Blog Action Day

This year Blog Action Day's theme is The Environment. I've done other posts about Climate Change that you can read here, but for today I decided to do something a little different...

Kristin rubbed her wrist as she followed the scurrying secretary and the clip, clip, clip of her mother’s heels; she hadn’t meant to get her teacher into trouble, but she wasn’t exactly sure why this was Miss Tanner’s fault as it was she who had done it.

“Mrs. Colby, Kristin.” Miss Tanner beamed as she turned to face the whirlwind that had just entered the classroom.

Mrs. Colby clattered the biscuit tin onto the nearest desk. Miss Tanner’s smile froze as she looked at it. “The Time Capsule project.”

Kristin had never heard her teacher speak so quietly.

“I presume you gave the children clear instructions?” Mrs. Colby folded her arms across her chest.

“Eh, yes,” Miss Tanner peered at Kristin. “Kristin was supposed to ask before she put anything in it.”

Now both Mrs. Colby and Miss Tanner were staring at Kristin and she could feel herself going red.

“And I also said to put in everyday things.” Miss Tanner’s confidence grew as Kristin’s head fell lower.

Mrs. Colby tutted and turned to Kristin.

“What exactly did you put in it?” Miss Tanner knelt down and looked at Kristin, her eyes asking for permission to open the lid.

“Everyday things.” Now it was Kristin’s voice that was small.

“It was more like my bloody flowerbeds.” Mrs. Colby’s hands flew to her hips.

Miss Tanner had not taken her eyes from Kristin and finally Kristin dared look up and nodded. Miss Tanner lifted the lid and removed the five ziplock bags containing the wilted remains of Mrs. Colby’s flowerbeds.

“I just thought that in the future there might not be any flowers and so people would like to know what they looked like. I thought they’d keep. Mummy puts things in those ziplock bags so that they keep.” A tear spilled out the corner of Kristin’s eye.

“What have you been filling my daughter’s head with?” Mrs. Colby rolled her eyes.

Miss Tanner stood up and looked at Mrs. Colby. “Maybe if you had asked your daughter she could have explained. I’m sure that she did not maliciously intend to ruin your flowerbeds.”

“No flowers in the future.” Mrs. Colby scoffed.

“Well I don’t know about you Mrs. Colby.” Miss Tanner held up the bags for inspection. “But my Mum used to plant bluebells, pansies and snowdrops.”

“So?”

“It just seems amazing what you’ve got in your flowerbed? Not very English country garden are they?”

“Well, the weather’s better now. We can have more variety.”

Miss Tanner raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s Kristin’s point Mrs. Colby.”

Copyright ©, 2007. Verilion

The End

So everything seems to coincide, I finished Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. The solutions to Climate Change were a bit thin on the ground; well really it boiled down to stop using coal now and this relies heavily on Government intervention, big business taking action and responsible conduct on our part. Well as we know, not all Governments have ratified the Kyoto agreement. Big business? Well if BAA’s recent behaviour over Camp for Climate Change is anything to go by I guess that BP must be the lone crusaders on that front. And responsible conduct on our part? Well I try, I buy green products, recycle, reduce my energy as much as possible and swapped to energy efficient bulbs, I don’t drive and I download music. On the minus point I then burn the CD’s for my friend’s birthday, combining the cover and the card together which I then slip into a lovely jewel case. I go to Music Festivals, now according to William Shaw at Word magazine, it’s alright that I travelled by metro to get there, but I checked the line up of Rock en Seine and Reading and Leeds Festival which was on the same weekend: Arcade Fire played Paris on Friday, Reading on Saturday and I think you can guess where they were on Sunday. So, the upshot of reading the book is that I am left feeling a little pessimistic about the future of the planet; however, I did gain a better understanding of the difference between weather and climate, why Climate Change was happening and how it will affect us. Remember the Inuit? Well, if we don’t change things they are likely to become the first people to lose their land through Climate Change.

I also finished writing my book. It closed at just over 80,000 words, which is a little bit more than I thought it would be at the beginning of the summer. Vanilla has advised me to leave it alone for a little while now. Now it’s not that I don’t take fellow writers advice, but I did then rush off and go and pick up Masello’s book, which now has a wee little layer of dust after over three weeks on the top of my pile of books to read. Rule no. 27 is Let it marinate. So I spent yesterday drawing a picture. I know that my description is a bit thin on the ground so I figured if I drew it then it would be easier to describe it when I go back to it. I also spent hours looking up Cornish, Breton, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish words. I changed all the place names. OK that’s not leaving it alone, but I didn’t read it, hitting the ‘replace all’ key on Word does not constitute reading.

And today is the last official day of the holiday, tomorrow is really weekend. My big wish for this weekend is that there is a freak meteor shower and a big lump of molten rock comes whooshing through the skies and splits up and coincidentally crashes into and burns to a crisp all the buildings that make up my place of work. Failing that one of my colleagues returning from their exotic holiday will display signs of an extremely rare and contagious (but not fatal) disease and when I arrive late (as I always do) the building will be cordoned off and the men in white bio suits will be milling about in a most sci-fi manner and I will be sent home. It’s not that I don’t like my job, I do, but I have spent the summer as someone else and it will be a shock to my system to put on those other cloaks. There are two; there’s the multicoloured striped one, which is rather like a Magician’s cloak turning you from scientist, to writer, to mathematician seamlessly, the other is darker cloak full of shadows and Machiavellian plotting and I hope I can get through the year without having to put it on.

Right I’m off to go a lunching and a shopping and maybe have a nice glass of Sangria!

Shout in Peace

Well, before this blog turns into a forum for cute kitty pictures and discussions about how much cat food is needed, I think it’s time to return to some more globally pressing issues.

Just over a week ago I posted about the Camp for Climate Change taking place at Heathrow on the 14^th – 21^st August 2007. Calvin Jones from Climate Change Action Group then posted an article explaining the reasoning behind this years Camp, their aims and philosophy. In addition Calvin’s blogs provide up to date information on campaigns at the main group and in Scotland and resources. If Climate Change is something you feel strongly about then I urge you to take a look at the article and the blogs.

But if for a moment we imagine one of those wavy flashbacks to the week before last, the biggest problem about this Camp was BAA’s abuse of the law to try to silence peaceful protest; however as Mr. Jones pointed out BAA did not succeed, the Camp is still going to take place and in fact so unsuccessful was BAA’s initial action that the named protesters in the original injunction can still take part lawfully. So, one would think that for once campaigners had won a victory over big business.

Unfortunately, it seems that the world does not reserve such kind surprises, on Saturday I read that up 1,800 extra officers had been drafted to police the event and were being encouraged to use section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Section 44 gives the police powers to:

· Stop and search people and vehicles for anything that could be used in connection with terrorism

· Search people even if they do not have evidence to suspect them

· Hold people for up to a month without charge

· Search homes and remove protesters' outer clothes, such as hats, shoes and coats.

Well, perhaps using a Terrorism law is not so far fetched in this case, after all it is companies like BAA and the ilk that are terrorising the whole world with the short-sighted policies thus causing irrevocable damage on the planet we all share. But has BAA won?

This morning I read:

In four minutes and 30 seconds yesterday, two double-storey scaffolding tripod towers were erected and a banner slung between them. Within the hour, up to 150 people had come and were unloading pallets, tents, compost toilets, wind turbines, kitchens and bikes.

Camp for Climate Change started two days early and arrived before the Police did! Some protestors have already been stopped by the police, but at the moment all seems well with some policemen pointing out that they do actually agree with the camp.

So please, if there is an issue you care about SPEAK OUT. Time and time again popular peaceful protest (with minor disruptions) has proved to be successful and now with web platforms such as these we are even more able to disseminate information. So let’s do it while we still have the chance. Last week I also read that the MoD had put in place new restrictions on what the Armed Forces can publish on Blogs, e mails, websites and text messages!

And lastly Tony Wilson died at the age of 57 on Thursday night of a heart attack after battling kidney cancer. As the founder of Factory records, my hat goes off to him for creating the most fabulous record sleeves that had me sneaking into my big bros room to stroke them while blaring out Joy Division, as I sat nodding my head and being all morose.

Stand up for your right to Camp

That’s right, me who hates camping says, 'Stand up for your right to CAMP!'

The Camp for Climate Change is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport on the 14^th – 21^st August 2007. The Camp for Climate Change is an awareness raising activity which aims to make customers flying out of Britain this summer aware of the damage CO₂ is causing to the environment and the part that air traffic has to play in that. I’m not sure how much awareness will be raised at the airport when little Jimmy has run off with his brother’s PS2 and the lady with the highlights in front is having a hissy fit because she can’t take the ten litres of gunk she spreads all over her face in her hand luggage, but that’s not my point. My point is that BAA tried to stop the whole thing. BAA, a huge airport authority making mega wonga took on three individuals and took them to court under some ‘harassment’ law and said they would disrupt the running of the airport. The harassment law that BAA’s many lawyers spent many hours discovering to stop this planned bedevilment taking place on their hallowed grounds is intended to be used to stop ‘stalkers’ and the likes. Seeing as BAA is not strictly speaking ‘a person’ but a huge corporation I do not entirely understand who John Stewart (of the Heathrow Campaign Against Aircraft Noise) and Josh Garman and Leo Murray (of the anti-aviation group Plane Stupid) were supposed to be stalking. Unfortunately, they will now not be taking part in The Camp for Climate Change, but many others will be. George Monbiot’s article is far more eloquent than mine, but I agree when he says that this isn’t only about protecting the planet we live on, but protecting our democratic voice. If we allow big businesses to deny us of our freedom of speech we might as well accept that the battle to drastically lower CO₂ emissions is lost. If on the other hand you remember the Poll Tax and you live near Heathrow, maybe you’ll join Monbiot and the others to make the people’s voice heard.

Also the results of The Clarity of Night 'Halo' contest came out. I should have mentioned it yesterday but was suffering a bad case of ‘Can’t string a sentence together’ due to insomnia! Congratulations to all of you who entered and especially those who won prizes and honourable mentions. There was a huge amount of entries this time and there was a moment there when I thought I wasn’t going to get through all the stories, but I did. And off the top of my head two of the entries I voted for were placed.

Junk Mail

This morning I got two e mails; one was from Amazon telling me that Colissimo were going to deliver my copy of Harry Potter to my door tomorrow morning without fail. Yeah, well if I don’t blog tomorrow you’ll know that pigs have finally flown. I have a very distinctive memory of visiting a Colissimo office on the other side of town. I sat in the office for a very long time while I imagined that the guy who had trundled off to look for my plane tickets had disappeared into the sorting office to rifle through a mountain of mail that was just casually tossed on the ground; moving one parcel could cause an avalanche of legal documents. Like I say I imagined this and finally I did get my plane tickets and I did go on holiday very early the next morning.

The other e mail was from Live Earth. I used their carbon calculator a few weeks ago and have been bombarded by e mails from them ever since. I don’t like e mails like this, they annoy me. I know that I did something on their stupid site weeks ago and I don’t need to be reminded every few days. All the same I clicked on something on their stupid site and discovered this: every now and again the O in the corner of the screen turns into SOS. This stands for SAVE OUR SELVES. Is it just me, or does anyone have a problem with this? Isn’t that just a little ... selfish? Do we ignore the ring necked possums whose habitats we’ve destroyed? Wasn’t it saving our selves that got us into this mess in the first place?

So I suppose that already being a bit niggled by this site I was looking for stuff to annoy me. It didn’t take very long to find it though. Right there on the other side of the header are the corporate sponsors of Live Earth: smart, Philips and MSN. Yes! smart who make those rinky dink cars that tell the world it’s alright to have only one person in the car and that pedestrian crossings are for parking on. I hate them, I really do, but now I hate them even more. Listen to this crap:

Why should people spend more money on gas than on the milk they carry home? The smart fortwo cdi (diesel version) is the only car that gets 60 miles per gallon! That not only saves money, it also saves our environment.

Oh, but if that’s not enough, get this:

smart helps tackle this global challenge by taking action and retaining the fun factor in driving.

The only way I can finish is by saying that I am flabbergasted by the hypocrisy of this. I’m thinking of writing them a letter asking them what was the criteria for the choice of their corporate sponsors, but in the end I don’t know. There’s a part of me that says that some of what Live Earth is doing is good: it’s a big event, it’s brash, it’s spreading awareness, but it’s being done in such a clumsy way that even the Daily Mail can pick a million faults in it and I really hate it when I agree with that trashy newspaper. Do we have to dumb down the message to spread it?

Scary Biscuits

When I was about thirteen I went through a phase of reading ‘horror’. I ploughed through Stephen King and Clive Barker novels like there was no tomorrow and generally they scared the crap out of me. And then I don’t know whether I stopped because I learnt the formula or whether I just got fed up with being scared, but to this day I haven’t picked up another ‘horror’ book and I’m hard pushed to go and see a ‘horror’ movie (although I have to say I just didn’t find the Blair Witch Project scary).

The book I am reading at the moment is about a world gone rampant. The characters are extraordinary and varied, but the main protagonists are hell bent on destruction. As I read of their catalogue of horrors each night I go to sleep with a deep feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. It’s not that the book is predictable, far from it, it’s just there can only be one ending: Apocalypse.

So how comes I find myself reading the scariest book since ‘The Thief of Always’? Well I may have mentioned this before, but I’m reading ‘The Weather Makers’ by Tim Flannery. I think the type of books he usually writes are light hearted romps into the world of Natural Science and his native land of Australia. This; however, is terrifying. Yeah, he might talk about ‘diddle’ penguins and Species C that hasn’t even been named yet, but in the next sentence he explains very carefully why they are all going to DIE. Before we make this planet completely uninhabitable we are going to become a very uniform, hot, boring place and the word diversity will become a word from yesteryear. I’m only a third of a way through it and I really do want to get to the ‘...what we can do about it’ bit, but in the meantime, here are some of my thoughts (which I may already have mentioned here):

• Change to a Green Energy company. France has finally taken the energy monopoly away from EDF and GDF and companies like Enercoop produce energy using only sustainable/renewable energy sources.
• Walk/cycle/take a bus/metro. In fact please do the first three so that I’m not so cramped on the metro.
• Do you have to take that plane? Could you let the train take the strain?
• Recycle
• Do an audit at work. How many people turn off their computers when they are away for more than five minutes? And lights? (OK lights are a tricky one. If you use fluorescent ones, it’s actually more energy efficient to leave them on, otherwise turn them off. Also in this climate of Global Warming light creates heat, so leaving lights off means you are a wee bit cooler and don’t need so much air con).

I know that the green lobby can come across as evangelical, but we don’t have much time left. Read the book, you’ll see for yourself.

Velib' ouch

I think I’m being a bit grumpy, but then I think it’s because I ride a bicycle like a pissed goldfish. The last time I went cycling was on Isla de Mujeres to a Turtle Sanctuary. Because I was on an island I thought there would be no traffic. There was a part of my brain that was blocking the fact that there was an airport on this island and outside of our hippyesque traveller enclave the 20^th century had marched on. So, en bref, by the time we got to the Turtle Sanctuary I was terrified and had almost cycled into a moped.

On July 15^th 2007 (on the day when Paris empties itself of its citizens like a haemorrhaging artery) the Velib’ scheme will begin. The idea is that you borrow a bike from one place, cycle off to another place and leave your bike there. The first 30 minutes are free and after that you pay 1€ for the first half hour, 3€ for the second and 4€ for the third and every half hour after that. The system is already in place in Lyon and seems to be working well. You do have to pay a membership to borrow the bikes, but it’s 1€ for a day, 5€ for a week and 29€ for a year.

Now apart from the fact that I ride a bicycle very badly these are why I think it’s a good reason:

· Bicycles get stolen all the time in Paris, so this is one way of avoiding having your bike stolen.

· As a cyclist you will not have to pay for the maintenance of the bike, or have to worry about where to store it.

· It’s environmentally friendly.

At this point I am struggling. You see every aspect of me is saying this is a great idea, but, it’s all well and good installing thousands of free bikes, but where are the bike lanes? I haven’t seen any extra ones being painted around the city recently. Every cyclist I know has had an accident at one point in time or another and frankly for me to get to work directly I could go round the Arc de Triomphe (if I was crazy) or I would have to ride parallel to the Peripherique (the Paris ring road).

Secondly my journey time would be longer, it would take me ten minutes to walk to my nearest post at this end and fifteen minutes at the other end. It takes me twenty five minutes to get to work at present. Nevertheless, when I was really considering this, before I realised that I would be seriously endangering my life, I did think that for the sake of not getting my metro line it would be worth it.

Which is when I realised who the people who are going to be renting these bikes are. It won’t be M. Blogue in his new range Twingo. Why would he battle the elements when he has a city efficient car with power steering and a car stereo? The amount of traffic is going to stay exactly the same. Some commuters might give up on the metro and cycle around and rush hour could turn into a scene straight from Beijing, but I mean that in the loosest sense.

Now looking into my crystal ball I look into the future and predict several things:

1. I will be run over by a cyclist;
2. A congestion charge will be imposed on Parisian drivers. I don’t know where the congestion zone would be, but perhaps instead of doing it by zone it will be done like the motorways and during red times you pay more than say green times.
3. More cycle lanes will be created.

If number two and three happen, then I foresee that this scheme will be very successful. As for number one it’s just inevitable.

Oh by the way I am now on holiday 65 days of freedom. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah...

Cinq minutes pour la terre

Tomorrow in France, all the citizens are being asked to turn off all their electricity between 7.55 pm and 8 pm, the reason being that:

a) the new Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change by the United Nations (I’m translating this, so this could be a bit of a dodgy translation) is being presented in Paris;

b) to show the presidential candidates of the forthcoming elections that Climate Change should be a subject of governmental debate.

The Eiffel Tower is going to be turned off (it sparkles every hour once it gets dark for ten minutes) and a number of other Mairies (town halls) are participating in various ways as well. I’ll let you know how it went, and you can join in too if you want.

What on earth is going on?

In the dying days of my Christmas holiday, I curled up on the sofa under my sleeping bag and watched An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore's overblown PowerPoint presentation on Global Warming/ Climate Change made in an incredibly patronising manner with a catchy little number by Melissa Etheridge at the end. Despite this, the movie is brilliantly simple and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I saw it.

Al Gore didn’t wake me up to Climate Change; part of my choice to become vegetarian was also based in Environmental issues. Before I launched myself into the big scary world of work I volunteered for BTCV and wrote articles in their newsletter about new Sites of Scientific Interest (SSI) and so such. In my first job I was responsible for getting the Environmental area off the ground and then I left England and was hit with poverty like a ton of bricks.

One of my lasting memories of Mexico was wandering through Puebla one Sunday afternoon. A mother wrapped in a bright orange shawl held out a plastic begging bowl while her young mucky faced daughter next to her shat uncontrollably, probably suffering from dysentery.

In Mexico I lived in a compound behind a brick wall guarded by a little old Mexican man, iron fences and a fuck off huge Rottweiler. I got taxis to work when I was late (which was frequently, I never was a morning person) and poverty was hidden away on the outskirts of the city, but every now and again when we got on the buses to this place or that place, it sat right next to you. I began to understand that being vegetarian was a privilege and that had I grown up in Mexico (or even in Mauritius –my parents’ birthplace) survival would be a more urgent issue. I realised that having money allowed you to put plasters over things like environmental issues, but in the end while individual action made you feel better, doing it for yourself is not enough. If you believe in something and you want to change it, you have to shout about it and you have to shout to as many people as possible. Being a politician helps, being a pop star or film star helps, or just being you helps if you SHOUT.

I’m still kind of vegetarian (I had a choice of ploughing my way through a tasty proportion of marine wildlife in Mexico or eat cactus for two years), I have more bins than my tiny flat really needs and sometimes I get a little mixed up and have to retrieve the cotton buds from recycling and contact lenses cases from waste. I have bio washing up liquid, soap powder and three different styles of Monoprix ‘Agisson pour demain’ reusable bags, but what the movie really reminded me was that I wasn’t doing enough for tomorrow.

Before the sun grows grow into a red giant in 5 billion years we need to do something. Gore suggests that you do some stuff. I’ve included the link here. In the movie he also makes a couple of suggestions which I now don’t see in the list:

• Write to your politician.
• Vote Green (not necessarily the Green Party – who I have to say always made me want to laugh when they turned up with those enormous sunflower badges pinned to their home knitted sweaters).
• Become a Politician.
• Oh and watch the movie, or better still get your kids to watch the movie, because they will not let you forget what they have seen.

So to finish off I'll steal Monoprix's catch phrase: Act today for tomorrow. Now I guess I better write them a letter to say that even though salad comes in a biodegradable bag that turns into compost, their yoghurts are still overpackaged.