Originally sold as Electrisave (at £79) the unit has been re-launched as The Owl and includes a monitor, a sender box and sensor, enabling you to view your energy usage in real time. It is simple to install and requires no wiring; just clip the sensor unit around the positive cable connecting your electricity meter to your fuse box then set the monitor to the price you are paying for your electricity - usually about 12 pence per unit (see your electricity bill).
The monitor allows you to read the cost per hour, the energy being used (in kW per hour) or the carbon dioxide you are producing. So with the help of an OWL we can see the amount of energy we use in our homes, as it measures the electricity consumption of all our home appliances encouraging us to turn off appliances which are not in use, (or are being used inefficiently such as by unecessarily filling up the kettle!).
One user has already reported likely savings of £300+ per year (including a reduction of £150 by changing one appliance!). Cost is £29.95 (£32.59 by post) and units should also be available at Greenbelt this year.
Bethesda also has a project to put 8.5 kW of photovolatic (PV) panels on the church roof; watch this space!
For more information email Mark Boulton at traidgreen@brocklebank.plus.com or phone 01242 674839
]]>Tuesday 5th August - Arrived at Climate Camp. All the waiting around to be searched by the police and the searching itself, by a rather shy policewoman, was all worth it when I was welcomed to the beautiful field of tents and solar panels, windmills and compost toilets, dreadlocked anachists and people like me, come together because we KNOW that spurning plastic bags and tungsten lightbulbs is not enough. I read James Hansen's open letter to Gordon Brown on the way up here and he is saying just what Climate Camp is saying - that there must be no new coal in the UK, of which Kingsnorth is the first of 8 planned. Climate camp is a little oasis of kingdom living, of how things should be. Nearly all energy is renewable, any waste is carefully separated - even raw from cooked compost, food follows CEL's LOAF principles well - bought from a local farmer, organic, vegan and fairtrade. And the food is so tasty and no one ever goes hungry, but unlike the feeding of the 5000, there is never any left over. I58, the Student Christian Movement and Christian Ecology Link are running a undercover Christian Cafe in the centre of the camp serving coffee and vegan cake until 4pm. We met at 9-30 to celebrate communion.
Wednesday 6th August - Was woken at 3-15 and 5-30 by someone screaming "Riot police get up! Riot police, get up!" People crawled out of tents and rather slowly made their way to the top gate where riot police were appearing to threaten to come on site. The shear number of people there apparently prevented them, though I do think it all seems to be a bit of a game. I wandered back to the London neighbourhood tent and found it looking like a bomb site and washed up and tidied for 2 hours. Mark Dowd from Operation Noah popped in today. It was good to see him. He seemed to know a lot of people here. Didn't help with the cafe today - Rosie and Karen are doing it all. Must help more tomorrow.
Thursday 7th August - 5-30 wake up call again this morning so I did my stint in the London tent washing up and picking up beer cans. These campers seem to know how to party. Went to too many workshops again today (planning Saturday's action, Plane Stupid, and Direct Action Training where had to act out being protestor and policeman - quite fun!) so didn't help in the cafe AGAIN. Barbara Echlin, secretary of Christian Ecology Link, came to visit with a gift of cherry tomatoes from her garden. Met to pray at 9-30 and sang lots of taize. Even more people tonight - 15 or so.
Friday 8th August - Saw George Marshall do his Climate Rollercoaster presentation today - excellent - I am a bit of a fan. Went to a couple of religious workshops today - one discussing religions' place at Climate camp and one on Green Spirituality. All very interesting and enlightening and nice to see that we were all in agreement about so many things. 20 of us met to pray for the day of action tomorrow.
Saturday 9th August - Our day of action. Us Christians joined the peaceful police escorted march to the power station carrying banners saying "Kingsnorth, the end is nigh" and "Consume cake, not coal". When we got to some gates, we sat in a circle and sang and prayed for the end of Kingsnorth. While people were milling around, chatting to policemen, a helicopter flying overhead instructed us to disperse in 10 minutes or horses, dogs and batons would be used! 19 of us, including 4 of our group decided to stay and sang protest songs as we were dragged off one by one by riot police. We carried on singing for a while as we sat in the policevan - the acoustics of the individual cells of a police van are quite good - rather like singing in the bath.
Sunday 10th August - I am drafting this blog from a pristinely clean new police cell in Kent. Rather liberating to have nothing but a Bible, a pen and paper, a couple of blankets and the clothes I came in. Nothing to do but sleep, pray, read the Bible and write this blog and I have been mostly sleeping - the matress is twice as think as my camping matress and it's lovely and quiet. I'm sure it's rather different if you had to stay here for any length of time. The policeman checking me in was friendly and joking "have you taken drugs or alcohol today and if not, why not?" and keen to talk about how much he supports our cause. The freckled jailor who delivered my room service said that he wished that he had people like us more often as we were so polite. I said we would do our best! We got off with a caution and I even got back in time for a shower and dinner before our Hartley Wintney Operation Noah Group meeting in the evening! It's quite hard to be back in the real world, with all the STUFF, and all the people who don't KNOW what we know. A funny thing - I told a detective who was in charge of getting us from the van to our cells that Climate Camp was like an oasis of how things should be and he said that the name of the police project in charge of the Climate Camp action, randomly generated by a computer was "Operation Oasis".
Addendum. Reading through this, my experience seems rather at odds with what others have reported e.g. www.climatecamp.org.uk which shows that there was a lot of unnecessary police brutality against the protestors. I guess I was lucky not to be on the receiving end of any of this and I would agree that the protest seemed to be incredibly over-policed and there was a lot of unnecessary controls. All food and supplies for the camp, which was feeding 1200 plus people per day at a suggested £4 day donation, had to be wheel-barrowed about 1/2 a kilometer to the site and we had to go through a police check point on the way out and the way in! Hundreds of items were confiscated - from bicycle locks to hand made soap. A friend had his walking stick confiscated on his way in and it was not returned to him on his way out - I believe that this was because they lost it, not because they meant not to return it, but either way, my friend was not too pleased!
]]>As chair of the Hartley Wintney Operation Noah group, I had taken the petition to all four primary schools in the area and collected hundreds of brightly coloured signatures as well as hundreds of paper footprints, each with a child's pledge to do something to cut his or her carbon footprint. St John's Church Careforce volunteer Josh Parmar helped me collect the signatures. Adults of the village had their own official petition to sign which was also give to 10 Downing Street. The aim of both petitions is to get government to strengthen the Climate Change Bill.
Children representing each of the schools in the area traveled up to London by train on the 14th in time to knock on No. 10 Downing Street at 12 noon. They were joined by our MP, James Arbuthnot who has been very supportive of Operation Noah. The petition had been presented to Mr Arbuthnot at the Hartley Wintney Operation Noah Day on 5th July. (You can read all about that here.)
Children as young as five can understand the basics of climate science. All you need to tell them is that carbon dioxide acts like a blanket over the earth and that it is made when we use energy. They can work out for themselves what will happen to polar bears when we drive too many cars. And you don't need to teach children the innate worth of a polar bear. It is highly appropriate that this was a children's petition as it is they who will see the physical results of this generation's actions - either of our moral and spiritual bankruptcy or of our courage, vision and integrity.
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En route to Australia on a plane (God does do irony), the holy Father spoke of the need to "wake up concsciences" on climate change. "We have to be capable of responding to the great ecological challenge and to be up to the task of this challenge." "We have our responsibilities toward Creation," he said.
This is encouraging, as the Pope is due to release a new encyclical later this year on social teaching, and it is possible he will go into more detail. Apparently he told reporters that he didn't want to get into the technical and political detail involved indiscussing what sort of agreement the world should be aiming for in Copenhagen 2009 to replace Kyoto. Fair enough.
But he can lead on the "waking of consciences" by making it very clear that Catholics the world over have to undergo what JPII called "ecological conversion."
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Dear Mark,
I do despair of any energy reductions when at my doctor's surgery this afternoon, one receptionist said that the energy-consuming, ubiquitous TV could not be switched off because of patient confidentiality. The receptionists talk about patients and need the damn television blasting out to drown out their confidential talk!
Such people will not be impressed by 90% cuts by 2030. Nor those who carelessly leave lights on, or install constant boiling hot water boilers that are never allowed to be switched off in my office, or use the much-loved 2 Kw heaters to supplement the central heating or, the latest, portable air conditioners that are now brought in and used even when windows are left open, or my directorate that builds new social care centres with floodlighting for CCTV cameras when they have super-secure windows and doors and are in low-crime areas anyway!
Aren't targets always missed and even simply ignored? Is not 99% of the population energy illiterate, complacent and careless and just not interested in saving energy let alone are prepared to meet targets?
What do you think? What answer would you give to Tim's despairing questions?
]]>About 60 folk turned out and more sent their apologies (including the local MP.) Monmouthshire Cable TV were there (with access to 75,00 viewers), so we'll soon have a weblink to the event and you can all see what you missed.
Well done to Lexi and team - now time to recruit more members and engage in a campaign of action locally!
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Had a weird Saturday. Spent part of it at the Labour Party's Compass conference in London ('Born Free and Equal') and another part watching thousands of cyclists ride by, cycling as they were when born - stark staring naked! (The latter was much more fun of course and was a powerful and assertive statement of against oil dependency and car culture and also an assertion of positive vulnerability 'Pass wide and slow. I am easily hurt'.)
At the Compass conference heard the Rt. Hon. Douglas Alexander MP, Minister for international development say something surprising. A questioner had asked why the government, treating the electorate as a market, had assumed only 'right-wing' demand in the market, instead of 'creating demand' for progressive ideas in the way that Barak Obama succeeded in doing with his campaigning.
In response the Honourable Minister said this, and I paraphrase: social democracy and progressive ideas was built on two pillars, the trade union movement and faith organisations. Now that both were in decline, and we live in a largely secular society....the social forces on which a Labour government depended for progressive policies were absent....
In other words, there is not enough faith (or trade unionism) to save the planet.
We could react to this approach in two ways. We could regard it as wrong-headed, and a lame excuse for an absence of progressive leadership by a government fearful of leading on the greatest question of our time: the threat to our security posed by climate change. Instead the government is inclined to abrogate such leadership to something abstract called 'the market', because, it would appear, faith organisations and trade unions no longer play a leadership role in society!
In other words we could indulge in yet another round of weeping and wailing about the weakness of the Labour government. Or we, as Christians and faith organisations, could rise to the challenge....as we are doing at Operation Noah..and exercise the kind of moral and ethical eadership that the market is incapable of.....This will then allow elected leaders like the Rt. Honourable Alexander, to follow.
I feel strongly about this, especially after a fascinating inter-faith dialogue at Heythrop theological college in London last week....when people of faith questioned how they could 'add to the debate' about climate change, without alienating others; without alarming others; and without paralysing potential campaigners with fear and defeatism. We should not, in my view, be 'adding to the debate'. People of faith, more than any other I would contend, whether they be Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims or Hindus all have their faith rooted in morality and ethics. They/we should be leading the debate on climate change; condemning the destruction and exploitation of those precious resources on which all life on our planet depends - and proposing alternatives.
And if we model ourselves on Christ, we will not do so by trusting to focus groups and 'warm words'.
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The day ended with more speeches including a message of support from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said Christians were "stewards of God's creation … As such, we have a responsibility, both to God and to generations to come, to ensure that this remains a sustainable world." There was also a party which we couldn't go to if we were to catch the last bus home. A good day, fabulously organised. If the government refuses to listen to this legal protest, I am sure, and hope, that the organisers could arrange something a little more disruptive.
]]>Second, it centred less on the facts and figures of global warming and concentrated more on the central premise that mankind has got its thinking and values all wrong when it come to looking at nature and creation. It's a pity there weren't more religious/spiritual voices. But it was a refreshing watch and "brave" for a TV station to have a go at the advertising industry's role in the manic consumption mess we find ourselves in. Perhaps Ch4 has , at least in part, made up for broadcasting "The Great Global Warming Swindle."???
You can see a trailer on YOUTUBE:
]]>Confession: I have been on one plane since the pledge year ran out. That was last December to Madrid (a trip that cost me next to nothing as I used convenient air miles which for years have been linked to my Mastercard account!). But as from January, since taking up work with Operation Noah, I have been happy to shun the airports. It's mainly a credibility thing. Standing at public meetings and beating the drum for leadership doesn't sit well with frequent flyer trips to all ends of the earth, does it? It would be like working for the NSPCC and privately being a corporal punishment demon with your kids at home.
So this year's holiday takes in Scotland and Cumbria by train. Will I ever see the inside of an airport again, I wonder??
How about you? Are you ready to take the pledge to give up flying for a year? (We'll allow an exception for family emergencies.) If you are ready to take the plunge, follow this link to make your own pledge.
Then please come back here and leave a comment telling us about your experience and motivations. Will making a pledge not to fly for a year entail a major change of lifestyle for you? Are you adjusting your holiday plans to accommodate your commitment? Are there joys and pleasures you have discovered because you took a form of transportation other than flying? Would you recommend this to others? We want to hear from you! Leave your comments and stories below.
]]>A non-scientist and politician, Lawson asserts with great confidence that: "There is, indeed, a real question about the extent to which modern global warming science is genuine science at all", page 6.
Scientists have responded to this insult quite coolly. For example, Peter Stott, from the Met Office Hadley Centre in a letter to The Guardian, Tuesday, 6th May 2008, wrote in response to Lawson: "One simple result stands out from the data. Readings taken from land stations, the decks of ships and records of sea surface temperatures all show a long-term warming trend. Other observations, such as the retreating Arctic ice, demonstrate the effects of this human-induced warming. The message the data is telling us is very clear."
Even the shadow spokesperson for the Conservative Party, Peter Ainsworth, has distanced himself and the party from Lawson's commentary.
As to mitigating against the risks of catastrophic climate change, or adaptation to it, Lawson draws heavily on the prevailing economic view that future generations will be richer than we are. As a result, he claims, we should leave any potential costly adjustments to them because they will be better able to afford them... If they still have a choice of course. The gathering evidence on climate feedback loops for example is indicating, with ever-increasing certainty, that beyond certain tipping points, no amount of cash thrown at the problem will have any effect at all.
This book should be taken seriously by scientists and others for the fact that a lot of people are likely to read it and may give it credence, even though it is ill-argued and subjective (on the heat wave in Europe in 2003, during which thousands of people died from heat stress, Lawson notes: "As it happens, I spent the summer of 2003 in south-west France myself, and found it perfectly tolerable", page 34). People are afraid of climate change, but they are also afraid of what it will mean for their lives if we are to take serious action to avoid the worst effects. This populist book will serve to allay these fears and gather support for a business-as-usual approach. Those serious about protecting our civilisation and life on earth, scientists especially, cannot allow Lawson to go unchallenged.
]]>The ghastly tale of a man's abuse of his daughter and her children (one shudders to think of the abuse his wife must have endured) has shocked the world, but most particularly the people of Amstetten, a small town in Austria.
While the grisly details of the abuse have hit the headlines, the real story for me is the absence of community in a town that for 24 years turned a blind eye to the goings-on on their doorstep. The persecutor would frequently have to deliver groceries to the home in wheel barrow to feed the imprisoned family, but this detail was unremarked upon by his neighbours who believed him to have a small family of three.
We must hope that the people of Amstetten learn from this that having - more branded goods/more white appliances/more foreign holidays - is never a substitute for being - whole, decent, fulfilled persons living in community with friends and loved ones, sharing and supporting each other.
]]>We need Christian thinkers and leaders willing to intervene - loudly and angrily - in these crucial debates - and to do so in public spaces dominated by establishment figures like Lord Lawson, whose supreme arrogance permits him, a retired politician, to challenge a body of distinguished climate scientists who have over 18 years painstakingly built up a body of evidence and come to conclusions likely to cause Lord Lawson to have to tighten his belt and make sacrifices.....
Lord Lawson does not like that prospect at all, and so has invented convoluted and often deeply flawed scientific arguments to challenge a whole community of scientists, and a large body of alarming science....His voice is a lone one, but it has ricocheted around the establishment's echo chamber these last few weeks almost without challenge....Why aren't more Christian thinkers and leaders challenging him, publicly, angrily and authoritatively? Not by trying to outdo him on the science front (although that is not difficult) but by moving the debate on to the terrain of Christian ethics? Why does this man go unchallenged on this vital ethical issue of discounting the future?
We need more Christian thinkers and leaders to challenge climate change deniers - and engage in debates in forums like those of the Financial Times, where important decisions about our future are debated, weighed up and agreed. We Christians have become too accustomed to talking to ourselves, or to the already-converted....too used to engaging in arcane debates around matters that should be private...like one's sexual preferences. An introverted obsession with sex and with women is revealing.. (there! I got that off my chest... !)...but does little to challenge the unethical and thoroughly un-Christian stance taken by powerful and influential opinion-formers - like Nigel Lawson - and other decision-makers....shaping the amorality of our society's approach to climate change ...and therefore the very possibility of any future for coming generations....Humph! Humph! Humph!
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Below some quotes from the economist Wilfred Beckerman's letter to the FT (22nd April, 2008) castigating Lord Stern's assertion that society as a whole should consider future generations......
"How much certain sacrifice is one prepared to impose on people living today, most of whom are desperately poor, in the interests of future generations who, as it happens, are projected to be much richer? - a very respectable ethical foundation that goes back far as David Hume, the pioneer of 'agent-relative ethics'. This is the view that 'special obligations' - say to one's family, friends, neighbours, fellow citizens and so on - require giving their welfare priority over that of other people, including distant generations.
"Second, there is also no basis for Lord Stern's assertion that not many people would dissent from his approach. Personally, I do not think I have ever met anybody who would not give priority to the welfare of his or her family or friends over that of distant generations. And if I did I would quickly sever my relationship with them. Furthermore, one authoritative survey of people's attitudes to discounting the future reports a study restricted to residents in Washington DC and Maryland, which showed that the average respondent would trade off 45 lives in 100 years' time against one life today, and another study in Sweden that implied a trade-off over a similar period of 243 lives against one life today!"
]]>(Follow this link to read full letter.)
This is how I replied:
Wilfred Beckerman (letters April 22) is right to say that our response to climate change cannot just be left to purely scientific and economic considerations. However, the ethical criteria he invokes run totally counter to the tough and searching demands of Jesus in 2000 years of the Christian tradition. Professor Beckerman says we must prioritise known family and friends over the claims of strangers and distant generations. But in this respect, Jesus' ethic was quite clear: blood ties alone are no basis for expressing moral imperatives. In his truly revolutionary call to a universalist approach, Jesus has little time for purely "defending your own." He warns that following the path of true love may well set "man against his father and daughter against her mother." (Matthew 10: 35) He asserts: "if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans do the same? (Matt Ch 5:47) Those who are really worthy of the name "mother and brother are these which hear the word of God and do it." (Luke 8:21)
That word of God, enshrined in the call to the people of Israel to look beyond their own narrow boundaries, reaches the heights ot true self giving when it is extended to those hitherto unknown: Leviticus 19:34 says "The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the homeborn among you and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." No surprise then that Jesus frequently has Samaritans, the dreaded "strangers", as the unlikely recipients of his attention. No wonder also, that Al Gore, a committed Southern Baptist, was totally on the ball at the end of his film, An Inconvenient Truth, when he said that the unprecendented challenge of global warming requires enormous "moral imagination."
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I have to say, the Minister was impressive. First in his time allocation and also in his energy of engagement. He accepted that the climate science is moving on and although he didn't want to usurp the role of his Climate Change Advisory Committee by pre-empting them, more or less conceded that 80 per cent cuts by 2050 were inevitable. As for ON's 90/2030 target: he wouldn't engage with that. (not in public at least!)
Shipping and Aviation?: the stock answer about how impossible it was to work out emissions responsibiltiies for international journies. But as Tony Juniper had pointed out the night before at a big FOE rally: if scores of civil servants can sort out the minutiae of fiscal codes and tax bands, they could crack this one easily!
But the real heroes of the day were the religious. I told them in a pre-lobby address, that their lives were beacons of hope. So many of them live out the "Live Simply" lifestyle: sourcing food locally, keeping transport emissions to a minimum and eschewing the pace of the modern world which is inevitably carbon intensive. They are holding a mirror up to the world. We need their witness now more than ever.
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