Rupert's Read

These two dramatic developments in recent days [see links below], especially that at Nagoya, seem to offer great hope. But are they really as good news as they appear? As argued in my paper in THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEN ECONOMICS a couple of years ago ( http://www.rupertread.fastmail.co.uk/Economics_is_philosophy%20full%20length.doc  ), I am deeply concerned that the sudden move to accepting the financial valuation of ecosystem services (1) embraces a brand of anthropocentrism that in fact aims stand opposed to ecocentrism (because the financial numbers are all based on capitalist economics, which attributes no real value to nature, only to human wants), (2) delegitimises moves to value nature on other grounds (once we have a number attached to nature, won't people who say that it is priceless be told not just that they are merely sentimentalising, but that they are factually mistaken?), (3) is incoherent and so vulnerable to attack (because nature - and ourse...

Do read this, if you are interested in understanding how even Scotland would benefit from the clocks not going back tonight: http://www.psi.org.uk/pdf/2010/SCOTLAND_DAYLIGHT_FINAL_v4.pdf

This very thoughtful post http://bit.ly/cHTPZu  carefully makes the argument that those opposing serious action on dangerous climate-change eerily echo the arguments of those who opposed serious action to stop slavery. It points out for example the striking parallels that exist between the arguments of the capitalists who called for only voluntary action to reduce the negative impact of slavery, and the arguments of the capitalists who call now for only voluntary action to reduce the negative impact of manmade climate change.     But the parallels can be taken one stage further:     Global over-heating is happening because of our burning of ever more fossil fuels. This burning gives us access to a vast energy glut, compared to which almost all the preceding existence of human beings has been extraordinarily low energy. But Peak Oil and the soon-to-follow Peak Gas mean that this glut will be temporary. In future, people will not have acce...

This is very important good news. Geoengineering puts our ecosystems at dire risk (and distracts from actually fixing the climate - which is why Newt Gingrich loves it). ...Major victory for common sense as hacking of planetary ecosystems is premature until such time as all other options are exhausted; and until there are global protocols, consensus and a sound scientific basis for any geoengineering that may or may not occur. October 29, 2010 From Earth's Newsdesk and Climate Ark, projects of Ecological Internet (EI) http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/ | http://www.climateark.org/ NAGOYA, Japan - Ecological Internet welcomes reports that the 193-member UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will close its tenth biennial meeting with a de facto moratorium on geoengineering projects and experiments. This is a tremendous victory for the ETC Group's "Hands Off Mother Earth" campaign [1], which has carefully researched and presented the case for such a ...

Following the Government's announcement yesterday that there is as yet no funding for a Northern Distributor Road, Green Party councillors havecalled for the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) to withdraw the Joint Core Strategy (JCS).       Councillor Phil Hardy said 'This announcement makes it clear that there is no funding for an NDR before a further review in December 2011.   This removes any case that the JCS plan can be implemented based around the NDR.   This news simply makes the JCS plan unsound and it should now be withdrawn immediately.   This would be good news for many people who oppose the housing allocations and the high carbon transport strategy.   Now is the time for the GNDP to go back to the drawing board and develop a Plan B that is low carbon, public transport led with more realistic housing allocations.     Green Party councillors are also calling for the NDR to be abandoned...

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/26/barnet-no-frills-council-overspends This serves as a warning to the Tories (and ConDems) that if we cut too quickly we'll end up spending more .  

http://www.shapingnorfolksfuture.org.uk/content/rail/ : I'm broadly supportive of this campaign, though not particularly of the 'Norwich in 90' component thereof! FAR more important than time-reductions on the timetable is improving the reliability of train services, and working to reduce or eliminate the weekend repair schedule which devastate weekend rail travel in our Region. Surveys show this again and again: people don't mind much about 10 minutes on a timetable; what they mind about is hours of uncertainty or delay in real life.   As for the changes that the government are proposing to make to rail franchises: It is all very well to extend the franchise to 12 or 15 years, but what would be better would be to extend the franchise to permanency - while taking it back 'in house'! I.e. Renationalise the railways. That is the only cure to a balkanized rail system which has resulted in obscenely vast private profits at public expense without a...