decade and achieved a 16% reduction in car use but was not sustained due to lack of funding and dictates from Dept of Transport on priorities. All part of keeping the motor industry going to fuel economic growth!

/Extracted from the magazine Planning, thanks to Alan Francis./

National Liftshare Day, Tuesday 9th June

Those who share their daily commute with just one other person are saving on average one tonne of CO2 emissions every year, as well as money on fuel.
Check out liftshare https://www.liftshare.com <https://www.liftshare.com/> for more details. They also run BikeBUDi a simple and free to use scheme that simply matches people up with others cycling the same way, so they can ride together. Similarly with WalkBUDi. They also run http://school-run.org/ which matches parents doing the school run. Car-share York is another of their initiatives.

Vestas, on the Isle of Wight, the Uk's only wind turbine factory is due to close soon. The Danish owners blame the recession, weakness of the pound, British nimbyism and the lack of commitment by the British government to renewable energy.

Daimler AG has acquired a 10 percent stake Tesla Motors Inc. Tesla is the only production car maker selling *a highway capable electric vehicle* in North America and Europe. Daimler's 'smart fortwo' (an electric version of the popular smart car) is due to start full production later this year in France. 100 pre-production models have already been extensively road-tested in the UK over the past year, plus a further 100 in Berlin. Tesla of California already have a production model electric sports styled car with a 300 mile range per charge and a top speed of more than 65 mph.

No joined-up thinking!

This was from an invitation to delegates for a conference entitled “Low carbon cities - sustainable urban development through technology”

“Dear colleagues,
There are still bargain flights available to attend the next EUROCITIES Knowledge Society Forum conference, taking place in Reykjavik from 10-12 June 2009. Please check www.icelandexpress.com <http://www.icelandexpress.com/> <http://www.icelandexpress.com/>for flights starting from 240 Euro (round trip, including taxes) from various European destinations. Please contact me directly if you need assistance to book your travel or accommodation.”

In many parts of Europe agriculture is taking the lion's share of our *water supplies.* Supermarkets are full of fresh vegetables from Spain. They are grown mainly in Andalucia which is the driest part of Spain and the industry is taking 80% of Spain's water according to reports from The European Environment Agency and WWF. Andalucia has the highest water abstraction (water removal) rate in Europe. The WWF report found that just four crops in Spain swallowed up 1 billion cubic metres (1,000 billion litres) of water. That represents the annual household consumption of 16 million households in the UK, and UK households are extravagant even by European standards. Studies have shown that in the past 40 years rainfall in Andalucia has decreased by an average of 120mm per year and is now down below 300mm per year. In North Yorkshire, the driest side of the country, average rainfall is currently around 600mm per year. Parts of Spain are now suffering drought as a direct result of intensive agriculture and this is beginning to have a social impact on the population. Although it is now a major part of the Spanish economy, this is a very good reason to avoid buying Spanish vegetables and buy local produce, in season, instead.

Le Chat Noir, 10 Eastborough, Scarborough presents:

Sunday 14th June 7pm – 9pm. French Cabaret night An evening of entertainment (accordion music and singing) and a glass of wine and plate of cheeses included in the price of £10 per ticket. All profits to Scarborough's Rainbow Charity. Tickets must be booked in advance.

Monday 15th June 6pm. Cooking with wild plants workshop - Recipes and samples will be given on how to cook with wild herbs and plants, which helps us create a better relationship with nature. £2 Booking essential. Supporting Sustainable Scarborough.
Enquiries: Scarborough. 01723 350653

Friday 8th May

Don't forget!

Meeting about our constitution Monday 18th May 7.00pm at Green Planet, Hanover Road.
Meeting of Scarborough Borough Council Cabinet to discus service 121 bus stops, Council Chambers, Town Hall Tues 19th May 10.00am. Observers required.
Regular pub social Tap & Spile Falsgrave from 8pm Tues 26th May

New Scarborough Local Food Directory
A revised edition of the Scarborough Local Food Directory is now online. You can search nearly 100 entries by category or postcode area. www.scarborough-local-food.org.uk/directory.html
If you know of a local business which you think should be included in the Directory, but isn't yet, please email its details to Madeleine Parkyn at localfood@topfield.org.uk.

A report by the Food Commission is critical of government incentives to make us eat more healthily. Despite a £1.3 million a year campaign to encourage us to eat '5 a day', the actual increase in fresh fruit and veg intake between 1974 and 2007 is barely 10g per person per day. There has been a significant decrease in native fruits and veg but an increase in those from hotter climates. The biggest selling 'fruits' by a long way are bananas and juices, neither of which supply cartenoids or phytochemicals associated with protection from disease. On the vegetable front, ready prepared salads are the biggest seller, once again with debatable health benefits. Any increase in sales is offset by the dramatic increase in food waste over the past 10 years. 25% of all food purchased now finishes up in the waste bin. The Food Commission concludes that whilst the £4 million and some odd expenditure over two two year periods has changed peoples eating habits it has not had the desired effect of encouraging people to eat more healthily.

Economists and oil experts at a recent conference in Geneva have carried out some convoluted calculations to prove that if the price of crude oil goes over $200 a barrel most of the world's GDP is used up in paying for it and at around $150 a barrel the world's economy will begin to stall – as happened in July 2008. Based on those figures, at the current price of nearly $50 a barrel, we are already spending something approaching a quarter of the world's GDP to keep ourselves supplied with the stuff!

A report by the Canadian Energy Research Institute shows that the cost of complying with climate-change legislation that is being aggressively pushed in the United States will make Canada's oil sands, already the world's most expensive to develop, even more costly. By February of this year most of the production on tar sands had stopped because the market was not strong enough to support it.

Fossil fuel companies in America have already spent $44.5 million since February of this year in a campaign to stop America adopting climate-change legislation. Between January and April, the coal industry alone has spent $71 million in saturation coverage of the media.

Energy giant E.ON is investing £150 million in a scheme to provide high intensity LED street lighting to local authorities across the country. They intend to lease the equipment to local authorities to get their money back.
The new lamps, using Light Emiting Diodes (LEDs) instead of conventional lamps have eight times the life, give a 26% reduction in energy use and a 40% reduction in carbon emissions. They also have more than twice the light output per watt of energy compared to conventional street lamps. They are also highly directional so there is less 'light spill'.
They were trialled in a car park in Coventry, and are now being fitted to street lamps in Oldham and Rochdale.
A further development is to use these same lights for rural road junctions, linked to sensors so that they are only on as traffic approaches.

Both First Group and Stagecoach Group see Peak Oil as a real threat to their business. Accordingly, Stagecoach is investing in experiments with used cooking fats to run their buses. Moir Lockead of First Bus is quoted as saying “I argue that the sooner we get fuel prices to move up again the better, because at that point we’ll stop wasting it. Even if we did nothing else, we’d at least be a better and more efficient company because we’d be conserving energy.” They are now looking seriously at 100% biofuels but acknowledge that biofuel from cereal crops is not the way forward. Both companies are also pushing the government to electrify much more of the railway network.
What about Arriva? They have made no comment and do not appear to acknowledge a problem.
East Yorkshire Motor Services? Maybe we need to ask them.

Reclaim the streets.
For some inspiring film clips of what can be done – and is being done – take a look at http://www.streetfilms.org/

Saturday 21st March

Congratulations to Scarborough Climate Action Network on opening their shop 'Green Planet' on Hanover Road, Scarborough.

Tuesday 10th March

Message from the Transition team at Hull:
“On Sat 14th march we are showing "The Power of Community" followed by a cuppa and cake and a chat. It starts at 3pm at The Village Hall on Boulevard (near the stadium---well---ish!!!) Any or all would be welcomed with open arms! Our numbers are rising slowly but steadily and hopefully this event will be successful, with more to follow. We have managed to get some city councillors interested in our initiative which is a start.”

More local news
From Jane Pepper and the Friends of Safe Ways Park:
“We have secured £1780 from First Trans Pennine Express to purchase 70 trees + compost to plant fruit trees (apples, plums, cherries) along the route of the Old Railway. We need to get them planted before the middle of March and so would appreciate help on Saturday 28 Feb and Saturday 7 March.”

York in Transition booked 500 seats at the Theatre Royal to stage George Marshall's Carbon Detox Show. They bit the bullet and swallowed hard. They succeeded. Over 400 people watched an very informative and entertaining performance. Full marks to York in Transition. It proves what can be done if you try.

Scarborough Climate Action Network is screening Zeitgeist, a film giving an activists view of what is driving our society around the world. Showing will be at The Valley Bar, Valley Road at 7.45pm on Thursday 19th March

News from the outside world
In three successive general election campaigns this government has made a pledge to cut carbon emissions by 20% compared to 1990 levels. It has also passed what has been hailed as the strongest Climate Change Bill of any nation. So when is it going to start doing something? When they came to power in 1997 CO2 levels were at 582.9 mte (million tonnes CO2 equivalent). By the end of 2007 it was 584.9 mte according to the government's own figures, just published. Throughout 2008 it rose even further.

The market for plastic recyclate has fallen flat on its face due to the economic situation. But, Network Rail is trailling the use of sleepers made from recycled plastic to replace the old wooden ones still being used on slower lines such Scarborough to Hull and even in parts of Scarborough to York line. Holland has been doing this for a number of years! No surprise there.

Following on from the piece about voracious slugs in the last issue of this newsletter comes news that levels of metaldehyde have exceeded maximum levels in drinking water in several areas this winter due to the heavy rainfall. Metaldehyde is commonly used in slug pellets and is harmful to nearly all life, including pets and garden birds, and to humans. Manufacturers have agreed to print maximum usage guidelines on the packaging. Does anyone ever read it? “Wear gloves when handling this product, do not allow to come into contact with the skin, do not breathe in the dust, do not use where pets are known to go” That's what's on the packets already. Available in just about every high street shop that sells anything to do with gardens, often with no choice of alternative. Like most pesticides, where is the control on its sale?

Farmers are reporting that due to the heavy rains much of the nitrogen and minerals have been leeched out the soil and so when conditions improve they will need to apply extra amounts of artificial fertilizer this year. Hasn't anyone told them about organic farming and permaculture? It is only because it is a monculture, and the soil is starved of its natural inputs that it leeches out. Look in any natural forest. All plants get what they need to sustain them without any inteference from mankind. Farming on forest principles produces more than three times as much food per hectare, with minimal input, as any 'commercial' farm.

Tesco have gobbled up over 1 million Easter Eggs at a rock bottom price that had been ordered by Woolworths before they collapsed. This means they will sell them at well under half the price of anybody else and still make a very handsome profit.

The government is about to dish out several hundred million pounds to the regions to spend on transport improvements. It is down to each of the regions to submit a Regional Funding Application (RFA) what they prefer that money to be spent on. Yorkshire and Humberside region has been awarded around £6bn and has put forward 13 road building schemes as a priority. As less of a priority – a few more trams for Sheffield, a new railway station at Haxby near York, and 'oyster card' scheme for York (pre-payment card for all public transport) at a projected cost of £2m, three more Park & Rides for York. Then something called the Bridlington Integrated Transport scheme (a mere £200,000 allocated) and the Beverley Integrated Transport scheme. If these are anything like the Scarborough Integrated Transport scheme is all about keeping cars moving. Ours amounted to the 'Park & Ride' and has cost over £19m. Over the few days of operation so far I saw one bus on which I counted six people. I have seen loads with nobody on. I have a copy of Yorkshire & Humberside RFA if anybody would like to read it. I question just how concerned our region is about reducing our carbon footprint or even encouraging people to use public transport.

As part of the Campaign for Better Transport, Nick Harvey (a member of this email list) runs the Friends of the Bridlington-Filey-Scarborough Railway Line, a voice for public transport users, both visitors and residents, using bus, train, coach and taxi along this rural corridor. They promote greater use of all public transport and campaign for improvements to services with better co-ordination to enable a more comprehensive service to be provided in this rural area. As a result of Nick's efforts Northern Rail have promised an hourly service from Scarborough to Bridlington on weekdays and a reduced version of the summer service on winter Sundays. (Compared to no service at all on Sundays at present) Contact Nick info@greenexpressrailtours.co.uk and get involved.

BBC 2 screened “A Farm for the Future” last week – an examination of alternative ideas for farming including an investigation into permaculture. I now have a copy of it and hope we can screen it soon. A few intersting facts came out of it

1) There are roughly 15,000 small farmers in UK, and their average age is 60.

2) Only 4 species of grass are sown in our cultivated meadows. Most grazing land is sown with just one species which makes a very weak surface for livestock under wet conditions – which means that most livestock has to be kept indoors during the wettest part of the year, at great cost and great expenditure of energy. Traditional meadows have several species of grass which form a strong mat which will withstand livestock on it during the winter. - a huge saving in cost and energy.

3) Permaculture delivers 5 times more food per hectare than conventional farming.

A Vision for the Future – workshop held at Friends Meeting House 7/3/09

A very successful workshop with the following outcomes:

Re-Skilling Group
Facilitator: David Yates
Will be carrying out an audit of skills being taught in the education sector.

Food Group
Facilitator: Pete Redwood
Will be investigating the possibility of a regular farmer's market in the town centre.
Will be conducting a survey of farms within a five mile radius to find out what is grown and what can be grown.
Will be investigating the possibility of a series of workshops/outings on the subject of food foraging (food for free) and following it up with recipes, cooking etc.

Energy Group
Facilitator: Steve Parker
Will be looking ways to improve the building stock of the town and investigate ways of distributing information on solid wall insulation.
Will be looking at ways of encouraging a reduction in car use.

These are all open groups. Anybody is welcome to join in. If you wish to get involved in any or all of them, please contact the facilitators direct. If there is a subject you are particularly interested in that we haven't covered please contact Pete Redwood Tel: 01723 353640

Monday 16th February

Coastival
We had more than expected at our showing of Power of Community, which raised some good comments and thoughts at the end. We also had a fair bit of interest at the Arts and Green Fair on the Sunday. Welcome to all those who signed up over the weekend.

Pub Social
The next pub social will be on Tuesday Feb 24th at the Tap & Spile, Falsgrave from 8pm. Come along and meet us all. Bring your friends and neighbours.

Climate Rollercoaster
York Theatre Royal Tuesday 3rd March 7.30pm Transition York is hosting George Marshall's one man Climate Detox show. It's the show about the book Carbon Detox. Tickets £10 (£5 concessions) from Theatre Royal box office 01904 623568. Further details from Edward Harland 01904 651323.

A Vision For The Future
Saturday 7th March 2.0pm at Friends Meeting House, Quaker Close, Woodlands Drive (near the hospital). A workshop, open to everybody, to start the process of formulating our vision for the future. We hope to establish a number of focus groups from this workshop who will then be looking at specific areas such as food, energy, transport etc and developing sustainable ideas for Scarborough. There may be a nomimal charge (£2 or £3) to cover costs but we haven't done the arithmetic yet.

Other news

Sustainable Communities Act
Scarborough Borough is one of only 74 authorities in the country so far (out of over 400) to sign up to the Sustainable Communities Act. The Act was passed last October “to promote the sustainability of local communities”. Listed under section 2 are “matters to which the local authority must have regard”. In summary it covers the provision of local services, the availability of goods produced within a thirty mile radius; it is designed to encourage organic food production; it is about conserving energy and producing it locally from sustainable sources; it is about social inclusion and mutual aid. It's about all the things we stand for.

How does it work?

The local authority now has the power to approach the Secretary of State to modify a law to enable sustainable practices to happen. An example quoted by Local Works, the organisation that pressed for it:

“Did you know that a largte supermarket does not have to pay non domestic business rates on its car parking spaces? You could compare this with the position faced by local shops of having their trade affected by yellow lines and parking costs. Point out that this is not a level playing field for trade. So why not suggest the following idea to your local panel, urging them to make it one of the suggestions to be put to the Secretary of State (SoS). - ‘That the Secretary of State takes the power (or gives local authorities the power) to levy non domestic rates on all those car parking spaces – with a power for the council to allow discounts (perhaps up to 100%) if the supermarket, or other store, sources a stated percentage of goods for sale locally.’

A variation on that theme could be used in our fight against Asda and Sainsburys expansion.

Lets make sure our council uses it now that they have signed up to it. View the full details at http://www.localworks.org

From the European Federation for Transport and the Environment
* Heavy goods vehicles account for just 3% of all road vehicles and just 7% of total vehicle kilometers, account for 20% of the congestion, are responsible for twice as many road deaths per kilometer as cars, and by 2030 their CO2 emissions will have increased by 54% despite increased pollution controls on HGV's and buses coming into force in September of this year. This is according a report just published by CE Delft, a firm of Dutch environmental consultants.

* Currently no EU country is allowed to charge lorry owners more than the infrastructure costs (curently 51 billion Euros, agianst an income in HGV taxes of 54 billion Euros.) A controversilal law working its way through the EU parliament may change this and allow governments to charge for externalities of noise, congestion, polution and excessive wear and tear to roads.

* Austria has had its knuckles rapped by the EU for imposing emission controls on second-hand cars that were too strict and for imposing bans on heavy lorries on some main roads.

* A car owner has taken Mercedes Benz to court for selling him a car that had a higher fuel consumption than that published by the manufacturers. He won and has been awardedcompenstation for the excess fuel he has used.

More roads
The government has quietly, but rapidly, increased the amount it has been spending on roads on the past couple years. One transport campaigner has suggested that the effect could be just as damaging as the 3rd runway at Heathrow, except that it is gettting no publicity.

Despite their greenwash, the Lib Dems have also been promoting and supporting road widening schemes.

New resource
The Self Sufficiency Shop has just gone online. Very limited range at present but worth keeping an eye on. They are online ordering only.

The world leaders, for years past, are RealGoods. Based in USA, but they send all over the world. Their Solar Source Book is a mine of information.

And of course, for hand powered tools, loose nails and scews, pure bristle and wood brushes, wood burning stoves etc. don't forget R. Yates in Malton (near the bus and train station). If they don't sell it it probably doesn't exist. They have a website but it doesn't do justice to the huge range they sell.

For a wealth of ideas without having to buy things see http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk

Excess consumption
A new report from the European Environment Agency claims that 80% of European greenhouse gas emissions still come from the energy sector.

Also available from the same source is their 40 page report on Environmental Signals – the signs that we are doing things wrong. For instance – Spain, where many of our vegetables and fruit come from these days, has the second highest water abstraction rate in Europe, just behind Cyprus. They are closely followed by the UK. The report suggests that such high rates are unsustainable and will lead to problems in the near future. Ireland is near the bottom of the table. Their use is tiny in comparison.

The large amount of vegetables imported from Spain has also given rise to an increase in slugs in the UK, namely a particular species which breeds prolifically and dominates all other species. The grey squirrel of the slug world!

The report also claims that growing bio-fuels for transport, even in Europe, creates far more CO2 in the growing and processing than the resultant fuel saves, as well as taking land that should be used for food production.

News from the Oil Drum
Latest analyis on the overall efficiency of different fuel sources for vehicles.
Bio-ethanol = 12.5% based on fuel produced from crops grown in temperate climate
Hydrogen Fuel Cell = 24% based on hydrogen produced by electolysis using wind power electricity
Petrol = 34% using standard grade petrol in standard internal combustion engine

Electric = 73.6% using wind powered electricity for charging

Another oil company declared insolvent – Energi Oil plc of Newfoundland, Canada.

An ironic twist. The low price of oil is making road surfacing (and by extension, road building) cheaper.

The International Energy Agency is expecting the Peak Oil syndrome to show itself in 2010 due to the cut-backs in production now and the lack of investment, or potential investment, to get it going again. I used the term 'syndrome' because in July last year 75% of the world's oil producers were unable to produce sufficient to meet demand. Peak Oil has really already arrived.

North Sea oil production and development is virtually at a standstill due to lack of investment and 50,000 jobs are at risk. North Sea oil peaked in 1997 and has been dropping at around 5% per year ever since. Production for December 2008 was about 1.4 million barrels a day – down from nearly 6 million barrels a day in 1996.

Reconciliation organisation ACAS has found that Italian workers got the jobs at the Lindsey oil refinery because they were ready for work as soon as they clocked on and worked without tea breaks. British workers lost out because they wanted time to change once clocked on, and demanded tea breaks.

We are having the coldest winter for many years – but – global February temperatures are the highest they have been since the 19th century.