The Mumsnet Society for Environment, Development and Apple Pie

[policywonk]

Thought I'd start a new thread to keep up the conversation about the issues that we were concentrating on at the G20 (maternal and newborn health and a low-carbon future, among other things).

Maybe we can get a bit of momentum going. The next big event will be the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings at the end of April. This will be the first opportunity to assess how the IMF proposes to use the new money it's been given, and what sort of conditions will be attached to the money given or loaned to developing countries.

I'll kick things off with a link to Oxfam Man's excellent blog

Fucking slackers

Giz, it was one of the NGO people at the G20 briefing day. I'm not sure what his source was but he reckoned it's an open secret in energy circles? You'd know more than me though (does it sound weird?) Anyway, he said very specifically that no government or NGO could risk being publically associated with it.

Hope you don't mind me joining the conversation but the French have a target of 0.5 t/capita (if I have understood correctly)- They are hoping to achieve it through Nuclear Power.

(Interministerial Task
Force on Climate
Change (MIES) (2004))

PS by 2050

Of course I don't mind, junk. You're the first person to say anything USEFUL for days.

I wonder whether either you or gizmo thinks that 0.5 tons is anything like a realistic target? Are the French making much progress towards it?

gizmo is tweeting about smart grids - something I know nothing about.

No no no. We need to mobilise our personal and collective capacities to effect powerful change from below. (Not that sort of below.)

I guess so.

I'm going to post something really pompous later on.

Ooh Lenin, if you have a look at Oxfam Man's blog (link in OP) he posted something yesterday about giving cash sums directly to poor people with few conditions (no alcohol or gambling I think it was. Pay-per-view porn encouraged though.)

Anyway peeps, LOOK - there's a rumour that the Treasury is considering cutting the development aid budget in the upcoming budget. You can email the Treasury at [email protected], tweet at @HMTreasury or just get in touch with your MP and tell him/her you don't want the development budget cut.

This is wot I wrote to the Treasury:

'There's a rumour going around that the Treasury is planning to cut the overall budget for development aid in the upcoming budget. I very much hope that this is not the case.

As someone who has always been sceptical about the New Labour project, I believe that your excellent record on development aid is one of the few things you can be unequivocally proud of, and one of the things that still makes me want to vote Labour rather than Conservative.

The global recession is hitting the poorest people on earth hardest of all. It would be shameful for you to cut the development aid budget at a time like this.

Yours sincerely,

Web-based nutter'

Well interestingly enough (I say 'interesting' in a qualified way of course), there's a project abroad to provide vouchers to poor communities, which they would be able to exchange for the service of their choice from the provider of their choice. Cameron is rather keen on it. There's a post about it on my blog

I've just realised (being stupid) that members of the public can attend Select Committee meetings at the Commons/Lords. Thinking about going along to the development/climate change ones. Anybody fancy coming with me?

What can people like me do?

I try, I really try to read and understand all this but the reality is, I get bored. I need to know how to save the planet & trust the banks but I need it in sound-bite sized chunks.

I recycle.

I wash at 30 degrees.

I have those bloody awful energy saving lightbulbs.

I keep chickens and compost everything.

I take my litter home with me and scoop the dog's poop.

There are millions of divvies like me. How can all the information be presented to me in an easy way? G20 has passed me by.

I hear you Doodle. That's partly what I hoped this thread would be about - people posting up little actions we can all do (email your MP about this, sign this e-petition, look at this blog etc etc).

It sounds as though it's the environmental stuff that's important to you - in which case, don't worry about missing G20, nothing happened (well apart from ME that is) - the environment was completely passed over.

The big news on the environment front is the Copenhagen meeting in December, which will take up where the Kyoto treaty (shortly to expire) leaves off. So the important thing for the next six months will be to pressurise national governments to make and stick to big commitments in terms of carbon reductions, and investing in what people are calling 'the green recovery' - ie, getting the world out of this recession by investing in green, clean technologies.

So will be posting more stuff up about Copenhagen as time goes on.

Will have more of a think about good sources of digestible information and will get back to you!

I read one piece (newspaper) that described an organisation called (something like) ICPP - all the scientists were funded by the oil and tobacco industry, so their findings were discreditted before they were even published. They were saying global warming was a natural occurence and had more to do with the sun's activity than ours.

The article also said that most, if not all, other studies are funded by governments and start with the premis that CO2 and our production of it, was to blame and now they are trying to shoe-horn their findings to fit the premis - IYSWIM.

A friend of ours works at the met. office. He thinks global warming is natural rather than man-made as well.

See, now, that all just befuddles me! I recycle because I'm ashamed of what we're doing to the planet but I'm not sure if what we're doing/trying to do is going to help climate at all.

Confused but entitled to vote - this is my false dichotomy. I'm voting on my childrens future but what in Gawd's name am I voting for and why!

I have a headache now

Doodle, all I can say to that is that there's an absolute, cast-iron scientific consensus that climate change is real, and is man-made (anthropogenic, in the jargon). There are some who disagree, but the consensus is on a par with the consensus that HIV causes AIDS (another one that generates a lot of controversy, but very few proper scientists will even entertain the notion that it's not true).

I know what you mean about not feeling qualified to judge the arguments - neither am I. But I am happy to go along with the absolutely overwhelming majority of physicists and climate scientists.

Some people (possibly your friend at the Met Office?) get tangled up because there are entirely natural fluctuations in climate over geological time, and they think that the current change is on a par with them. But, in absolute terms, it's really not. The rate of change is out of all proportion to previous climate fluctuations.

New Scientist article here - not sure I can honestly describe it as 'bite-sized', mind

It's an interesting debate.

Just posted this on another thread, but it might be a bit relevant here, following Doodle's post - in Fife a group ran an experiment of only buying local food for a year - it was called the Fife Diet. It was very successful, and there are other projects happening because of it.

PW - do you think it might be an idea to create a profile, just with a link to your blog on it?

OK policywonk, stung by the accusation that my contribution wasn't useful (you puppy hater you), here is a video that's really worth watching.

Doodle2U, you might find that this gives you something easily digestible to think about - and gives you a reason to carry on doing what you're doing.

Apologies if you've seen this before. I think it's brilliant, and worth watching again.

the arguments for and against global warming and what we should do

That's interesting Habb. Oxfam have a campaign going about local food - they're worried that the trend towards choosing local food will penalise farmers in developing countries, who didn't create this mess and desperately need the export market. There's a tortured debate about whether less-intensively produced products that are then shipped (not air-freighted) to market can be justified when you consider both the carbon issue and the development issue. Oxfam suggest buying Fair Trade products from developing countries instead of domestically produced meat/fish (meat and fish being carbon-intensive by their very nature).

OTOH, local people buying local produce is a powerful thing and probably has wonderful knock-on effects in terms of community organisation. I love the local currency experiments that are going on around the country - there's one in Lewes called the Lewes pound.

Local vs global innit.

Good point about profile - I took the old one down when my anonymity went south because it had pics of the DCs on.

BIWI, I will look at that later - ta

I'm going to have to turn the wireless connection off now cos I'm supposed to be working today and I'm doing bugger all.