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Issue 3 wikifeed
Local and Regional
July 7 Issues based marketing agency Creative Concern has succeeded in securing a two-year, £180,000 contract from Enworks, the regional body that seeks to encourage environmentally sustainable business practices. from how-do
July 7 The Manchester office of Groundwork UK awarded a two-year marketing services contract to agency Creative Concern to promote Enworks, a publicly-funded programme which helps businesses in the North West to go green. The contract, which was publicly tendered in February and runs until March 2010, is believed to be worth around £180,000. Enworks, which is funded with £6m from the Northwest Regional Development Agency, advises businesses on how to reduce waste and energy usage and increase recycling. (From Crains.
July 8 Preston entrepreneur Steve Jackson has increased his stake in local business Recycling.co.uk.
segregates and recycles metals, plastics and glass. The company has also pioneered Recycling Lives, a Preston-based charity that aims to provides relief from financial hardship, homelessness and poverty
July 8 Manchester Green City Team releases its July Bulletin. Not a dickey-bird about climate change
July 10 Euro MP Chris Davies (Lib Dem) condemned the government for failing to recylce enough batteris
July 14 SAICA, a Spanish company, announces plans to build a recylced paper mill in Trafford.
July 14 Solar panels will provide enough heat to save up to 30 per cent of the energy costs of running a health centre in Bury (Crains, 14 July page 13)
July 14 bmibaby and easyJet announce more regular flights to Barcelona and Geneva (among other places)
July 15 The Northwest Development Agency have put out to tender the establishment, management and development of the Northwest Climate Fund. "The northwest Climate Fund offers England's Northwest a genuine opportunity to invest ina n innovative and powerful carbon reduction fund for the region which could help identify, launch and fund a range of small and medium-scale projects across Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside
July 16 Salford-based green energy company Ener-g has equipped a community heating system at Stratford Eye, a mixed tenure development of offices and apartments overlooking the Olympics site in East London. It will harness Ener-g’s tri-generation technology to create its own cooling, heating and electricity and reduce the 19-storey building’s C02 emissions by approximately 93 tonnes per annum – equivalent to the environmental benefits of a 36-hectare forest containing 14,000 trees.(see North West Business Insider)
July 18 Launch of the "Mini-Stern"
National
July 7 The union "Unite" said company executives should have their pay and bonuses linked to meeting environmental targets.
July 7 Ruth Kelly announced a slowdown on biofuels for transport after the Gallacher report confirms what campaigners have said all along- they drive up food prices, threaten social and ecological diversity.
July 8 Environmental Audit Committee report urges shorter term targets and steep domestic cuts ahead of carbon trading.
July 8 Adverts subverted and protest threatened for Fairford Air show by climate change campaigners, who see the event as highly pollutive as planes will be flown from all over the world. The more cycnical among the protestors argue that the event simply stands to 'make the business of dropping bombs more family friendly'. (indymedia)
July 8 The Environmental Audit Committee says expanding airports and buying in emissions credits will damage the UK's efforts to hit reduction targets. It says there should be more focus on cutting by 25-40 per cent by 2020.
July 8 More than 80 Labour MPs have signed an amendment to the Climate Change Bill, in an effort to get the government to raise the 2050 target from a 60% reduction to an 80% reduction.
July 9 Greenpeace, RSPB and other groups issue an "Energy Efficiency Scorecard" on the governments efforts. "Little progress" is the take home message.
July 10 Cleaning up nuclear powerstations could significantly exceed £73 billion quid, according to the Public Accounts Committee
July 10 The free-market thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that enthusiasm for "green taxes" are unrealistic.
July 10 A Foreign Office minister declares that shifting the views of foreign publics on cimate change has moved to "the heart of the UK's public diplomacy effort". (FT)
July 11 Insurers will offer cover for homes at risk from flooding after reaching a new agreement with the government.
July 12 Centrica, which owns British Gas, is looking for outside investors to pay for half its planned £3.5bn wind farm programme.
July 14 The CBI warns the Tories, in effect, that they're too left-wing, in their opposition to the planning bill.
July 14 Gordon Brown wants at least 8 new nuclear power plants in the next 15 years and says there shouldn't be an upper limit if energy companies want to build more.
July 14 David Miliband talked about hot air and hurricanes with Caribbean leaders for two days
July 14 The Environmental Audit Committee reports that government departments are falling far behind their internal carbon reduction targets.
July 16 Ofgem will force power suppliers offering so-called "green tariffs" to spend more on renewable energy.
July 16th. A third of Tory MPs who responding to a survey questioned the existence of climate change and its link to human activity. Two-thirds said tackling climate change should not be a priority for local councils.
July 17. Another shortlisted scheme for the government's ecotowns programme was put in doubt after the land owners, the Wellcome Trust, involved in the proposed Cambridgeshire development decided not to sell. Ministers are left with only 12 of the original 15 sites assessed for the scheme.
July 17 The government announces plans to make its computers carbon neutral by 2020
July 17 The first commercial scale underwater turbine that generates electricity from tidal streams was plugged into the UK's national grid, in Northern Ireland. The most conservative estimates suggest there is at least five gigawatts of power in tidal flows around the country.
July 18 A discussion paper for DEFRA on food security lists high energy prices, poor harvests, rising demand, biofuels and export bans as potential problems
July 19 Archbishop Desmond Tutu has spoken out at a World Development Movement meeting on the "serious injustice" of Britain's carbon dioxide emissions record.
July 19 The Guardian reports that Ofcom will next week rule that the makers of The Great Global Warming Swindle misrepresented climate scientists views. Let's wait and see..
Global
July 7 The G8 (Might be of interest that Avaaz are running full page add in financial times to influence delegates, see avaaz.org)
July 8 EU announce that aviation will be included in the latest EU Emissions Trading scheme
July 8 The Asia Development Bank sets up a new fund that is buying carbon credits created after the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. This is a first.
July 9 Delegates from a lot of ports and cities met in Rotterdam to draft the Worlds Ports Climate Declaration
July 9 Blackstone plans to invest 1 billion euros in an off-shore German windfarm.
July 9 At the G8, George W Bush agrees to a long-term target for cutting emissions. Before saying "goodbye from the worlds major polluter" China and India reject a target of halving C02 emissions by 2050. Next year's G8, in Italy, is being held on an island.
July 9 Airlines claim that an EU plan to make them pay for emissions reductions will cut investment.
July 10 A meeting of Business for New Europe hears that carbon trading in Europe will be worth £80bn in 2 years, and £800bn globally by 2020
July 11 OPEC warns of slowed investment in its oilfields if consuming countries turn to alternative energy and reduce their oil demand.
July 11 MIT scientists have invented a simple "solar concentrator" that gathers sunlight over a large area and channels the energy to photovoltaic cells at the edges (FT)
July 11 Shares in one of the major companies- Ecosecurities- offering carbon credits dropped to a new low.
July 11 Aluminium prices hit a record following power shortages at Chinese smelters.
July 14 A group of scientists has used deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments to show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast of the United States and elsewhere might be used to securely imprison huge amounts of globe-warming carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources.
July 14 The European Commission will launch a raft of proposals on Wednesday to curb the environmental impact of consumerism by supporting eco-friendly products and technology.
July 15 Ocean Power Technologies is planning to put its first 40kw buoy in the water next year, as part of a wave power station off the northern coast of Spain (FT)
July 15 The closure of a coal-burning plant in China led to a 60 percent decrease in developmental problems for children, reported a study by the Columbia Center for Children's Health
July 15 Philips' energy efficiency lighting sales grew at 16 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, as consumers fret over their carbon footprints and companies struggle with energy price rises.
July 15 The White House buried a report prepared by US government scientists which detailed a rising death toll from heat waves, fires, disease and smog they predicted would be caused by global warming. Environmental advocates accused President George W Bush's administration of delaying the release of the 149-page report so that it could avoid regulating greenhouse gases.
July 18 Al Gore makes a speech saying the US should aim to be getting all its electricity from zero-carbon sources by 2018
Scary Science
July 8 Deforestation is not only unabated, its accelerating around the globe. The problem is growing bigger, and yet it is also becoming more concentrated. Just how concentrated? Previously Brazil was thought to account for about a quarter of worldwide deforestation. Now it is understood to be a whopping 48%. This news comes from a new study in the 7/8/08 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Matthew Hansen
July 10 "Reef? Not" A third of the world's reef-building coral species are facing extinction.
That is the stark conclusion from the first global study to assess the extinction risks of corals.
Writing in the journal Science, researchers say climate change, coastal development, overfishing, and pollution are the major threats.
July 11Twenty Russian scientists are to be evacuated from their camp on a drifting ice-floe in the Arctic after it started disintegrating sooner than expected. The Russians had set up research station "North Pole 35" on the floe last September when it measured a safe five kilometres long and three kilometres wide, and their original plan was to stay on it until this September.
Apocalypso Beat
June 30, jb4cocmmunity Funding newletter reported that local authorities in England are set to share almost £300 million as a reward for successfully promoting economic growth in their areas. The £296.2 million additional funding from the Local Authority Business Growth Incentives (LAGBI) scheme will be split between 371 councils, who can spend it on initiatives to help them meet local priorities. (this may want to go under local)
What's been going on
July 10 Green Party- 5 people attended and discussed??
July 14 CaCC meeting- 9 people discussed international treaties and upcoming events
July 14 Sustainable Neighbourhoods Forum, 6-8pm, Midland Hotel, 16 Peter St, Manchester 0161 227 0377. The Forum will discuss the aspects of the Transport Innovation Fund which directly affect the work of the Sustainable Neighbourhoods Partnership: biodiversity, access, energy demand, green corridors, alterations to public spaces etc. It is by invitation only as are all Forums, and attendees must attend as a representative of an organisation, group, association not as an interested individual. (see www.afsl.org.uk calendar for more details).
July 15 Climate Camp meeting
July 17 SEMA meeting
July 18 Launch of the Mini-Stern report
July 19 Camp for Climate Action fundraiser, Yard theatre, Hulme, M15 5RF from 8.30pm, with DJ's and bicycle orchestra, #3 on the door.
What's coming up
July 22 Information event at the St Thomas Centre M12 6FZ, 0161 277 1014, to brief voluntary and community sector organisations about TIF and to start to get a picture of some of the particular questions and issues that this may raise for the sector, hosted by the Transport Resouce Unit of the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation.
July 22nd Climate Camp neighbourhood meeting July 22nd at 7.30pm at Jabez Clegg
July 23 First part of a BBC eco-thriller called Burn-Up
July 23 ""Energy Coast" regeneration scheme. launched. (Nukes on the Cumbrian coast)
July 25 AGMA meeting at which a decision will be made on whether to have a referendum on the TIF
July 25 Critical Commute and Critical Mass
July 31 "The 3 Billion Quid Question: debate on The Transport Innovation Fund, Congestion Charging and Climate Change
Aug 3-9 Camp for Climate Action www.climatecamp.org.uk