Festival flim-flam

"It demonstrates that Bristol has credibility in green issues....What the festival does is make it real for people." says Big Green Week organiser Darren Hall (here)
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Bristol will have credibility on green issues (in fact all issues are green issues) when it can demonstrate significant progress on tackling the key issues: horrendous traffic congestion; ongoing air pollution problems; carbon footprint many times higher than is sustainable; ecological footprint that will grow with loss of green spaces and green belt, new road building, rising population...; poor public transport services; low level of economic self-reliance, especially food and energy security; high levels of inequality; poor levels of participation in key matters such as voting in local elections....

That it is thought that a festival is what will make Bristol's green credibility real speaks volumes. A festival on its own is mere flim-flam, nonsense and humbug. When are genuinely and significantly green outcomes going to happen in place of the tinkering and public relations ?? After all people have been burbling their greenwash for decades now.

Greenest government?

Govt have clearly gone over the top with their greenwash and greenspeak. Just 2% of the UK public believe they live under the "greenest government ever", according to an opinion poll.

And only 4% want to see laws protecting the countryside weakened, as the government is expected to do this week.

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to lead the "greenest government ever" on taking office in 2010.

Critics say that recent decisions on climate change, forests, badger culling, urban pollution and nature protection have undermined the claim...(more)

Mind you the real situation is much worse than the public think - 53% of people say the government is about average on green issues and 10% say it is greener than average. In fact its not green at all - its taking us in a direction opposite to a green one and we are missing out on building a healthier, economically stable, more energy secure and more food secure future as a result.

Climate and carbon

This week is Climate Week. I'm all in favour of raising awareness of climate change and the need for urgent action on a significant scale though I find that many of these sort of initiatives provide more opportunities for greenwash and greenspeak than real, concerted green action. I note that significant contributors to climate change such as Tesco, EDF, H&M...are sponsors of the week!!! I have serious doubts about the policies of Govt, councils and business on carbon reduction and climate change - they are too small scale and too slow and so dont match best science. We are missing out on good, sustainable economic development as a result too. Many approaches dont show joined up thinking eg more products are being marked with their carbon footprint but shoppers dont have any information to tell them what is too high or too low a footprint and there is no requirement for them to stay within a carbon budget in any case. Anyhow, here's a screencast I've made giving an essential guide to carbon footprinting - call it one of  my contributions to the week:

Greenest Government Grumbles

Labour MP Michael Meacher takes the Cameron Govt to task on its green claims - and makes some decent points on renewable energy, energy efficiency, the Green Investment Bank...Two days ago Ed Davey, the replacement for Huhne as Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, repeated again the Coalition’s boast that it was the greenest government ever. Even by the standards of current self-congratulatory political rhetoric, that’s pretty vapid. It’s worth exploring the actual record. The Coalition Agreement proposed to increase the target for energy from renewable sources. In 2010 the UK was ranked third in the world for investment in green business, and investment in alternative energy and clean technology reached £7bn. However it has now been rated 13^th, mainly because investment in wind energy fell 40% last year, with only one offshore wind-farm being completed. That reflected the Chancellor’s openly stated negative attitude to green energy, supported by the letter sent by 101 Conservative MPs to the Prime Minister deploring wind-power development both onshore and offshore...Friends of the Earth in their recent report...judged that they found little or no progress in three-quarters of the government’s 77 green policies that they examined. (more)  

Price of diesel reaches £1.30/litre in Bristol....

I've been giving my reaction online to the news that the price of diesel in the Bristol area has reached £1.30 per litre ('Dismay as diesel rockets to £1.30', Bristol Evening Post, 9 June). We should have been weaning ourselves off all oil products for decades now via very large scale investment in: energy efficiency; public transport, walking, cycling; support for local economic development; renewable energy; research into alternative fuels... Given that previous Tory and Labour Governments have made green claims one would have thought this would have been done but it hasn't. Now the security, stability and affordability of our lives has not been assured as a result of this inaction. It does not look to me like fossil fuel (and food) prices can have anything but an upward trend over time as the scarcity of this finite resource can only grow.

Those who for example react to describe not living close to work and being poorly serviced by buses/trains correctly highlight two aspects of the issue that need to be addressed very urgently (and that we should have begun addressing at least two/three decades ago when greens were, as now, advocating localised development etc). Having said that, whilst I appreciate the individual circumstances some people are in, there are many who could choose a greener alternative (nearly half of all car journeys are less than 2 miles long).

Government has completely failed to make it easier and more convenient for people to make green choices however and so they need to take the lion's share of the blame here. Re-allocate just a quarter of the road budget and in ten years we could build light rail systems in eight cities, create 10,000 people-friendly home zones, put £4 billion into cutting train and bus fares, £1 billion into rural transport and another billion into transport for disabled people. Add to that safe routes to all our schools and colleges and tens of thousands of new jobs and it's money well spent (see here for more detail of green transport policies).

Brown doesn't want to retreat from his 'green agenda' - but he doesn't have a proper green agenda to speak of!!

Gordon Brown says he does not want to retreat from his 'green agenda' (reported here). If he had a real and proper green agenda the Labour Government would have done a great deal more to wean us off oil and we would then not be so badly affected by the high price. However, his frequent green talk is not matched by the kind of investment and policies we need on energy efficiency, public transport, green energy and support for local economies.

Our Prime Minister's thoughts on nuclear power provide another good example. Yesterday Gordon Brown strongly advocated more ambitious nuclear plans, with some building in new locations as well as replacing nuclear stations on existing sites (see here). The day before however the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said that the costs of cleaning up the dangerous radioactive mess from existing nuclear sites has soared to £73 billion (see here for more) !! Doesn't make more nuclear sound like good economics or good ecology does it - we know that the government and our money is the ultimate insurance when things go badly wrong and get dirty and dangerous with this so-called 'clean' power source.

Arguing that nuclear power is somehow green has always been ridiculous - the case against it is very strong indeed.

More green talk but little/no green action on renewable energy

I recently wrote to my MP, Kerry McCarthy about renewable energy, especially generating on a small scale in many local situations (see here and take a look at EfficienCity for a great vision of a greener city whilst you're at it). I received a letter of reply a few days ago in which she states,

'I...support an expansion in our renewable energy generating capacity. I believe lessons can be learned from Europe in introducing the feed-in tariff and think that this is an area that should be further investigated to assess its suitability for the UK.'

Frankly, talking about further investigation is just not good enough because we've needed significant action for some time now - Germany has 200 times more solar power than the UK and we are very near the bottom of the EU renewable energy league along with places like Luxembourg and Malta !!

Why have successive governments not done much more? They have been more than willing to talk green whilst the consequences of dependence on coal, oil and gas have grown, with ever-rising fuel and food prices biting hard for instance. The long term stability, security and affordability of our economy depends a great deal on us breaking our oil addiction but governments have not made this happen.

Tory Eddy tries to face in two directions on green spaces

Leader of the Tories on Bristol City Council, Cllr Richard Eddy, like the Tory Party as a whole these days, tries to face in two directions on the sale of Bristol's green spaces. In his letter in today's Bristol Evening Post ('U-turn on Bristol's Parks', Open Lines, 4 Feb 2008) he tries to portray himself as green by using fine phrases like 'custodians of the city's green heritage' and 'owe it to future generations'. Yet he says he is in favour of 100 acres of city open, green space being flogged to developers where it will be lost forever under tarmac and concrete! What hypocrisy!

Councils tree (stump?) policy

Yet more evidence that Bristol City Council just doesn't care about and prioritise our environment (as if flogging off allotments and parklands, considering plans to mass incinerate waste, atrocious air quality, tremendous congestion and a very poor public transport system... aren't already enough)! Bristol Street Trees campaigners show how the council is cutting down large numbers of big trees and is often not then planting replacements - see the 'stumps' slideshow/photos on their website and you may recognise a stump near you! We know from past actions that they have not got their act together: http://vowlesthegreen.blogspot.com/search/label/trees

Cadbury's blatant 'greenwash' and 'greenspeak'

Blatant 'greenwash' and 'greenspeak' from Cadbury's by signing up to find where the carbon emissions are in their supply chain (see 'Cadbury is not green - its ghastly, says union', Bristol Evening Post, 23 Jan 08). WE ALL KNOW what's about to happen to their emissions and where! They are about to hugely increase them by closing the Keynsham factory and shifting production to Poland, only to ship chocolate back here to be sold to our large market. Dont buy the stuff!!

Sadly for us all, business and political leaders 'greenspeak' and 'greenwash' is about par for the course these days (and has been for yrs) - give the impression of concern and action but in reality its mostly business as usual.

Gloomy days for building a greener society

I'm feeling particularly gloomy about the prospects for building a greener society at the moment. There are so many reports around that clearly demonstrate that we dont have the right plans and we are not moving in the right direction (mind you there are times where you only have to look out of your window or walk down the road to realise this!).

Here are some examples, all taken from one single copy of the Bristol Evening Post on Friday 18 Jan :

*plans to turn the Bristol to Bath cyclepath into a major bus route - even though cycling is arguably even greener than walking as a transport mode, it is the most popular cyclepath in the UK and has 2.4 million journeys per yr (see the Bristol Cycling Campaign site to sign a petition opposing this)...

*political factors (ie different councils unable to work together in the common interest) still stand in the way of the establishment of a transport authority for the Greater Bristol area - a vital step if we are to have proper integrated and sustainable transport...

*yet more flood warnings given by the Environment Agency, especially to the South West and the Midlands, though the sw regional masterplan felt unable to comment on future flooding impacts here (!!!) from rivers or on the coast beyond appreciating local authority and Environment Agency work...

*waste to energy firm Compact Power, based in Avonmouth, called in administrators due to a cash crisis (buyers have since moved in though I believe)...

*the South Bristol ring road moved a step closer, with the regional masterplan approving the idea...

*over a hundred thousand more houses are planned in the Greater Bristol area...

*Bristol International Airport expansion plans moved a step closer due to regional masterplan approval...

*the region is highly likely to miss its 2010 target for renewable energy generation (35 to 52 MW of generating capacity in Greater Bristol)...

*the prospect of a Severn Barrage (or other methods of generating energy from the tides in the estuary) is not even mentioned in the regional development masterplan...

*a letter clearly contradicts the governments two main reasons for favouring more nuclear power stations, showing that nuclear does not help us fight climate change...

*locals express their views in letters opposing the confirmed decision to close Cadbury's at Keynsham, meaning that chocolate for the very large local market wont be produced locally (instead it will be produced in Poland and transported back here for sale, at great carbon and thus climate change cost)...

*Bristol Parks Forum express the belief that Bristol City Council have plans to sell off double the amount of parkland originally reported (ie more like 400 acres than 200 acres)...

*traffic levels in the Greater Bristol area have risen by 15% in the last ten yrs (higher than the 12% national average)...

*PM Gordon Brown said no to government funding for the proposal to reopen the Portisheaad railway line...

*my green friend and colleague Stephen Petter illustrates how the 'improvements' in education standards as shown by school test results is illusory (there is plenty of academic research to back up his good sense and reasoning, and I argued this point myself at length back in Nov 07 on the Bristol Blogger site,VowlestheGreen // November 28, 2007 at 7:00 pm)...

*an Ofsted report concluded that many pupils drop Geography (a subject that deals with many of today's vital issues and is very important in delivering environmental education) at age 14...

Yet this was only one newspaper, in one city, on one day. As for compensating 'good green news' - there wasn't any on this occasion.

Bristol City Council are having us on with their 'green capital' nonsense

This story 'Threat to City Parks' in today's Bristol Evening Post shows just how little Bristol City Council really cares about the environment here. Green space is one of the main assets we have and one of the key reasons why there is any credibility at all in any 'green city' claims. Clearly the plans to flog off hundreds of acres of green space show that the City Council is having us on with its 'UK's green capital' ambition.

'So it goes' - is the environment dying to give us biodiesel for the Earthrace powerboat?

So, the '...revolutionary biodiesel powerboat Earthrace arrived in Bristol Docks.As part of the Sound of Many Waters - Clifton Cathedral's year-long campaign of caring for the environment' recently (see the local story about the 'cross between a spaceship and a spider' here and more details on the boat and what its going to do here). Amazing design, technically very interesting, thrilling to be on, and so on....but is it really powered by truly green biodiesel fuel?? (I'll leave aside, for the present, whether spending all this effort trying to achieve a world record for circumnavigating the globe is the greenest thing to do with your time!!)

If the biodiesel put into the boat comes from large scale crop moncultures, which involves massive land, including forest, clearance and energy/chemical intensive production then its certainly not a green fuel. Far from being carbon neutral, the sums show that fuel from these origins is making climate change much worse, as well as taking land from food production and inflating food prices.

If the biodiesel comes from the recycling of used vegetable oil and fat, which some of it may do for this boat(??) (including some fat extracted from project founder Pete Bethune's own backside apparently), this is much greener.

Truly green biodiesel could be produced from all the waste veg oil and fat we produce in large amounts (its a waste disposal problem for goodness sake!!), but we aren't organising our society to do this at the moment - instead we seem to be going for the environmentally damaging production of biodiesel and other biofuels from large scale monocultures, with people wrongly still calling it green!! There are some very rich people out there getting a lot richer, making a lot of already poor people poorer, and over-exploiting the environment - and investing in bio-fuels produced by very un-green methods! So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote (and the environment does seem to be dying to give us biofuel).

Conservative 'Conservationist' Con

Mary Martin is right about climate change being a major concern but wrong to think that Conservative leader David Cameron has truly 'addressed this grim problem' (letter 'Global warming concerns justified', Bristol Evening Post's Open Lines, 8 October). David Cameron and the Conservatives have given us some green sounding words but up and down the country where in power have been a million miles away from implementing green policies.

All over the UK Conservatives have: supported new roads; supported aviation growth; opposed EU green schemes; advocated axing environmental regulations as "red tape"; opposed congestion charging; supported incineration of waste; supported tax cuts for super-consumers; supported low taxes for the most polluting multinational businesses; advocated unfettered global trading; supported nuclear power; supported Trident nuclear weapons over tackling climate change, even though climate change is now recognised as the biggest threat to our security.

Not really a list of green Conservative policies in action is it - but it is in reality what they are doing, so maybe its wiser to judge them not just on what they say but on what they do.

Biofuel plant approved for Avonmouth is not green.

Biofuels are still commonly seen as green. Some may see the plans to build the UK's biggest biodiesel plant in Avonmouth, just agreed by 'green' Bristol City Council, as part of the green development of that area. Biofuels certainly dont qualify as green if they originate from large scale monocultures however, with very large areas cleared for the energy and chemical intensive cultivation of single crops. (The same sort of argument applies to biodegradable plastics like the corn starch ones Bristol City Council wants to make available to line our brown recycling bins with).

Most biofuels, sometimes called agrofuels, are made from large-scale monocultures of oil palms, sugar cane, soya, maize, sugar beet, oilseed rape and jatropha. They should not be considered green as they contribute substantially more to greenhouse gas emissions by nitrous oxide emissions from fertiliser use and by land conversion, than are saved by burning slightly less fossil fuels. They are set to significantly accelerate climate change, something academic and green campaigner George Monbiot has written about with some passion (also see http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/).

Its not just climate impact that makes biofuels from monocultures distinctly non-green: bio-diversity losses, water and soil degradation, human rights abuses (including the impoverishment and dispossession of local populations) and the loss of food sovereignty and food security. The impacts seen today result from a less than 1% market penetration of biofuels in Europe yet the EU target is 10% by 2020 and the UK are aiming for 5% by 2010.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has called on governments to cut their subsidies for the sector, saying biofuels may "offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal."

The European demand for biofuels is pushing up commodity prices and thus encouraging multi-billion dollar investment in infrastructure and refineries linked to large-scale deforestation. The impacts of this investment could be irreversible and will open up tens of millions of hectares of virgin forest to land conversion and logging.

Greens support an immediate moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures - a period for scientists and policy makers in the EU and western nations to gain a greater understanding of the total impact on social, human and land rights plus climate and biodiversity impacts. The Green Party supports the Agrofuels Moratorium Call launched in July 2007 in Brussels (supported by over 100 organisations in its first week).

There should be no public sector incentives for agrofuels and agroenergy from large-scale monocultures. We need a moratorium on EU imports of agrofuels. All targets, incentives such as tax breaks and subsidies which benefit agrofuels from large-scale monocultures, including financing through carbon trading mechanisms, international development aid or loans from international finance organisations such as the World Bank should be suspended now.

The moratorium called for by the signatories applies only to agrofuels from large-scale monocultures (and GM biofuels) and their trade. It does not include biofuels from waste, such as waste vegetable oil or biogas from manure or sewage, or biomass grown and harvested sustainably by and for the benefit of local communities, rather than on large-scale monocultures. Such sustainable biofuels development may well be valuable - where local sources of food production and biodiversity are not endangered, soil is protected from depletion, industrial scale chemical fertilizer regimes and the use of any GM technology are banned. This means small-scale production units, eg on farms, which benefit the local communities.

See also: http://www.channel4.com/blogs/page/newsroom?entry=how_green_is_biofuel

So many issues and problems for Bristol are transport-related

Today is World Car-Free Day. If Bristol is going to become the UKs ‘Green Capital’ it is transport-related problems that have got to be tackled perhaps more than any other. The list of issues raised by our current car, lorry and road-focussed, intensive approach to getting around is very long(not to mention flying of course, that’s another – related - issue).

Here’s a list of issues off the top of my head:

climate change contribution from carbon emissions;

toxic air pollutants and their health and wellbeing impacts, especially for children;

noise and vibration and the quality of life effects;

the footprint caused by transporting food over many hundreds/thousands of miles;

congestion stress, delays and costs;

public transport, cycling and walking investment relatively and absolutely poor whilst service quality is also lacking;

deaths, injuries and accidents;

road crime;

contribution to obesity and other health problems through lack of exercise;

loss of green, open space and threat to wildlife and biodiversity due to road construction…

Given these very serious issues doesn’t it make sense to: cut the need to travel as much; protect and enhance local community facilities and services; go by walking, cycling, bus/coach/train (invest serious money accordingly); make the price of travel by all methods fully and fairly reflect their total costs (raise the costs of non-renewable fossil fuel, bring in congestion charging and reinvest money raised in public transport..); plan transport properly (create a Transport Authority for Greater Bristol asap) ?? Challenge the green talk we get an awful lot of and demand green actions and outcomes.

For more on World Car-Free Day.

Lib Dem zero carbon plan is pure 'greenspeak'

A report in today’s Bristol Evening Post, strangely (since its mostly about a national Lib Dem document), entitled ‘Councils’ key role in climate control’ starts by saying,

‘Individuals, households and communities all have a crucial role in tackling climate change, according to a new blueprint for cutting down on carbon emissions. Ideas have been proposed in a 50-page document called Zero Carbon Britain, an ambitious blueprint outlined by the national Liberal Democrat leadership this week. It lays out in-depth details of ways in which governments, individuals, businesses, industry, energy providers and developing nations can tackle the issue…’

This is pure ‘greenspeak’. Such environmental policies are completely inconsistent with what Lib Dems have been doing around the country in practice. Green MEP Caroline Lucas (http://www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk/) put the point very well when she said,

‘…their record in power at all levels is one of supporting both airport expansion and more road-building, …The truth is that we can't cut emissions sufficiently by tinkering around the edges of society. We will only reach a zero carbon society - as we must if we are to avert the worst impacts of climate change - by changing the very ways we do business, live our lives and measure progress: now that would be a truly radical proposition. As long as the other parties remain committed to economic growth at all costs and ever-freer international trade, this necessary radicalism seems far from their thinking, whatever their leaders are saying this week.
Only the Green Party recognises that if policies to address climate change require a different economic paradigm, then that's to be welcomed, since the kind of materialism that is currently driven by contemporary consumer capitalism is leaving people unfulfilled as well as destroying the planet. Far from being a sacrifice, a zero-carbon society will be a healthier, happier, society, with warmer homes, better public transport, stronger local communities, more green jobs - and more free time. Put simply, the policies we need to live good lives are precisely the policies we need to tackle climate change - and that is what we need to articulate if we are to have any chance of achieving a zero-carbon Britain’

Carbon sums of Bristol International Airport dont add up!!

Spokesman for Bristol International Airport James Gore (one assumes no relation Al Gore!) might have a stronger case for airport expansion and more flying if his carbon sums added up but they don’t (‘Flight path to a greener future or flying in the face of climate change?’, Bristol Evening Post, 14 August).

The beneficial effect of the doubling of aircraft fuel efficiency he refers to is far outweighed by the massive growth in numbers of flights, passengers and goods carried, and total distance travelled. Growth in air travel is exponential, thus total fuel consumption and consequent carbon emissions wont be kept down without addressing this growth. This is clearly demonstrable in figures.

I have been annually calculating my three person household’s ecological footprint, along with my students, for the past seven years. This year the figure was 10,400 square metres of land, with no flights taken. If we flew on just one 10,000 km round trip holiday from Bristol Airport (a common travelling distance), this footprint would rise, according to the EcoCal computer model used, to 14,400 square metres – a 38% increase. The single round trip would then be the biggest contributor to our footprint at 28% of the total, approx the same as all household heating and lighting for a year and slightly more than the impact of household travel by all other methods.

Any carbon savings that might result from people travelling shorter distances to their regional airport as opposed to going to London are trifling. After all people are travelling tens or hundreds of kilometres to the airport but are then getting on a plane to travel thousands or tens of thousands of miles. Its obvious that to tackle climate change one should first address the issue of encouraging the travelling of the greatest distances.

The same argument also applies to any carbon savings made from the various environmental plans and targets to do with airport buildings, renewable energy, and aircraft operational procedures. I don’t dismiss these and we should save all carbon emissions where we can - best, of course, to start by prioritising the biggest emissions sources first ie ever more flying!

EasyJet spokeswoman Sara Pritchard feels that low cost airlines are not more polluting, citing the use of newer, cleaner planes, and a code of environmental conduct. She is backed, not surprisingly by BIAs spokesman James Gore who states that the ‘low-cost mode is inherently greener’. I’m not against cleaner planes, however, both James and Sara fail to mention the effect of a very key factor – cost. The law of supply and demand says that the lower the cost of a product the higher the demand. Since EasyJet offers very low cost air travel then it stimulates very high demand! This is obviously neither low pollution or inherently green since we need to lower demand to achieve these ends.

We've had this green debate before!!

Is this the standard of 'green' debate we should expect in Bristol? Bristol Conservative leader Councillor Richard Eddy, photographed of course - since all Conservatives were really Greens all along - looking very concerned that newspapers are not being recycled at the city council, ' slagging off ' Councillor Gary Hopkins and his Lib-Dem colleagues as 'two-faced' ('Recycling - is it one rule for us and another for the council?', Post, February 6). Councillor Hopkins of course has a go back, in characteristically bruising style. Both claim to be Green these days, because they feel (as they have done in the past) that there are votes in it of course, but engage in the debate in the most un-green manner!

Councillors Eddy and Hopkins both seem to have a particular fixation with recycling, as if it is an end in itself! This one feature of politicians who are not Green but who are trying to appear Green. Actually recycling is far from the top of the list as far as being environmentally friendly is concerned. The first priority is waste reduction or minimisation and on this basis I'd be asking why there are so many newspapers at the council that need dealing with in the first place! After reduction comes the reuse of objects so that they do not enter the waste stream: for example the refilling of bottles. It's not until one gets down to the third level in the waste management hierarchy that one gets to recycling, composting and the recovery of energy from waste and yet much of the focus is here, both in government targets and council action.

Real Greens would be campaigning hard to emphasise the need for reduction and for reuse as our top priorities instead of quibbling over a relatively small point about city council newspaper recycling, the solution to which appears to be forthcoming anyway! However, I've no doubts that Councillor Eddy has achieved his political objective of getting some significant publicity by appearing to be concerned about so-called 'green issues'.

My great fear when I see and take part in the Green debate of today is that we have been here before. Back in the late eighties and early nineties there was a surge of interest in and concern for all things Green, as there is now. Politicians in the big parties suddenly 'became green' and claimed to have green policies. Yet if they had and they had followed through on those policies nearly twenty years on we would surely expect far fewer problems rather than the greater problems we actually have!

Something I wrote back in summer 1990, in response to Bristol City Council's Green Charter, is as worryingly relevant today as it was then:

'Can the institutions and decision making processes and politicians who have been in power and caused the problem really be trusted to solve it? Will they compromise at crunch points, as has happened over the years which have brought us to this point? Indeed we must ask whether the political will for real action can exist without Green Party councillors on the City Council. One of the big dangers is that people will feel that everything is ok because 'the council is doing something' when nothing fundamental has changed and environmental problems are more urgent than ever. It is vital that everyone keeps the pressure for action on, and remembering the kind of politicians that have given us our problems we must all beware of 'greenspeak'.'