August 2010 printable subscriber newsletter

Ecologist

29th July 2010

This month's newsletter looks at putting communities back in charge of their forests, the effects of petrol prices on environmental behaviour, the depletion of oxygen levels in the ocean, the restoration of one of the world's biggest landfill sites and the huge opportunities of decentralised, open source manufacturing. To download the newsletter, log in and scroll to the bottom of the page...

‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,’ cries a anguished Job in the eponymous book of the Bible.

Swap the Lord for energy secretary Chris Huhne, divine providence for the Government’s new Annual Energy Statement, and the patient Job for a good environmental citizen, and you will come close to the experience of trying to digest the slew of policies, figures and analysis in the latest missive from the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

Huhne starts by whetting our appetite for renewable energy. Rolling out smart meters, committing to subsidise low carbon forms of heating, accelerating the roll-out of offshore wind turbines, a renewed drive to turn biomass waste (poo, food waste, etc) into energy.

And then the Lord taketh away.

‘The low carbon economy must happen, but it will not happen tomorrow,’ Huhne told Parliament. ‘There are potentially twenty billion barrels of oil equivalent remaining in the UK Continental Shelf...we must maximise economic production while applying effective environmental and safety regulations.’

Ah yes, the continental shelf. How could we have forgotten? Then he begins to rain manna again....

To view the rest of this article - you must be a paying subscriber and Login