FFS!

Quote of the week has to go to Monbiot: "The government also plans to introduce what it calls a Fair Fuel Stabiliser. This policy might be blessed with the best abbreviation since the proposed City University of Newcastle-on-Tyne was rechristened, but it’s likely to ensure that demand remains strong."

My colleague Steve was arguing on the Politics Show why fuel duty should not be reduced and I think the events in the Middle East are just the latest in a long line of reasons stretching from climate change to sustainability to health.

I fully accept that the impact of high prices are felt on the less well off but this can be dealt with fairly simply by personal tradeable carbon quotas. A cap on carbon use across the country with fair share access to oil/gas/coal would mean that people who use less than their equal share could sell their excess quota to others, offsetting the cost of lower amounts of carbon that they have used, FFS!

Kent tops carbon emission league

The front page story in this week's Kent on Sunday is that Kent has the highest carbon emissions of any county in the country. The data were published a few days ago by the Guardian and a breakdown of emissions in kt for various sectors across all regions, counties and boroughs.

Kent has the highest emissions in the country (11,879kt in 2008) of any county. Of course, Kent also has the highest population of any county in the country and so its per capita emissions are broadly in line with the rest of the country (8.5kt per person).

This doesn't mean we should be complacent, though. High populations should lead to economies of scale for energy efficiency. Public transport links should be far more efficient with high populations. Kent is one of the warmest places in the country, with Gravesend often cited as being the warmest on many days and Favesham holding the record for the hottest place in the UK on record (both towns are just north of the North Downs), so energy for heating should be lower than other parts of the UK.

Looking at places with low carbon emissions, Wales, Scotland, North of England etc. we see that they have high per capita emissions as populations are low. London, on the other hand has a low per capita emission figure and a high population.

It doesn't really matter what the population size is, at the end of the day it is the amount of carbon being released that is doing the damage. There needs to be radical change to the way we live if we are to make a serious dent in our emissions.

MBC Carbon Reduction Targets

It looks like Maidstone Borough Council's Tory run cabinet are going to ditch the previous 'Primrose Promise' of carbon neutrality by 2010 agreed by the Lib Dems in favour of year on year carbon reduction targets of 3%.

Carbon neutrality, as any real green will tell you, is a farce. It is like paying someone in Africa not to smoke cigarettes so that you can continue to. I welcome MBC's change of direction (of course the LibDems are furious...), but it doesn't go any way near far enough.

The scale of the climate challange is such that we need to kick the carbon habit by around 9% per annum in this country. Furthermore simply reducting the council's footprint will achieve very little, the target should be borough wide and include all households and business as well as local government.

9% is achivable with polictical will and public support, but the latter will be lacking until the former is evident. The world is in a position where it now needs an effort akin to the changes made to manufacturing at the start of WW2. There are just 100 months left to tackle the problem if we want to prevent catastrophic climate change.