Ground vs Green

Just chipped in to the 'Ground vs Green' debate going on on the Evening Post website, particularly in response to someone calling themselves 'another cynic' because they did not regard opposing building a stadium in the green belt as rational. Here's my contribution to a debate that is, as usual, of the very highest quality (!!):

'I think most rational people would be pro stadium. The only thing to be cynical about is the use of the TVG laws by a minority of people to undermine the workings of the democratic planning process.' said another cynic.

What's rational about:

- designating land as green belt and then not protecting it?

-the council/govt saying we need to fight climate change and then turning land from a net absorber to a net emitter of carbon?

-expressing concern about the need to be ready to deal with flooding caused by the sudden heavy rains we now get and then removing land that naturally absorbs and steadily releases flood water?

-saying wildlife needs to be protected but then concreting over habitats?

-having government agencies like Natural England working to show how necessary to our physical, mental and social health green spaces are and how we all need to live close to a green space and then removing said spaces?

-saying what a good idea local food production is, especially in view of things like peak oil, and then reducing the land area available to grow food locally?

-MPs strengthening the law on town and village green establishment in both 2000 and 2006 then going on to campaign against the use of the laws they established??

By the way another cynic, the current planning process is a statutory ie legal process primarily and not a democratic one. Though it has a democratic element to it through the involvement of elected Councillors and Secretary of State, they are supposed to be guided by rules and regulations not a party line...hopefully to establish a rational outcome. The Ground vs Green debate will not be finally resolved by petition or voting but by the law that is an essential feature of a modern democratic system - and in this instance it may well prevent a wider majority view prevailing over a very local majority view.

Oxfam 'Sow the Seed' of hope event on College Green

Bristol political leaders join top chef to urge action on climate change Oxfam South West stages event at College Green to call on world leaders to ‘Sow the Seed’ of hope

Political leaders from across the political spectrum in Bristol were joined by one of the city’s top chefs at College Green this morning, to urge more action from world leaders on climate change.
Council leader Barbara Janke, deputy Labour leader Mark Bradshaw, Green Party Councillor Tess Green and Liberal Democrat councillor Anthony Negus said they were delighted to support Oxfam South West’s ‘Sow the Seed’ campaign.

Meanwhile, one of Bristol’s finest and most respected chefs – Chris Wicks, from Bells Diner in Montpelier, which has just been named as one of Britain’s top 100 restaurants – came along in his chef’s outfit to back the campaign.

More than 100 ‘Sow the Seed’ labels were planted in the ground outside the Council House, bearing Oxfam’s call for the international community to help farmers in the world’s poorest countries deal with the devastating effects of climate change.

Speaking at the event, Barbara Janke said: “Speaking as someone from Bristol in the center of a major food-growing area, we are more sympathetic than most to the effects of climate change on farmers in the developing world.

“We’ve seen in Pakistan floods the most recent dramatic effect of extreme weather, but this is clearly affecting people around the world, where climate change is already affecting food production and their ability to be self-sufficient.

“We need to address climate change as a global problem and raise awareness of how important this is.”

The event is part of a global week of campaign events that aim to highlight the devastating effects of climate change on food production in the world’s poorest areas.

In Pakistan, for example, up to 40 per cent of households in the flood-affected areas lost all food stocks. Fodder for livestock has also been lost, so even families who have been able to save some of their animals are struggling to keep them alive.

Mark Bradshaw said he was delighted the campaign was happening in Bristol and that the effects of climate change were something that we “cannot ignore”.

He also called for the introduction of a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on banks to pay for the world’s poor to adapt to and survive climate change.

“In the current tough economic times it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the climate change agenda. Now more than ever do we need to invest in tackling it.

“That’s why it’s so important to introduce a Robin Hood Tax so that the financial industry pays its full contribution to addressing climate change.

Chris Wicks, whose restaurant – a fixture in Montpelier for more than 20 years – prides itself on using locally sourced produce, added: “In my restaurant it is important for us to do our bit by using local products to cut down food miles. But it is essential that we help poor farmers develop their own industries.”

ENDS

For press information contact: Christopher Brown at Oxfam South West on 0117 916 6474 or 07887 632 658 or cbrown@oxfam.org.uk

Notes to editors: The Sow the Seed event at College Green is part of a series of events around the world during the week, highlighting the strength of the campaign to fight climate change. See: http://tcktcktck.org http://sowtheseed.org/ http://www.facebook.com/oxfamsouthwest

Picture caption: Back row, from left: Cllr Anthony Negus, Chris Wicks and Barbara Janke. Front row, from left, Mark Bradshaw and Tess Green

Oxfam works with others to overcome poverty and suffering
Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International and a company limited by guarantee registered in England No. 612172.Registered office: Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY.A registered charity in England and Wales (no 202918) and Scotland (SC 039042)

Copenhagen Climate Summit and Cumbria...

Excellent guide to and commentary on the soon to be held Copenhagen Climate Summit here produced by Greenpeace. It shows that the current draft treaty has no agreement on the key issues: the level and timings of carbon emissions cuts; financing of measures to adapt to climate change, transfer clean technologies around the globe, help poorer countries cut emissions and protect their forests. It also shows that there is as yet no agreement on how best to protect forests, whose destruction causes between a fifth and a quarter of all climate change.

In short, all the hard issues and real problems are currently being ducked!! See this very useful Greenpeace guide to where various world leaders (so called!) are letting us down, here - this is a snippett of what it says about our PM Gordon Brown:

...He’s failed to embrace renewable energy and quit coal putting him at odds with his own advisors on climate change. And because of wrangling over finance with the rest of the EU, the UK hasn’t been able to offer more than words to developing nations.

Gordon - have you truly seen the flooding in Cumbria and the other very serious flooding events in recent yrs or have you merely looked at them? This from the BBC website:

Five million people in England and Wales are now at risk from flooding every year,

Two million homes have been built in the natural floodplain of rivers or the coast and are vulnerable to flooding,

Scientists predict that climate change may lead to more frequent flooding in the future,

Property, land and assets to the value of £214 billion are at risk of flooding in England and Wales,

Since 1998, 28 people have died as a direct result of flooding, including children. Thousands have suffered shock, trauma and devastating damage to their homes and possessions,

Many families have still not moved back into their homes following the 2000 floods,

Six inches of fast flowing water will knock you off your feet; four inches of water will ruin your carpet, and two feet of water will float your car.

See details of the Foresight Future Flooding report, by Sir David King and 60 top scientists, here.

Met Office climate change projections: serious consequences for us all

The latest climate science projections from the highly respected Met Office can be found here. Below I've reproduced the key Met Office findings for the South West of England by 2080. The graph shows the regional temperature increase by 2050.

Medium emissions scenario

*Under medium emissions, the central estimate of increase in winter mean temperature is 2.8ºC; it is very unlikely to be less than 1.6ºC and is very unlikely to be more than 4.3ºC.

*Under medium emissions, the central estimate of increase in summer mean temperature is 3.9ºC; it is very unlikely to be less than 2.1ºC and is very unlikely to be more than 6.4ºC.

*Under medium emissions, the central estimate of change in winter mean precipitation is 23%; it is very unlikely to be less than 6% and is very unlikely to be more than 54%.

*Under medium emissions, the central estimate of change in summer mean precipitation is –23%; it is very unlikely to be less than –49% and is very unlikely to be more than 6%.

The consequences for us all and for our society and economy are very serious due to more floods, droughts, heat waves, storms, impacts on health and public services like rail travel, impacts on food production....The costs of inaction on tackling climate change far exceed the costs of taking effective action now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/18/uk-weather-climate-impact-report

Greenbelt, housing, roads, population...

Contributed to the online debate about this report, which begins, 'More than 100 protesters held a demonstration in the centre of Bristol to fight plans to build thousands of new homes on the green belt surrounding the city. Members of a number of groups set up by residents in areas threatened with the loss of protected land gathered on Harbourside to voice their protests. From Dundry, Whitchurch and Long Ashton to Shortwood, Siston and Warmley, they travelled to the Architecture Centre, where recently unveiled plans for a new town of 10,000 homes south of Long Ashton have gone on display...' to answer charges of NIMBYISM.

*Anon/David - You are not presenting any genuine argument here at all. You are just labelling, name calling and accusing. Its cheap and easy to use the term NIMBY (not in my back yard).

Huge loss of green space to housing (and associated roads...) adds to climate change, makes us more prone to flooding, destroys wildlife habitat, removes attractive landscape and reduces the area available for our leisure and recreation....and more! It makes meeting many vital social and especially environmental targets that much harder.

Campaigners achieved a great turnout at this protest and are putting fair arguments about why we have green belt, which is supposed to be protected, in the first place!!

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*I agree very strongly with Sarah about proposing to build more houses on proteced green spaces when there are significant numbers of empty houses - I believe there are 7000 in Bristol alone!

We are also a very long way from exhausting the brown field sites within cities. Classifying land as green belt is meaningless if we are just going to build over it as planned...

I do appreciate the contribution of Peter from Kingsdown however, as it raises a key issue - that of population growth (click to see enlarged graph of UK population growth). We would have the pressure for house building eased considerably and would find many social and environmental targets easier to meet if we could prevent large population growth and preferably reduce it a little from where we are today.

Sustainable Development Commission Chairman Jonathon Porritt has recently called for people to voluntarily have a maximum of two children (and in his latest blog post favours a policy of immigration numbers that equal emigration numbers ie no net increase). If you look at the undeniable arithmetic his view makes good sense.

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We should be doing much more to get sex education right, not least because of our sky high teenage pregnancy rate and the rate of various sexually transmitted diseases! Population considerations should form a part of this process.

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/index.html

By George he's not got it!

Plenty of evidence around at present that architect George Ferguson (PPRIBA, BA, BArch, RWA according to here) doesn't get what is truly meant by sustainability. His column in todays Bristol Evening Post provides a good example to illustrate what I mean. He says this near the start,

'I am writing this from the sweltering heat of the Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition - I call it work. This city is wonderfully sustainable and dominated by pedestrians and water traffic.'

Later in the piece he contradicts this by referring to the 'massive annual maintenance bill, not to mention the mega-million flood defences.' of Venice. Far from being 'wonderfully sustainable' I'd say Venice has some serious sustainability problems to deal with, not least sinking/subsiding/flooding and the massive economic consequences George himself points out (see viability section on diagram).

So I'm left puzzled as to what overall sustainability scale gives Venice a 'wonderful' score (even though the dominance of pedestrian and water transport is an obvious and significant upside).

Add to this the example of the proposed 'cycle houses' development on/near the Bristol to Bath Railway Path. It's much favoured by George (his architects Acanthus Ferguson Mann have been retained by the developer Squarepeg) but consistent with sustainability thinking its not. One part of current plans would cause significant damage to a biodiverse green space, a negative change in its 'rural' character and a loss of visual amenity. See previous posts here, here and here, plus the Green Bristol Blog, Bristol Blogger and Keep the Bank Green .

Of course it might be that George does get sustainability but puts other factors ahead of it??

Let's protect our wetlands !!

World Wetlands Day is coming up soon, on Friday 2 February. The Convention on Wetlands, sometimes called the Ramsar Convention, was adopted on that day in 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar. All sorts of organisations, particularly green ones, have taken advantage of having a World Wetlands Day to raise public awareness of the value of wetlands and the importance that should be attached to their protection from development. One possible threat to wetlands in the region is the Severn Barrage of course.

Our wetlands include: the ponds in our gardens and parks as well as naturally formed ones; rivers like the Avon, Severn and Frome; reedbeds; and bogs. A very large variety of plants and animals live in these habitats which are prized by nature lovers and seekers of leisure and recreation. They are very important for our bodiversity as well as fulfilling a key role in storing flood water. Vitally now that climate change is bringing more weather extremes, wetlands reduce flooding in built-up areas.

Climate change is now a reality. Rising sea levels, warmer, drier summers, stormier winds and wetter winters are features we are seeing. Wetlands soak up water like sponges, allowing it to drain away into the ground in a controlled way in times of flood risk. As a result less reaches our towns and cities, where it can be very damaging. Wetlands are a buffer between the sea and inland development - absorbing the storm energy and acting as a storage area for high tides.

Wetlands protect areas where people live. A lot of work has been and is being done to restore drained and damaged wetlands. New ones are being established across the UK including restoring traditional ‘washlands’, putting the bends back in straightened-out rivers, and creating large areas of reedbed, which act to clean polluted water. 400 hectares were produced by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust alone in 2004/5.

Greens feel that valuing wetlands is the right thing to do for future generations and appeal to people to continue to support their rivers, ponds reedbeds and bogs. They are often of high aesthetic value because of their form, appearance and beauty. They are highly valuable ecosytems, benefitting both human and non-human life. They are often used for education and training so their value to learning is high. Wetlands are a good source of relief from toil as providers of spare time interest. Wetlands are very good for the economy because of the protection from damage they offer, and the leisure and tourism money they can bring in.