Turning over the Church's year

 I find myself saying from time to time that we should make more of Holy Saturday. I know that the Orthodox have a liturgy about the burial of Christ's body. I think that holding it as a day of lament, a day to consider what it would be like to live, for example, in a meaningless universe without God, a day to remember the finality of death -holding back from anticipating a relativising of that finality. This appears not to be what the Orthodox do -as they think about the harrowing of hell and the 'resting' of Christ -which still seems framed by the hint of resurrection. I think we could do with an exploration of the darkness, maybe.

But then as I think about adjusting our liturgical practice, a flow of other things I'd like to explore about the church's year starts (some of which I've posted before) ...

I think that we should perhaps start the church's year with Creationtide; in September. This would align with the new academic year and draw us much closer to our Jewish roots. I'd suggest that the liturgical colour should be green and that to compensate, we might take another colour for 'ordinary time'. I'd suggest a pale grey or cream -something basically perceived as neutral.

Then in November we've lately begun to have Kingdomtide. How about we have that as the penitential preparation for the Christmas season? -And use purple or deep blue as the season's colour? Maybe during this season we might fast a la Ramadan -not eating during daylight hours.

I'd suggest then we swap the Advent colour for a festal red (and inter-shot with green?) recognising that December is essentially in experiential terms in our society, greater Christmas: let it be and don't fight it -hence penitential prep in November, Kingdomtide which lends itself to the themes of death, judgement, the last things etc.

I think I'd suggest that the liturgical colours for Lent should be brown and/ or sack-cloth should be used. This suggests soil, humility and the basis for new growth. To support this, I'd suggest we use ash and/or soil instead of (or as an optional alternate to) holy water at the entrance to church buildings during this season encouraging people to mark themselves with a streak or two. I'd also suggest exploring a fresh ashing on Good Friday -perhaps as a way to start a Stations of the Cross or similar.

During Holy Week, I reckon black and grey should be the theme palette. This resonates with the way that black is generally conceived in wider society as a colour of sombreness and mourning. Perhaps dark grey during most of the week and black for Good Friday and Holy Saturday -which we should definitely do more with liturgically. A day of lament and consideration of loss -including the death of God, hope etc.

Easter. Yes, gold is a good colour. But how about also using vivid spring greens? -Certainly for the Easter season. I'd strongly discourage any celebration of Easter before sunset of the eve. I'd encourage more careful consideration to strengthen the experience in the liturgy of darkness contrasted by light -which is often lost in the practical enactment of the rites. I've written more about this elsewhere.

I keep wondering whether at Pentecost, we should take an idea from the Holi festival in India (and beyond): "one and all, chase each other around with dry paint or coloured water, in water pistols or balloons!". And perhaps a good colour to use in this season would be sunny yellow or a warm orange to pick up on the fiame imagery of Pentecost.

I also think that it'd be great to have a festival -a change of colour- somewhere between the end of Pentecost and the start of Creationtide. So, there's midsummer, traditionally associated with the feast of John the Baptiser on 24 June and there's Transfiguration on 6 August.  The latter should be bright white and maybe a week or two of  that. Midsummer might run from 20 -25 June? Gold?

The other thing is to think through the environmental dimensions of many of these seasons and give them greater prominence. This is important because of the times we live in: we need to bring our relation to the non-human creation into a bigger part of our thinking on the way to becoming better climate citizens. So this could involve recognising Lost Species Remembrance day at the end of November -which would fit with All Souls on 2nd and Remembrance day on and around 11th. Transfiguration could have a dimension of the transfiguration of all creation in the Fullness of Time. Easter holds promise for all of creation. Some days hold seasons of the year significances which could be brought out more: spring, midsummer, autumn and midwinter have ecclesiastical near-neighbours which have traditionally been celebrated togther. There or also cross quarter-days of Candlemas, Mayday, Lammas, Hallows'eve which could be opportunities to consider our human relationship to our environment and our Christian discipleship in the natural world in which God has placed us and in which so many of us encounter God. 

I'd suggest that we should be holding days of penitence and lament around Earth Overshoot days. And Rogationtide might gain more prominence as days to consider and pray about our food systems globally as well as locally. Since Rogationtide is tied to the feast of the Ascension, it would serve as a short penitential lead-in to that feast. It might be that we look at the tradition of 'beating the bounds' at Rogationtide, -maybe to take in how our 'bounds' have been breached by pollution and by extraction, globalisation and colonialism. The message would be that, yes, we have to look after and know our own patch but also it is not possible to be simply parochial.

There are probably things I've been thinking about that I've for the moment missed out. I'll add more if/when I recall any.

Cremation, Burial -or what? -Christian eco-propriety in funeral practice

We've been thinking about disposal of human remains lately, particularly our own when eventually it needs to happen: what do we want to do? Mostly our thinking has been around it being ecologically righteous as far as possible, starting with the body itself not polluting or being treated in a way that will hinder the natural recycling that nature has been doing for millions of years with dead bodies. And then also the processes of funeral rites not contributing to pollution or global heating (or at least minimising that impact).

But/And, as Christians, we also want funerals to be consistent with Christian discipleship. So this article when I happened across it, caught my attention. It did so because the article had no consideration of the environmental dimension but rather mainly a -forgive me for the slight disparagement- a narrow individual-salvation concern as shown by this couple of sentences early in the piece.

Some believe that the Bible says you can’t go to Heaven if you’re cremated. This isn’t what the Bible says. There is nothing in the Bible that forbids cremation as a means of disposing a person’s body.

Fair enough as far as it goes: our hope of salvation lies in God's grace and remembrance (both in the sense of knowing us 'timelessly' and of re-making us eschatologically) of us beyond death not in a particular treatment of human remains. A few moments reflection will show up problems with the idea of the physical remains being necessary to ultimate participation in the new creation: many, many people's bodies do cease to exist after enough time. eventually in most conditions even bones' molecules are dissipated into the environment. A theology of reconstruction, if I may characterise it like that, means that after a few hundred or thousand years, there is nothing to reconstruct. It also implies a reconstruction using 'new' material to replace decomposed flesh, so why not simply replace everything? Especially if the new creation's material basis is different to the current material basis? 

Anyway, to return to the main focus: I think that a more wholistic consideration of disposal of our remains should take place; it isn't just about whether we 'go to heaven' or even whether we are being consistent witnesses to Christian teaching. Actually that last clause in the quote includes, in reality, noticing that being good witnesses to Christian perspectives should include -prominently at the moment- doing right and justly by the ecosystem and climate.

With the following quote from the article, however, I see both a positive basis for thinking about corpse-composting and also I find a quibblesome point.

Cremation, however, subtly suggests that our bodies are of no significance. Burial, on the other hand, communicates something far more consistent with the Bible. It affirms not only that the human body has dignity, but also that it has a future. It affirms that death is not the end of the body.

The positive basis is the appraisal of human bodiliness as good and having dignity as well as having a future and those things I definitely affirm. I'm not convinced, however, that cremation really does suggest lack of significance for bodies; I think that's a value judgement that doesn't make sense from 'my' (ecological) perspective -I can see why someone might say that but it lacks force because it only communicates those things if you come from a certain cultural background or with a certain way of looking at life-processes narrowly focused on individuals in an industrial system. 

I'm not convinced that the means by which a body is decomposed do in themselves suggest any such appraisal. Because that's what we are talking about -burial, cremation (or whatever) are all about what processes we entrust a body to for return to the elements. We need to see the bigger picture of molecules and elements returning to the wider ecosphere. What gives a body significance (which is a cultural construct) is how we treat it in terms of 'fare-welling' and how we link that fare-welling to whichever 'bigger picture' of life and cosmos we are beholden to. 

I want to suggest that it is also important to affirm bodiliness by recognising that 'from dust we are created and to dust we shall return' -"dust" being matter, essentially, and the energetic means for its decomposition back to 'dust'. We can do that slowly, by letting bacteria, fungi and biochemical processes work through their life-cycles with the body as raw material. We can do that quickly by oxidising using heat. (And there is another option mentioned below).

More important in terms of Christian ethics and witness is surely making the process most consistent and compatible with the Creator's designs of energy and matter cycles and flows. So, if there's a problem with cremation, it's not really that it disrespects the body or a Christian appraisal of bodiliness. The problem with cremation as I see it, is that it uses methods to accelerate bodily decomposition that are noxious for the environment (ie usually fossil-fuel in the form of methane based gas jets). It may be possible to mitigate that, and to do so would help return to a more positive appraisal of cremation.

As a related side-note here, I would also point out that embalming is a pretty bad thing to do from the perspective of environmental impact. 

And while we're considering less-direct issues of body preservation, we might want to consider how a body is stored pending burial, cremation or whatever. Cold-storage often does have a carbon footprint or dangers around coolants' storage and release. So the title of the article that stimulated my response here might also ask "is it OK for Christians to be embalmed?". I think that embalming is far less good than cremation in the bigger picture.

As a Christian, I believe that we honour our Creator by playing our part in good creation-care practices. And this includes disposal of earthly remains. That is a very body-respecting and material-creation-affirming thing to do. It is good biblical theology to recognise the dust from which we come and to participate well in the systems of life-and-death in which that dust plays its part -to 'tend the garden' with our remains as well as our living effort. The practice of embalming seems to me to be not only dishonouring to the living flow of the ecosystem but also to speak, perhaps, of an overemphasis on appearance and human convenience which is not easily consonant with Christian teaching and virtues. Perhaps that's a harsh thing to say, but maybe we need to be sober about such things rather than simply sentimental and revise our funereal practices in the light of the bigger picture I'm trying to work with in this post.

Personally, I'm looking into Water Cremation to recommend and/or enable for my 'relicts'. It seems to overcome the difficulties associated with conventional cremation and offer a way not to take up lots of rooms with a grave plot. And, as a Christian, I'm trusting in God's recreative promises not the condition of my corpse for a share in the resurrection to Life.

And as a PS -as I've looked at what internet search brings up in relation to the environmental impact of cremation, I've noticed that much of the find is backed by funeral industry with an interest in promoting cremation. One of the effects of this is to not quite compare like with like and be low oncomparative detail, giving the impression that hot-cremating is better than burying. Admittedly this is perhaps true if you take in embalming, plot-maintenance etc. But the simple act of burying a body is less fossil-fuel energetic than firing a body. What needs to happen is to factor-in the ecological impact of the 'extra' acts to corpse-disposal: travel, preservation, storage, containment etc of the body and things like travel by mourners. And these need to be accounted for side-by-side in whichever disposal means is chosen. It's hard to believe, ceteris paribus, that like-for-like accounting would put cremation ahead. The one exception may well be so-called water cremation mentioned above.

What Does the Bible Say About Cremation | Is It OK for Christians to Be Cremated - Beliefnet

Destruction of the cosmic Temple? Tish B'Av and Christians

Reading about Tisha B'Av in the Jewish calendar, I understood that it is much about the destructions (yes that's plural: one by the Babylonian empire and the next by the Roman, there has been no third temple) of the Temple in Jerusalem and also folded into those sorrowful recollections have been the calamities that have afflicted Jewish people (pogroms, expulsions, shoah, etc). The destruction of Temple in this way becomes a metaphor for other destructions -including Hiroshima. I wondered whether also taking the idea of creation -or at least the Earth as God's temple- it could be a time of lament for climate-chaos and breakdown? Perhaps a mini-liturgical season could be honoured informally?

If so, how might it look? The Tisha B'Av 'season' is three weeks and the timing is set by the Jewish lunar calendar relating to the anniversaries of the destruction of the Temple (on the ninth of the month of Av). It often takes in Hiroshima day (6 August) and that seems to be one of the things that a number of Jewish people fold into their observance of the season. So maybe the thing to do would be to take in the dropping of the nuclear bombs the 2nd being at Nagasaki on 9 August, and perhaps taking a week or two before that with, therefore, the Feast of the Transfiguration also on 6th. So end of July to start. Perhaps Mary Magdalene's feast day on 22 might be a good starting point -the story of her taking spices to anoint Jesus' body and also witnessing the resurrection are good starting points for considering 'calamitous' events? She's often associated with the woman who anointed Jesus' feet "for his burial" too ...

So I'm not proposing to change Sunday readings or anything at this point but to keep the days in between as times of reflection, prayer and repentance regarding human-made calamities affecting the cosmic Temple that is the Earth.

Why our plutocrats aren't bothered by climate change

Of course! the reason for lack of real motivation and action on the part of our governments is that those in government are pretty much networked into the class of those who are making money by the current financial system.

Now, they might still be interested in stopping the worst and costly effects of the changes that climate change would bring about were it not for the fact that the way things are set up, there is a greater incentive to make money out of selling new stuff to those affected. You see, if you own the means of production, then producing more is more profitable. New homes, new crops, new clothing choices, and all changing rapidly as we work through the succession of effects. All of that means opportunities for selling stuff especially for those with the capital to invest in the new products. It's the same problem at base as with the way we count GDP: it shows up as 'better' for the economy measured by GDP to clean up pollution, for example, than to prevent it; cleaning it up produces measurable economic activity where as stopping it doesn't. And where do the profits from that measurable economic activity go?

In most cases these are people working with organisations, businesses, which do things like scenario planning. The scenarios will certainly include the cases of greater amounts of climate change (above two degrees C). These will then have sophisticated SWOT style planning applied to them. So I conclude that this planning has shown them that there are, from the point of view of profit, greater opportunities than threats in the scenarios which bear down on the poorer members of our global society. As a Friends of the Earth spokesperson said:

“Compensating coastal communities affected by climate change is simply a matter of social justice, ... At the moment, the government is dumping these costs on individual households and vulnerable communities.”Almost 7,000 UK properties to be sacrificed to rising seas | Environment | The Guardian:

This is just the pattern that we are already seeing: the cuts are being made at the expense of the poorer and more vulnerable and letting off the richer (and financially more resilient) from doing their fair share: we are not all in it together. Trickle down economics doesn't work but we are left with the attitude that once was justified by it: that enriching the 'entrepreneurs' is a Good Thing. Of course most of the entrepreneurs turn out to be rentiers not particularly adding any value to the economy as a whole and removing money from the economy by salting it away offshore.

The point we need to grasp is that if you are wealthy enough, you will feel that you can spend enough money to make sure you are shielded from the worst effects: it's easy to move home, easy to buy the stuff you need to deal with the effects, even relatively easy to employ private armies security to keep you safe from the civil strife. They can survive in a new medieval economy by becoming barons.

Why I am very concerned about fracking ...

Of course we can see the argument for getting away from being supplied by potentially hostile and/or unstable countries. However there are major -and I mean major- problems with the whole enterprise.
Most importantly it doesn't help address our need (indeed duty) to decarbonise our economy. So unless it were accompanied by a very rigorous set of mechanisms to make sure that our exploitation of these fossil carbons did not contribute to increasing the net amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses, we should not even be considering this. This is one of the things driving a fairly furious response from members of the public and unless this is taken seriously we could have Twyford Down style protesting going on and given recent revelations about policing such things, a potential for even more bitter civil liberties issues arising. Will the costs of handling civil discurbancc also be including in the licenses? I suspect they won't; and that will mean effectively a hidden taxpayer subsidy. Better surely not to create that situation in the first place.

Secondly are the fairly major concerns about more immediate enviromental impacts. The fears about earth quakes would appear to be well founded at the moment. As do concerns about contamination of water tables and the effects on crops (I note the recent case in East Yorkshire). Again, failure to take such concerns seriously is likely to risk civil discurbance and raises the question of who will pay for policing, court cases, etc.

Thirdly, it's hard to work out why the energy security issues cannot better be met by pursuing even more rigourously the non-carbon paths already beginning to be explored and which show considerable and accelerating promise. Given this alternative strategy shows every chance of furthering several good outcomes (decarbonising, local jobs, regional jobs, potential for Britain to rejoin global leadership in related areas of tech ...).

Add that for many of us there is a big suspicion that the present government are too fond of  doing things that work well for informally influential friends and moneyed interests but are not necessarily helpful to the welfare of the wider population and for which our grandchildren will curse us heartily, and you have a recipe for a much less happy nation and huge costs in the short to medium term and stacking up exponentially as climate change accelerates.

See some further views here.
You might also 'enjoy' this news piece:

Don't leave your paper behind. Really?

On many of the buses I catch in and around Tyneside, there are copies of the free 'paper  Metro. which, presumably the bus companies receive an adnvertising payment for allow to be placed on their buses. At the same time, a number of buses have a public notice ´Don't leave your paper behind. Take it with you and recycle it´ In some notices, leaving your paper behind is said to be littering.

 

I think there are some problems with this.  It's a free as in 'giveaway' newspaper. It is offered at the front of the bus in such a way as to encourage people to pick it up and read it on their journey. In many cases passengers will have read as much as they wish by the time their journey ends and not wish to take it with them. I suspect that many of us almost instinctievly feel that leaving it on your seat to be picked up by another passenger is a neighbourly thing to do (though dropping it on the floor isn't). There's an interesting issue about 'ownership' involved here. The notices seem to imply that picking up a paper makes it yours.

 I think the psychology of picking up a free paper on public transport is that it is often felt to be a public good not a private possession, or at least it might only become a private possession once you put it in your bag or carry it off the bus or train, until that time it is still potentially re-placeable in the public domain and, in fact, to do so is a public good of neighbourliness because you are making the service of news and entertainment available to others. Thus it is not littering: it is recirculating.  This is something to be encouraged, surely? Even the advertisers in said 'paper would agree -albeit for different reasons: they would like more eyeballs to take in the product. 

A win-win situation?

Maybe, but not quite: there is the pesky problem posed by the non-co-operators: those who don't want to take it off the bus for their own consumption but also think it more amusing or that it is somehow acceptable simply to throw it on the floor and walk on it ... problem of the commons?

Samsung: finally respond after we contact sponsees

Finally, after contacting Chelsea FC and cc'ing Samsung. I notice too that they routed it through the appropriate regional office (in Gateshead) ...

Dear Customer,


Thank you for getting in touch and raising an important issue regarding
sourcing in Indonesia.

We take all of these matters very seriously and have been engaging with
Friends of the Earth and the broader electronics industry on this issue for
some time. We are also undertaking a thorough investigation of our supply
chain in the region to better understand what is happening, and what part we
play. While we do not have a direct relationship with tin suppliers from
Bangka Island, we do know that some of the tin that we use for manufacturing
our products does originate from this area, which sources much of the
electronics industry.

We believe that our work on this issue should be collaborative, and as a
responsible business we are contacting suppliers, industry bodies and
governments to better understand the issues that you raise and work together
to find solutions. We will communicate with you again as we learn more about
this matter.

Thank you again for your interest in Samsung Electronics.


Kind Regards,

Alan
Samsung Customer Support Centre

Culture is key to eco-housing

I've been working on things to do with cultural studies lately and so been reminding myself and reflecting afresh on how culture is one humongous trialogue between 'stuff', 'happenings' and thinking-and-feeling. The trialogue is unstable though, like any complex dynamical system, it can have areas and times of relative equilibrium when things don't seem to change much.

What is stopping us building more eco-houses?:

It is not technology, or even politics, which is holding us back in building more eco-houses, it is deep rooted cultural and social conventions in how we live and what we expect houses to do for us

So we should note the importance of the way that we think and feel about housing in relation to the things in houses that we tend to use or not and all of that in relation to events like fossil fuel price hikes. It's not just the 'tech'; it's changes in expectations and imagination alongside 'buy-in' to the need and importance of living this way.

Research says: eat less meat; grow healthier

The research indicates that a more vegetable based diet is healthier for us. The so-called 'Jesus diet' which is basically 1st century palestinian peasant fare would have only had meat once a week maybe a bit more if the there were leftovers and maybe we should take a leaf out of that garden (geddit?).  The research says:

vegetarians had lower triglycerides, glucose levels, blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index (BMI). Semi-vegetarians also had a significantly lower BMI and waist circumference compared to those who ate meat more regularly.

I suspect, but the report doesn't say, that the issue is animal fats: if I'm right that means not substituting full-fat cheese for meat, for example ... so something more vegan as well.

So, not only is eating less meat better for the planet (less cattle etc, less resource use) and the food reserves of the world (feed less domestic animals, feed more humans) but it's actually healthier for us.
You know it makes sense; come on people; how can eating less meat NOT be the Christian thing to do?

The Outquisition

I've found myself mulling this over since I read it. It's a bit 'community development' meets environmental crisis, trying to avoid Mad Max! Here's the main scenario that's been bugging me:

"Even if we do a pretty decent job of hugging the curve, and bright green innovation brings prosperity and security to a lot of people in many regions, some others will still suffer from ecological shifts, political abandonment, economic collapse or some combination of all three. Unless things change dramatically, we have not seen our last Dust Bowl, our last New Orleans, our last Detroit. What do the people who are left trapped in degrading places, who don't get the green collar jobs, do?"

To me this chimes with a concern I've had for a few years now, playing away at the back of my mind. The apocalyptic version of which is a new Dark Ages caused by environmental unsustainability becoming catastrophic probably via peak oil's economic effects and the rising tide of global warming. The latter will probably require resettlement of large numbers of people or their re-tooling for new conditions ...

... abandoned people and places are sometimes the ones who most need radical innovation; that, these days, new tools and models are practically scattered all over the ground, just waiting for people to pick them up; but that those who most need them are those who least know how to find them.

In the Dark Ages, arguably, it was the monasteries that kept learning alive and which often enabled development. I wonder whether part of the Church's mission should be conceived of in these terms:

What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition

And if I'm right about that (and check out the five marks of mission for a plausibility check: it hits at least 3 of the 5) ... how do we begin to build the capacity of national and local church institutions to do that?
Worldchanging: Bright Green: The Outquisition:
Ecology, food & civilisation

Just when you thought it was safe to eat Kit Kat ...

They've put fair traded chocolate on Kit Kat. Great. However ... "Nestle, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orang-utans towards extinction. We all deserve to have a break - but having one shouldn't involve taking a bite out of Indonesia's precious rainforests. We're asking Nestle to give rainforests and orang-utans a break and stop buying palm oil from destroyed forests."
Greenpeace | Ask Nestle to give rainforests a break:

I think I just upped the ante ...

... on personal eco-activism: I reported to Gateshead council an incident of suspicious pollution of a stream (for goodness sake it was running GREEN -like someone had poured paint into it) for at least two days over the weekend. It happened here 54.98104,-1.78325 - Google Maps and I sent this reference to them. I also have photos of the water -but I've not yet uploaded them. See what Gateshead environmental protection say...

Bracing for Rising Seas

Forgive the article's long examination of USAmerican effects; at least they give the rest of us a picture of the kinds of things we need to be thinking about. For 'New York' or 'Miami', read 'London' or -I don't know- 'Chichester' (and see here)
... Anyway, here's why you should read the article: to make sense of just something of the magnitude of the problem; "Responding to long-term sea level rise will pose unprecedented challenges to the international community. Economic and humanitarian disasters can be avoided, but only through wise, forward-looking planning. Tough decisions will need to be made regarding the allocation of resources and response to natural disasters. Let us hope that our political leadership can provide the bold vision and strong leadership that will be required to implement a reasoned response."
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Bracing for a Century of Rising Seas.
As Christians we are global citizens; loving our neighbour with a God who cares for the refugees and marginalised means we need to be using our votes with this agenda in mind and speaking with our neighbours in such a way as to influence opinion towards a safer and less volatile world for our neighbours into the future: our grandchildren and their peers.

Interestingly, politically, I think that this makes an adjunct to the already huge case for political and economic decentralisation: we need to pull our nation's financial and governance out of a basket that looks to be submerged. Guess whose parliament is on the front line of inundation? Ditto one of the world's leading financial hubs.

10:10 | sign up or come up with excuses for your grandchildren

Go here. Sign up. It's simple and you have to do it. 10:10 | Cutting 10% of emissions in 2010: "It’s simple: We all cut our carbon by 10% this year. You, me, that bloke walking his dog outside, your work, your kids’ school, the council, the church, the chip shop. Everyone."

Five eco-crimes we commit every day

Quite challenging this. Five eco-crimes we commit every day - environment - 01 December 2009 - New Scientist: "You might think you are doing your bit for the environment, but even if you shun bottled water, buy local produce and reuse your plastic bags, chances are that you have some habits that are far more environmentally damaging than you realise. What's more, if everyone else is doing these things too, their detrimental effects really add up."
I'm considering my response to the ones that apply.

First osmosis power plant

I recall hearing of this a couple of years ago. So it's interesting to read that the prototype is now producing power. It looks like quite an exciting development from a process that I am surprised produces the kind of power it can apparently do.
"In the prototype plant, the two solutions used are salt and fresh water, siphoned from near the point where they meet at the mouth of the fjord. The two liquids are pumped to either side of a membrane, where osmosis creates a pressure equivalent to a column of water 120 metres high. This is used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Many of the world's major cities are on river estuaries that could be ideal for osmotic power generation. Unlike wind and solar power, it can provide a continuous source of energy, although seasonal river-level changes do cause some fluctuations."
First osmosis power plant goes on stream in Norway - environment - 26 November 2009 - New Scientist:

Less meat -better planet - better heart

Eating less meat helps the planet – and your heart - environment - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist: "explored the livestock industry's potential to help the UK halve its carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 1990 levels, and the knock-on effect on the nation's health.

They found that the industry could slash its emissions, but only if the livestock the UK produces, and the meat the nation consumes, drops by 30 per cent. Farms must also optimise their energy efficiency by, for example, capturing carbon in manure.

The health pay-off would be considerable: 18,000 fewer people would die prematurely in the UK each year from heart attacks – a reduction of 17 per cent – as they would eat less of the saturated fats found in meat."

Green Gas

The fact is that that no matter how green our boilers and cookers etc, they still use hydrocarbon that was naturally sequestered from the rest of the ecosystem mostly in the carboniferous period (and there's a reason it's called that, folks; the clue is in the title). If, like me, you are somewhat vexed by this, then I share with you glad tidings that are for, hopefully, all the UK people. Our Green Gas - About Ecotricity - Ecotricity: "The idea of Green Gas. Actual gas, made from green sources, delivered into the gas grid and from there on to your home or business. This hasn’t really been possible until recently – but it is now." I think this means that by buying this when it becomes available, we'd be investing in building further capacity. I seem to recall Ecotricity have a good track record in reinvesting into green projects. I've just signed up for further information when it becomes available. Join me.

Eco-justice and ecological debt

This is from a recent WCC introduction to the statement Statement on eco-justice and ecological debt. I reckon that the term 'ecological debt' might be the one least familiar to readers, so here's what it says: "The concept of ecological debt has been shaped to measure the real cost that policies of expansion and globalization have had on developing nations, a debt that some say industrialized nations should repay. Dr Joan Martinez Alier, a professor at the Universidad Aut�noma de Barcelona in Spain, said climate change, unequal trade, 'bio-piracy', exports of toxic waste and other factors have added to the imbalance, which he called 'a kind of war against people around the world, a kind of aggression.'"
It's hard to see that one 'flying' of course, but it is important for us to acknowledge the truth of the matter. It's of a piece with the probable fact that developed nations 'owe' a lot of development to having been able to asset strip former empire. Of course the issue of the justice of asking people now to pay for the sins of their ancestors (or, worse, for the sins of their ancestors' oppressors) is also something that needs to be taken on board. Full statement here.

Fairness and taxing flying

I'm very sympathetic to some of those mentioned in this article.A tax on the Caribbean | Floella Benjamin | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. I have been too poor, at one time, to be able to go to a funeral in this country of a loved relative because the fare would have meant I wouldn't have been able to pay my rent and eat that month. So while I am about to make myself feel better by having a little rant, please do hold the bigger picture in mind. The rant is set off by thi: "A proposal to raise duty on flights to the Caribbean by almost 100% is unfair"
Unfair? Let's put some perspective here: unfair is that our emissions of CO2 and the methane from animals we can do without eating are what are depriving millions in low-lying countries of land and livelihood. Unfair is that our emissions may deprive our and everyone else's grandchildren of a quality of life we have come to feel entitled to.Unfair is that our flights are contributing to pushing us over the edge climatically and we are not the ones who will bear the brunt of the effects.
That said, The system should be fair, nonetheless in the way that it is applied. But let's beware that we don't take such 'tweakable' details as some excuse not to do anything serious and substantial to begin to address the global issue.