Recycling Petition / Greens Election Broadcast

An online petition, started by Coventry Friends of the Earth, can be found here.

The local election broadcast for the Green Party will be aired on Monday 24th April on the following channels:

- BBC2 17.55
- ITV 18.25
- BBC1 18.45

Very productive day yesterday, 11 streets leafletted!

Watching: saw The Constant Gardener at the Warwick Arts Centre last night

Listening: Fergal Keane interviewed the peace activist Norman Kember on Radio 4 this morning, his first broadcast interview at length, about his work, his capture, and the smears against him not thanking the SAS enough on his release.

Stop The War Meeting - 20th April

The next meeting of "Coventry Stop the War" will be on Thursday, 20th April, at 7.30 pm, upstairs at the Methodist Central Hall, New Union Street. The agenda will be:

- What response if or when the US/Israel mount an attack on Iran
- Public meeting in Coventry, possibly with Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo prison camp inmate
- Stop the War coalition national conference in June
- Activities that can help to gain publicity and public awareness for the anti-war movement

Prof Sir David King and Climate Change

Prof David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser, now says that a 3 degrees Celsius global rise in temperature, caused by 550 parts per million of CO2, would lead to:

- a drop worldwide of between 20 and 400 million tonnes in cereal crops, leaving 400 million more people at risk of hunger
- between 1.2bn and 3bn more people at risk of water stress
- few ecosystems (like natural forests) could adapt
- half of nature reserves would cease to be worthwhile
- a fifth of coastal wetlands would be lost.

What’s important is that King added that “it was essential that people did not fall into despair about climate change, because the worst effects could be still avoided with action.”

The bright side is that if we can hold the line at 400 ppm of CO2, we can keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

Does this sound like a situation where half-stepping will work, where Labour’s drip-feeding of renewable energy technologies fits?

Campaigning Begins!

Our leaflets come back from the printer tonight, and we'll be out on the streets of Earlsdon tomorrow from 1230pm onwards. We've managed to get 7000 A5 leaflets printed!

Fascinating interview on Channel 4 News tonight. Jon Snow behaving like Paxman, as he tried to get some straight answers out of Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister. The door is still wide open for nuclear, and renewable energy sources (such as geothermal heat pump, wind or solar PV) are receiving a tenth of the funding when you compare the UK with other countries.

Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is one of the world's experts on renewable energy vs nuclear:

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1151.php

Lovins: "Private investors have flatly rejected nuclear power but enthusiastically bought its main supply-side competitors—decentralized cogeneration and renewables. Worldwide, by the end of 2004, these supposedly inadequate alternatives had more installed capacity than nuclear, produced 92% as much electricity, and were growing 5.9 times faster and accelerating, while nuclear was fading."

Kirklees council in Yorkshire has pledged that, by 2011, at least 30% of energy consumption will be through renewable sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, and biomass boiler plants that run off non-fossil fuel such as wood pellets and vegetable oil. New residential homes and schools now under construction or in the design stage are already incorporating wind turbines and solar panels.

We'd like to see that replicated in Coventry.