It’s an exceptionally inconvenient truth. Only one American in three believes that human beings are responsible for climate change: a polling result 10% down on where opinion rested the year before.  Worse, the number of Americans who believe that climate change is a hoax or a scientific conspiracy – not doubting,   just damned blank certain – has doubled since 2008.  Add in those who assert that the changes, if any, are of “no significant concern”, and you’ve got 30% of the US denying, scoffing and just walking on by.  Are the issues clearer, the people more committed, here on this side of the Atlantic?  Call for the latest evidence from Ipsos Mori – and find that the proportion of  UK adults who believe that global warming is “definitely” a reality has plummeted from 44% to 31% in the last 12 months.  And although no study of this nature has been completed in Ireland (to my knowlege), figures like these, on both sides of the Atlantic, are getting more sceptical week by week.   The real change of electoral climate is that fewer and fewer voters pay any heed to scientists and politicians.   It isn’t hard to collate the factors that drive disillusion.  Professors with a colloquial touch writing “awful” emails; a recession so tough that it blows future shock away; a cold, cold winter the Met Office didn’t forecast; scientific angst about swine flu revealed as way over the top; dodgy figures, dodgy reporting, dodgy issues way up to UN level.  These are only a few of our least favourite things. Mix them together in the stew of pre-election politics, and the result is lethal inertia.

Environmental issues have slithered down the greasy pole of public anxiety.  They won’t get much of a mention on the imminent reshuffle: no fresh commitments, no crucial pledges.  In one sense, the heat may by rising; in another, the heat is off.  And that, of course, is cause for very significant concern.  Democracies move in particular ways. Voters have to clamber on board when sacrifices are required.  They have to see the need for pain, to sense the danger of doing nothing.  They have to lead their leaders as well as follow – once they switch off, nothing good happens easily, if at all.  An Obama stalled on healthcare reform in the Senate isn’t going to be able to deliver sweeping global warming policies.   He may not be George Bush, but he already seems to know when he’s on a loser. And, without him, you can write the Chinese or Indian scripts. You can tell that the follow-ups to Copenhagen will be feebler, not stronger: true cause for despair. Kick away any mass impetus for tackling climate change as schedules of imminent necessity fade and review panels plod across the wastelands of borrowed time.  What’s to be done (except wait for a natural disaster that ends all argument – and much else besides)?  First, through gritted teeth, say what won’t work, what’s been tried already and failed.  More jaw and Gore from politicians can’t cut it. T hey have come to seem secondhand sources, merely parroting a frail scientific thesis.  That goes, alas, for journalists, too – and for pressure groups issuing lurid warnings or staging angry demos.  Those of us who are convinced, who believe in the necessity of action, haven’t changed our minds. But we’re not the point.  The audience that matters is out there, sleeping or drifting. And rousing it will demand something different, not more of the same. Yet more of the same is exactly what we seem to be getting. More re-examinations of existing evidence, monitored by the people who failed to monitor it last time.  More supposedly transparent attempts to say precisely when Himalayan glaciers will melt. More United Nations panels, flying lugubriously hither and yon in the cause of consensus. More declarations signed by hundreds of scientists on behalf of a notional “scientific community” (rather like letters to editors from umpteen economists urging cuts or no cuts).  None of it has a ring of renewed confidence. And the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee.  We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms.  We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient.

via: guardian.co.uk

Article written by Peter Preston

One of the stories that crept under my personal radar a couple of week ago related to aircraft engines. Aircrafts account of 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of this figure is thought to be higher because the emissions are expelled at height, where they can do the most absorption of light energy. Further aircraft expel vapour trials which are thought to have an effect on the amount of light reaching the surface of the planet by dimming it.

So it is possible, but not completely proved, that flying gives us the worst of all possible worlds – heating the air and dimming the surface.   In the UK  Business Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, has announced that £45 million of taxpayer’s money will be spent on funding a “partnership” (as these things are fashionably bit inaccurately called) between nine Universities and Rolls-Royce, who produce aircraft engines, in a quest to discover ways of making aircraft engines more efficient. If the research finds a more efficient engine, there is no guarantee that the world’s airlines and military will adopt it. The nine Universities concerned would be better to focus research on projects less grand but with better environmental effect.It is an interesting contrast to the way that the Government has treated water heating, where for £45 million, there are existing ways to reduce emission. The aircraft industry has over the years received many hand outs form the taxpayer.  Justification of this is that “The knowledge, skills and high-end production … give us huge opportunities to benefit as global demand for low carbon products grows.” Yes, the opportunities are so huge that Rolls-Royce needs a hand out in order to take advantage of them. By all means invest in low carbon research which is important, but when the ship is sinking it is not the time for the crew to start re-arranging the deckchairs.

This is what the failure of the climate talks means.

The last time global negotiations collapsed like this was in Doha in 2001.  After the trade talks fell apart, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) assured the delegates that there was nothing to fear: they would move to Mexico, where a deal would be done. The negotiations ran into the sand of the Mexican resort of Cancun, never to re-emerge. After eight years of dithering, nothing has been agreed.

When the climate talks in Copenhagen ended in failure just last December, Yvo de Boer, the man in charge of the process, urged us not to worry: everything will be sorted out “in Mexico one year from now.”(1) Is Mexico the diplomatic equivalent of the Pacific garbage patch: the place where failed negotiations go to die? (more…)

WHEN it comes to adopting green parenting practices, being environmentally aware is not the same thing as being environmentally friendly, says green parent and ‘ mumpreneur’ Claire Lancaster, founder of Dandelion Lounge, a personalised stationery service with a focus on families.

” If you asked my mum raising a family in the Seventies if she was ‘environmentally friendly’ she wouldn’t have been able to answer the question, simply because the term would have meant nothing to her,” says Lancaster.

But in the Seventies, her mother opted for reusable terry-towelling nappies, walked everywhere, purchased from a local farm and greengrocers and didn’t go abroad for holidays. (more…)

If they have any sense, the leaders of the world will do well to play down expectations for next winter’s climate change conference in México. The conference in Copenhagen left a great many people disappointed. I predicted that the conference would not be successful, as it seemed to me that the nations of the world needed more time. They might not be in climate change denial, but they are certainly in denial that they are doing anything worthwhile to protect us from climate change. (more…)

As the economy gradually recovers from the past year’s big slump, changes are expected in consumer behavior: according to a recent survey, in 2010 UK and American shoppers are to pay much more attention to transparency and ethical responsibility in their food and beverage purchases.

A survey by market research organization Mintel reveals that, despite a widespread growing confidence and adaptation to overcome the previous restraints, consumers will be adapting to the new economy, moving away from excessive spending toward moderation and higher attention to ethical sourcing and sustainability. (more…)

What do people from Mexico City, Norway, Central Slovakia, Northern China, and South Australia all now have in common with the British? It is talking about the weather. One time the weather was a subject that I only really heard the British and Irish talk about. We would be famous for going on about it, sometimes in minute detail, perhaps that was how we partly overcame our reserve. Nowadays everyone is talking about the weather. (more…)

Having been in Copenhagen for some of the COP15 process over the last two weeks and watching like everyone else the – will they, won’t they – charade played out by the world’s leaders one is forced to ask the question – did the Conference end in abject failure or was it in fact a success?

It is hard to see the Conference as being any kind of success, but then that depends on how we define success and what eyes we use to look at the gathering with.

Yes, of course we all hoped that the world’s politicians would all see the greater reality and notice that not only was there an elephant in the room, but there was a stampeding herd of them forcing us all to realise that we are in fact standing on the edge of a cliff with nowhere to go as the herd approaches.

However…..

Success is defined as being able to see the reality of one’s situation clearer than one saw it before.  For if one sees the truth more clearly then one is better equipped to take meaningful and positive action in order to improve things for the better.

So ……

What we now know is that if we wait for the world’s politicians to take meaningful, equitable, sustainable and bigger picture action in order to secure a better future, the elephants will be upon us long before the politicians will be.

This is in fact a good thing.
Whilst we wait for “others” to act first we all miss our own window of opportunity to be the change we want to see happen in the world.
For in truth what can a few hundred politicians really do in the real world that 6,500,000,000 can’t do by all making one small change each day towards seeing the world becoming a fairer and safer place for all?

The Genie is in fact out of the bottle and to the surprise of some if not many, the name of the Genie on the bottle is not in fact that of Barrack Obama.

However, if you look closely again at the name on the bottle it might just be yours!

The charade of Copenhagen is over and the truth has been revealed.
The power moves back to the people and there is something so right about that fact.
Remember how the Governments of the world were shamed by their people’s overwhelming response to the needs of the Asian Tsunami?

We therefore have a precedent for what is needed and for what works.

You might not be the President but you can for sure be the Precedent!

Here in GreenMe, we love to treat ourselves.   But not if it’s at the cost of the environment.
In this age of fast consumerism we are constantly fighting the urge not to indulge in the latest must have for the home or ourselves.

For that reason we are bringing you exciting news of how you can relieve your eco-concience and still partake in some shopping therapy!!  Next week the well known Mullingar Auction House are hosting another of their famous events; (more…)

What if you knew where your cotton socks came from?

Or knew about the person who picked your coffee beans?

What if you knew how fresh green beans come to sit on the supermarket shelf all year round…? Would you stop buying them? Or would you in fact start buying them?
(more…)