Recently by Malcolm Reid

George Monbiot once wrote that it was no use him getting rid of his car and cycling to work if his neighbour bought a second car and parked it in the space created outside George's house. And this is a vital point. We need people to pull together in reducing our carbon footprint. For this the government should create the framework where people benefit from doing the right thing.

The most obvious thing is transport. Flying has a big carbon impact, roughly 10 times the impact of doing the same distance by train or bus. Aviation fuel is not taxed, whilst fuel for cars, buses and trains is, making them four times as expensive in fuel costs. The era of cheap flights would never have happened if there had been a level playing field. I do not blame people, especially people on low budgets, for flying across Britain if it is quicker and cheaper than the train. But I do blame government for not using taxes, subsidies and investment to make land travel the better option. ITALY has managed to do that. So can we.

This raises a major point. There are successful models around the world, and we should be looking to those. I will mention some.

I want to continue with the positive steps that first the Government can take towards creating a framework for a sustainable energy future, and then what we as individuals can do. But a reader raised the question of a revival of nuclear power in some form, and the government is also dabbling with that idea, so it needs to be addressed.

First of all, we need to have some guiding principle(s) concerning the energy we use. Mine is simply that we should not be using energy that our children will pay for. We should be looking at all forms of energy from that standpoint.

We have already put the debt of the banking crisis onto future taxpayers. In addition with the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) we are having facilities now, especially hospitals and schools, that are to be paid for later. We are now threatening to destroy the quality of life for future generations by continuing to release global warming gases. What would be the impact of a renewed love-in with nuclear power?

This promises to be quite a long blog so I am giving headings so you can skip to the aspect you want. The topics are: the difference between nuclear power stations and nuclear bombs, the costs, nuclear accidents, and nuclear fusion. Probably the last one on fusion is the most relevant.

The Copenhagen Summit is about commitments on reducing CO2 emissions. To date our UK government has been strong on commitments but weak on measures to bring them about. But in the last few months it has shown the beginnings of some joined up government with 3 initiatives.

One was the announcement in October of plans to install up to 1,000 charging points for electric cars around Newcastle and Gateshead over the next 2 years, making the NE the lead area for the introduction of electric cars. On its own this would have no benefit for the climate if the electricity continues to be generated by the old polluting power generators. But the other two together work well with this:

In July, Ed Miliband announced that a 'feed in tariff' would be introduced in April 2010 for renewable energy generated by homes and businesses. This is something that has enabled microgeneration to take off in Germany. It allows you to sell any surplus electricity to the grid and if it is a new and not yet very economic technology, such as solar cells, you get a higher price. This makes the payback time for a new installation shorter and encourages demand. It contrasts dramatically with the former policy here of allocating a fund for grants, which were withdrawn as soon as the fund ran out, leaving supplying companies with cancelled orders and possible collapse.

Then at the beginning of this month the government announced a 'smart meter' roll out to all 26 million UK households by 2020...

Monday 9th November 2009 was a special day in East Northumberland's renewable energy story. At 2 pm a delegation of 7 Cambois residents and I met with the County Council Leader and two Senior Officers to present evidence that the proposed Cambois/Blyth power station will not happen in the foreseeable future, and to call for the derelict site to be re-designated under the new Core Strategy for Northumberland for clean green technology and new housing. This would also enable the Port of Blyth to carry out its desired re-organisation, and be consistent with the regeneration of SE Northumberland.

The site has been left as rubble since the old power station was demolished 6 years ago, creating a nightmare for the residents, who presented photographs illustrating the decaying conditions they have been enduring. The Council Leader agreed to an escorted fact finding visit.

At 5 pm, on the same day, I received a call from Dave Black at the Journal asking if I had any comment on RWE npower's announcement that the proposed power station was to be shelved indefinitely! We hadn't been expecting such quick results.

This is possibly the most significant question facing this country. 2020 is a medium term date with some particular targets. First a related digression:

After my first blog I received the following email: 'You say the UK is currently in Europe only ahead of Malta and Luxembourg in adopting renewable energy. That's a very useful statistic. Do you have a reference for it please?'

Well, this perfectly illustrated the point I made at the end of my second blog. We have the power, in a way that has never before been available, of accessing all sorts of key resources, including scientific and government reports, and using it. In a search through my paper files I couldn't put my hands on the source, so I opened Google and typed in - 'renewable energy targets 2020'. I took one of the first choices 'The EU's target for Renewable Energy 20% by 2020'. This turned out to be the report of the House of Lords EU committee 2007-2008. There on pages 15 and 16, Table 1, were the full embarrassing facts - 3 columns: the countries, their percentages of renewable energy in 2005, and their agreed targets for 2020. I had not seen the full stark table before. These are the figures at the bottom of the scale for 2005: Malta 0%, Luxembourg 0.9%, UK 1.3%... and at the top: Sweden 39.8%, Latvia 34.9%, Finland 28.5%. Look at the table yourself. In the light of all the claims made by Tony Blair that we are world leaders in tackling climate change, and the way most people in Britain and even outside Britain believed him, these figures are mind bogglingly horrific.

I wrote in my first blog that I would examine some of Jared Diamond's ideas from his recent book with the above title.

Diamond gives 3 main reasons for failure of past civilisations: the catastrophe arriving imperceptibly slowly; the character of the catastrophe being outside past experience; and when a small ruling elite could reap huge rewards in the short term by actions which would in the long run cause devastating damage to the wider community.

The first two reasons did apply to our present climate change, but the painstaking work of scientists has diminished them if we want to open our eyes.

Diamond suggests that the 3rd cause can be averted if leaders are not isolated from the main society in walled, gated, luxury enclaves, but are affected directly by any disasters, such as Dutch leaders who will be drowned with the rest of the population if the dykes are breached.

In his recent book "Collapse - HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SURVIVE", Jared Diamond examines some of the dramatic civilization collapses of the past and their relevance to our situation today.

For instance when the ancient Maya in the 9th century were faced with prolonged drought, the basic response of their leaders was to carry out more and more human sacrifices to appease their god. Are our current responses to climate change equally inappropriate to an independent observer from Mars?

I will explore Diamond's ideas in a later blog. Today I want to alert you to a consultation.

Wednesday 9th September is the closing day for contributions to the government's innocuous looking consultation on "Clean Coal" called 'A framework for the development of clean coal'. However much this may be a paper exercise for a decision already taken, there is value in showing the government that the issues are widely understood and any short term selfish measure which puts our children's future at risk will receive massive opposition.