My Big Political Idea

This definitely sounds a bit esoteric, but will be of interest to any fellow policy wonks out there...this weekend, at the NUS Wales conference in Llandrindod Wells, and subject to debate time, I have put forward a motion on the subject of 'sustainable development in Welsh higher education'

The thrust of the motion is to call for the National Assembly for Wales to hold an inquiry into sustainable development in the Welsh higher education sector. If my basic understanding of assembly procedures is correct, this would be in the form of a select committee inquiry to assess the extent to which 'sustainable development' is being supported through the twelve higher education institutions in Wales. This would include expert testimony, the public being invited to submit responses, and a report and recommendations being set out by the relevant committee.

I think there can be a more diverse approach for students to lobby the Assembly other than on tuition fees, and this area seems to be to be a comparatively under-emphasized area of policy and strategy. This inquiry would be partly an assessment of where SD in Welsh HE institutions is and setting out a direction for the future - so the idea of such an inquiry is really policy-neutral in that it doesn't say 'do this' or 'do that'; rather, 'let's see where we are and what we need to do to meet our sustainable development objectives'. At the very least, it would hopefully place the issue on the political agenda.

Racing into the Future

The Honda Formula One racing team have stepped into the climate change fray with the launch of their car for the 2007 season which features no advertising, but Planet Earth.

Their associated website, Myearthdream, urges people to make carbon-saving pledges and then have their pledge appear as part of the car's design livery at F1 races. The pledges feature the simple stuff and each and every one of us can do - switching electricity suppliers, low-energy lightbulbs, recycling, using public transport - and something I don't see very often - not ironing and going for the 'crumpled look'. I should tell this last one to my mum...

I was taken aback when I read about this initiative- only recently have I begun to think about the environmental impact of F1 racing (which I frequently watch) and the industry has been targeted for encouraging high speeds and a profligate use of fuel. Still, Honda, alongside Toyota, have been at the forefront of lower emissions from cars and fuel efficiency and I would think it was complete greenwash if it was coming from a company like Land Rover. Watching a car plastered in the image of the Earth go around and around the track can only spark off conversation and thinking on climate change by F1 fans.

Taking the lead in London

London mayor Ken Livingstone is at it again, this time with a detailed plan for how London will cut its carbon emissions by 60% over the next twenty years. As Britain's capital, this is not only a highly symbolic move but with significant practical implications for tackling climate change. The plan focuses on current technologies and methods, which are all immediately do-able.

I'm all for blue-sky thinking, such as cloudseeding ships to create more cloud to reflect sunlight, but the fact remains that decentralized energy and energy efficiency still have a long way to go and they can do the job without much fuss. Transport, offices, homes, the energy supply - if we each do a little, we all do a lot.

The mayor said:
"Londoners don't have to reduce their quality of life to tackle climate change, but we do need to change the way we live"

Too right.

Fairtrade Fortnight rolls around!

Ah yes, 20% discounts at the Co-op on its entire Fairtrade range (alcohol, chocolate, coffee, flapjacks, cakes, sugar, bananas, avocados, etc etc etc)...it can only be Fairtrade Fortnight again!

This is Britain's fourteenth Fairtrade Fortnight, whose lead organiser is the Fairtrade Foundation - the people behind the certification of the Fairtrade mark.

From the entire banana crop (100m bananas) of St. Lucia recieving Fairtrade prices, to the news that Fairtrade sales now top £300m a year, and from statistics showing that the Fairtrade mark reaches over 2,500 different products to supermarkets (chiefly the Co-op, Marks and Spencers and Sainsbury's) falling over each other to extend the reach of their Fairtrade range, things are looking up for the kind of consumption that offers a helping hand to producers across the world.

The social premium that Fairtrade certification provides is a fundamental idea behind the concept - as a kind of 'top-up', it offers an investment that would otherwise take years to build up. Where these additional funds are invested is decided by a local committee of farmers (promoting cooperation and mutual support). Examples of projects include building more classrooms, processing equipment, housing, university and high school scholarships, clinics and village halls.

More details on local Aberystwyth events to promote Fairtrade will soon be up - take this chance to choose Fairtrade at supermarkets, shops and cafes now!

Past the 2000-hit mark!

This blog has now surged pass the 2000-hit mark, which was a pretty big milestone for me and one that I didn't think I would reach when I first got going with this project last fall. It averages about 20-30 hits a day an a rough average of about one post a day, which includes weekends and holidays. I am, however, somewhat perplexed by a massive surge yesterday of 500+ hits, of which 300+ came from different users...

People OR Planet?

Perhaps the biggest debate within the ethical lifestyles movement that has rapidly leaped onto the public agenda is an apparent trade-off between people ((Fairtrade) food produced in the developing world that is key to escaping the poverty trap) and planet (the food miles involved in such global supply chains and the carbon emissions associated with them).

Do we go for local food that has only travelled a few dozen miles to arrive at our doorstep, or do we choose food produced halfway around the world that is an integral part of economic survival for producers? A BBC article reports on the dangers that 'the green backlash' could pose to millions of farmers, particularly in Africa, whose agricultural produce is destined for UK supermarket shelves. A misguided kind of UK consumer pressure towards food miles, it writes, could threaten the survival of entire industries, leaving millions worse off for comparatively little reductions in carbon emissions.

What struck me particularly were the opening lines of the article:
"What is global warming?", asks Samuel Mauthike, a small scale vegetable farmer in Kirinyaga, Kenya's central province, as he crouches down compressing the moist soil around his green bean plants.

"Is it something caused by us in Africa?"

This point is particularly relevant - in making food miles a central concern do we end discriminating against those who have contributed the least to climate change? All of a sudden, African farmers are perplexed by consumers demanding less of their product just because it comes from distant lands, asking 'hold on, have we done something wrong?' We should, of course, be trying to cut carbon emissions everywhere that we can, and in development terms be searching for low-carbon growth and development.

Perhaps the high dependence of developing-country farmers upon Western markets means that to cut them off would only lead to more environmentally-destructive behaviour out of desperation; when we can break the cycle of poverty through trade, more secure livelihoods enable sustainability to be taken into greater consideration. There is a big picture to remember - and a more sustainable world must also necessarily be a fairer, inclusive one.

An online debate among People and Planet members that explores these issues can be accessed here.

GM Motions

Last Tuesday at the first Guild General Meeting of the term, two motions of particular relevance to me were passed, one indicating Guild support for the Go Green campaign, and one about recycling in halls - one of my priorities for the rest of the year.

Go Green
GM Resolves:

1. To support Aber People and Planet, the Guild's Environment and Ethics Officer, and others in campaigning for UWA to Go Green, which involves the university having in place four key factors: (a) a full-time members of staff dedicated to environmental progress; (b) A publicly-available environmental policy; (c) The active, public support of senior management to environmental progress; (d) A comprehensive review to investigate all the environmental impacts of the university;
2. To mandate the Guild President to write to the Vice-Chancellor to express the Guild's support for the Go Green campaign
3. To encourage all students to support the Go Green campaign through publicity in the Union and the website.

Recycling in Halls

GM Resolves:

1. To mandate the Environment and Ethics Officer and Halls Officer to lobby Residential and Hospitality services to ensure that an apropriate storage solution for recyclable materials is installed in all halls that offer recycling facilities.

Both of these provide a welcome boost for the remaining months of the academic year, and rest assured that I will be working flat out to speed up the glacial pace of progress.

Who'd Like to be an Environment and Ethics Officer?

Nominations are now open for Guild of Students elections until next Friday (2nd March). You can pick up the necessary forms from the reception in the Students Union that list all the details - and most of them are also available on the Guild website.

If anyone is interested in taking on my role as a non-sabbatical officer please don't hesitate to email me and I'd be happy to have a chat about the kinds of things that I get up to - although if you're reading this you probably have a reasonably good sense of how I manage to distract myself from writing essays.

What a Bright Idea!

I make no secret of my preference for 'choice editing' and there are few other things with which I have associated the subject with than the lightbulb. Happily, Australia has announced that it will be phasing out incandescent lighting within three years. An excerpt from the Guardian's leader comment notes:

"...the new technology has got better, allowing low-energy lights to shed their reputation for giving out a dim, cold, white light. New coloured bulbs now match the traditional warm incandescent glow. They cannot yet replace all bulbs; spotlights are tricky, so are low-voltage systems and dimmers. But that will change. Mr Turnbull [the Australian environment minister] is on to something. Britain's politicians should be looking down under for illumination."

Incandescent lightbulbs waste most of their energy input (95%) through heat, and the Australian initiative is estimated to save 800,000 tones of CO2 from current emissions levels - no small difference. Replacing incandescent bulbs is not only more carbon-friendly, but cuts down on household bills by lasting longer and using less energy. Energy efficiency standards will be raised in Australia so that bulbs that do not meet the minimum requirements (incandescent ones) simply cannot be sold.

There already is a UK-based campaign to ban the bulb, and its main organiser was featured in the BBC's Green Room environmental journalism series last year, providing a snappy summary of the campaign. Leo Hickman, Guardian ethical correspondent discusses the issue here. Phillips and Tesco are cottoning on to the low-energy lightbulb too: the former that it will be phasing out its own incandescent products within ten years, while the latter has halved the price of its flourescent bulbs as part of its pledges to tackle climate change.

Lightbulbs are usually the first thing that shoots out of my campaigning mouth when people ask 'what can I do to cut down on my carbon emissions' because lighting is something simple, tangible and that all houses have - and most importantly, it does make a difference. Switching an entire (average-sized) house to low-energy lightbulbs could save around 230kg of CO2 a year. I'm all for freedom of choice, but there are some things that somehow defy common sense, and what about the public interest? The basic technical design of the bulb has remained unchanged for over 125 years!

Tony Blair, believe it or not, hit the nail on the head when he remarked that he looks forward to the day when environmental concerns are a given for any product in the same way that health and safety considerations are. We should expect no less.

The Energy Manager

I wrote a month or so ago about the new Energy Manager, part-funded by the Carbon Trust, that is working at the university on a consultancy contract for six months. He is working within the Estates Office, on a 2-day-a-week basis. I can now provide further details about what exactly that person will be getting up to:

- Building Energy Managment Systems - the project is to develop a campus-wide BEMS that will allow energy consumption in buildings to be monitored easily and remotely, integrating existing stand-alone monitoring systems in individual buildings.
- Lighting - to develop a comprehensive lighting policy and action programme for both academic and residential buildings that will help deliver a 20% cut in electricity consumption for lighting.
- Biomass Heating - to look at areas where at least three biomass (woodchip burning) boilers can be introduced in buildings at a cost-effective level.
- Campus Refurbishment - providing energy conservation and sustainability input into the refurbishment of 1200 m2 of university office space during the first half of 2007.

For all but the last of these, the goal is that by the time these six months (up to June/July) are up, the tendering process for physical delivery of the changes identified will have begun.

UWA Environmental Strategy Snowed Under

Over the last four months, an Environmental Strategy working group has been plodding away with developing an environmental strategy for the university. This group comprises one of the Pro-Vice-Chancellors (Dr. John Harries), the Head of House Services (Alan Stephens), Head of Estates Management (Mike Tipping), the Procurement Manager (Mike Smith) and the Health, Safety and Environmental Advisor (Dr. Andrew Walker) and the draft strategy was due to be presented to the university's Health, Safety and Environment committee meeting today.

Unfortunately, the snowfall two weeks ago meant that the group was unable to meet to finalize their draft, and thus the strategy will not be presented until the next HSE committee meeting on June 6, 2007. When we last wrote to the Vice-Chancellor (at the beginning of the month), we expressed our hope that current students (and staff) would be able to contribute to this strategy becoming policy, and so I really do hope that this will take place before the end of the academic year. More to be posted as I hear about concrete developments.

The Climate Impact of UK plc

A new climate change report by Christian Aid titled Coming Clean, as it pushes the issue to the very top of its campaigning priorities, focuses on the big picture of the UK's carbon emissions and targeting Tony Blair's oft-repeated assertion that the UK can only do so much on unilateral climate change action because it is only responsible for 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

To begin with one point - 2% of a global total may not seem like much, but is near the top of the per-capita rankings and is still the seventh-largest overall emitter. What the report focuses on is how UK-headquarted multinational companies are responsible for generating a much greater proportion of carbon emissions through their international activities. The estimate provided by the report and the Trucost environmental analyst consultancy, comes to 15% of the global total.

Current emissions from FTSE companies are only voluntarily reported (at varying levels of complexity), and these generally only include the basics - from offices and personnel travel. What is glaringly missing is tracing the impact of the activities themselves. So banks like Barclays and HSBC (my own bank, admittedly), through lending and support for new fossil fuel projects, find their activities to be extremely 'carbon-intensive. Tesco and the supermarkets' global supply chain carbon impacts are not fully reflected in their reported figures, and well, I think you can guess that the oil and gas industries fall in the same bracket too.

What the report calls for is for government to introduce a mandatory reporting requirement for all UK-based companies, and for a transparent, benchmarked standard to allow for comparisons across companies. With apropriate data, measures can then be taken to reduce the carbon burden of UK plc.

Just as carbon emissions know no boundaries in effecting change elsewhere in the world, we should not be straightjacketed by national boundaries in considering the sources of international emissions. Have the high-emitting industries simply been outsourced to other countries, helping to lower the UK's emissions? This reflects, in the report's terms, the 'carbon cost of globalisation'.

Breathing Earth

A friend forwarded this website to me - Breathing Earth - an animated illustration of how the burden of carbon dioxide emissions is spread throughout the world, the rate of emissions and puts this in comparison with birth/death rates - in a real-time situation.

If nothing else, a snappy graphic to sit back and just watch for a few minutes to see a simulation of current carbon dioxide emissions over that exact period of time.

Future Leaders

This was released in late January, but I have finally got the chance to read it now - Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity chaired by Sir Jonathan Porritt, and UCAS, the undergraduate admissions service, have teamed up to conduct a survey among 2007 incoming undergrads to ask them about their expectations for the future.

With a 25% response rate (consisting of over 50,000 soon-to-be university students), the broad picture from the Future Leaders' Survey is that we will live (in 2030) in a world of greater technological development, but one where the global rich-poor divide is greater and climate change manifests itself across the globe. Amidst a recognition of the scale of change that awaits us in the coming century, Sir Jonathan Porritt wrote in his introduction to the report:

"...this is a transitional generation, with one foot placed confidently in the low-carbon environment-friendly economy of the future, but the other still rooted in today's high-speed, high-consumption, carbon-intensive lifestyles...As far as most of our future leaders are concerned, their glasses are undoubtedly half-full when they look out on the world ahead."

A selection of statistics from the survey:
- 76% believe that lifestyles need to change radically across the board, or at least in many areas, for humanity to survive the next century.
-55% sees itself as more concerned about the environment, with only 8% saying that their parents were more concerned.
-46% say that environmental concerns are important when deciding who to work for
-36% say that they have written to their MP
- 79% say that having an interesting job will be very important for their personal happiness in the next ten years, compared to 33% who say the same about having a job that pays well.

And of particular interest:
- 45% of those studying education, social sciences, architecture, and building and planning said that a good track record on sustainable development was important or very important in choosing where to study.
-14% of creative arts and design and social sciences students said that environmental considerations were important for all five of the following - employer, type of career, bank, car and voting preferences.

This is a trend that I think is only going to intensify in the coming years and decades. Sustainable development - environmental, ethical and societal concerns will find their way across most decisions we make and become an integral part of our thinking. Other surveys remind us that it is the grey-haired generation rather than the 16-25s who are more politically and environmentally active; the survey results suggest, at the very least, that positive, societal change among my generation is on its way - even if only haltingly for now.

Speaking the climate

First George Monbiot, now...Sir John Houghton, climatologist, will be delivering a guest lecture in Aber on the same day (Wednesday 21 Feb)!

The lecture will take place in the Physics Main lecture room at 5pm, and the topic will be on 'the basics of climate prediction'. I would imagine that this will be a science rather than a policy-based lecture, but he is one of the world's most renown climatologists and chaired the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 assessment and I'm sure he'll refer to his experiences then!

A light at the end of the tunnel?

There have been a couple of positive movements over the last week over a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the current binding international framework on climate change:

GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, has reached an agreement on cuts in carbon dioxide emissions for both developed and developing countries and a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions. Although non-binding and not official government policy, this agreement is important because it includes a number of key US politicians, business leaders as well as politicians from the developing world and is explicit in looking towards an international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. It is, as the BBC's environment correspondent suggests, a hard bargain that is movement of sorts. That is at least something to take comfort in.

The Canadian parliament has passed a resolution to force its government (against its will) to return to trying to meet its Kyoto targets; German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that she will make climate change a priority at G8 discussions in the summer; and Tony Blair apparently wants to conclude his premiership with a climate change agreement and the transfer of climate-friendly technology to poorer countries.

I know that this is big and important stuff and I'm not underestimating the significance of the GLOBE resolution in particular. But I have this nagging feeling that we might have been here before (think World Trade Organisation and Hong Kong Dec 2005 summit) and I'm not quite holding my breath yet. Prove me wrong.

What an Environmental Manager might do

A key aim of the Go Green campaign is for the university to employ dedicated full-time staff for environmental management. Is a full-time staff member REALLY needed? Here's a sample breakdown of how 37.5 hours a week dedicated to environmental management could be spent (taken from a guidance booklet from the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges):

• Environmental legislation
• Noise management
• Water management
• Water budget (invoicing)
• Energy management
• Energy budget (invoicing)
• Building design/ services
• Waste management (general / municipal)
• Waste management (hazardous)
• Waste minimisation
• Transport plans / parking
• Procurement
• Landscape management / Site biodiversity
• Policy development
• EMS/ ISO implementation
• Communications
• Reporting to committees
• Local community liaison
• Corporate communications (related issues)
• Environmental reporting
• Awareness raising
• Training
• Curriculum greening
• Student recruitment
• Staff / student retention
• Improving access to marginalised learners

All in a day's work. Not much, really.

Misleading, seriously flawed and procedurally unfair

In what has caught me by pleasant surprise, Greenpeace has won a High Court ruling that the Government's 3-month consultation process last year to build a new generation of nuclear power stations had gone radically wrong in terms of being a full public consultation that had been promised in the 2003 energy white paper.

The consultation outcome has now been quashed, and a new consultation process will have to be undertaken before planning for new nuclear build can begin. In the words of the judge:

"There was therefore procedural unfairness and a breach of Greenpeace's legitimate expectation that there would be the fullest consultation before a decision was taken."

The Government, of course, has responded that the decision was about the process, rather than the principle, which is of course correct - but process matters, and you can't conclude on a principle without taking the process into account.

Loving Green

As International Development Secretary Hilary Benn MP finds himself celebrating Valentine's Day by calling for consumers to purchase imported, air-flown flowers from Kenya rather than European greenhouse-grown flowers, I think I may be adjusting my thinking on the food miles concept.

Benn's argument is that Kenyan-grown flowers have lower carbon footprints, and choosing these also has a social/poverty impact upon the livelihoods of Kenyans dependant on employment from flower-processing areas (Fairtrade flowers, even?). It's not all so rosy, however, as the Guardian reports on the ecological and human costs of flower production - water consumption, soil erosion, deforestation, child labour, criminal violence, poor working conditions are just the tip of the iceberg.

I may have developed a rather slavish adherence to looking at labels and seeing where food has come from, but more and more I find thinking about the broader picture beyond country of origin and mode of transport. Can the emissions from the biological growing process really outweigh the emissions from air-flown transport and packaging? Carbon-lifecycle footprints are incredibly difficult to calculate, especially with all the indirect inputs and outputs by following the entire process, but they are perhaps the only accurate measure of Dutch/Kenyan flowers being the greener option. Food miles do matter - not least for the economic and social spillovers for the sustainability of the local economy - but perhaps not food miles uber alles.

The price tag of goods never really do reflect their environmental and social cost. Supermarkets have been able to push prices down by sourcing mangetout from Peru and asparagus from Thailand by the simple process of going for the choice that involves the lowest purchasing price, no matter where they may be. Wherein do human rights and environmental issues fall? I think I've just increased the amount of time I spend staring at the shelf deciding which option to go for.

Reading my mind

Coincidence? A few days after I discussed the BREEAM sustainability standards and criteria for buildings on this blog, the Welsh Assembly Government today announced that all buildings funded by the Assembly Government must achieve an 'excellent' BREEAM rating. About time, too.

This is part of a commitment for all new buildings in Wales to be zero-carbon from 2011 onwards, five years ahead of a general UK-wide commitment for new homes to be zero-carbon by 2016. This condition of WAG funding should, we're told, be fully in place in six months time. Public spending and procurement can play a vital role in support for sustainable construction and design and the hope is that as reaching the higher levels of BREEAM becomes commonplace, the public sector will follow suit too.

George Monbiot in Aber!

George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and human rights and environmental activist (and People and Planet's Patron) will be delivering a lecture in Aberystwyth next Wednesday, 21 Feb at 7pm in A12 Hugh Owen.

The title of the lecture is 'Environmentalism and Social Justice: When do they collide, when do they coincide?'

If you can make it, I'd strongly recommend going along. Monbiot is an excellent, engaging speaker and hearing him for the first time two years ago was what sparked me down a road of discovery about climate change.

He has published a new book last autumn, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, which details how a 90% cut in carbon emissions could be achieved in the next quarter-century without drastically changing our quality of life - and in fact, improving it. An edited extract is available here.

Climate Impacts on Wales

Front page of today's Western Mail and a full page in the Guardian, on a report released by the National Trust which projects that some 55 National Trust sites in Wales are in danger due to rising sea levels and soil erosion as impacts of climate change.

Engineering consultants were approached to produce the report, using scientific data from DEFRA's UK Climate Impacts assessments and over 100miles of Welsh coastline are estimated to be affected. These include sites of historic, archaeological and aesthetic importance and biological systems will be further affected by rising seas, flooding and increased salinity. Some of these sites can be protected, but it probably isn't financially viable to save all (or most) of them.

Again, prevention is far better than the cure.

Somehow, Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan has chosen this time to remark that climate change will 'hardly be unhelpful to Wales' competitive position' and that the introduction of caps on carbon emissions would see businesses get up and leave Wales - and presumably should therefore not be a policy step that the Assembly Government would undertake. Well, there you have it - it's all going to be all right with climate change.

To say that oh, things will be a bit warmer but on the whole we'll be hunky-dory just smacks of complacency to me. Climate change isn't just going to move one factor - temperature - in one direction, but wind patterns, precipitation, ecosystem structures...the list goes on. I would take very little for granted in the idea that Wales might just become another version of California. Perhaps the First Minister would do well to consider that rising sea levels see the abandonment of entire island nations, increased drought threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions, warmer temperatures bring different risk of infectious diseases and melting glaciers jeapordize water supplies across the most populous areas of the world. People who live in Wales will be affected by climate change, no doubt. But people who live in Wales won't be at the sharp end of the climate wedge, which is changing lives right now.

Green Musings

I've just seen An Inconvienient Truth for the second time, this time at the Student Union's Monday evening movie showings and I have to admit seeing it for a second time was even more powerful than the first. There is a mass of scientific data presented in it and I was able to digest it a lot better, and appreciate the reflective moments in the documentary too.

I've also returned to a relaxed piece of climate change commentary from Guardian editor Michael White, which I've reproduced here in full and I hope you enjoy:

The man in the fish shop was right about one thing. "Lovely weather, but a bit too lovely for February," I had observed. "It'll snow in a couple of days," he predicted, a man who keeps a professional eye on the shipping forecast. "Good, I was beginning to worry that global warming had finished off the British winter," I replied. "I think it'll be all right in our lifetime," the fish man reassured me.

But he's wrong, isn't he? The evidence of climate change is too great and too everywhere to be ignored. So naturally most of us are still managing to ignore it most of the time and in most of what we do. I sometimes feel as most people must have done in the 1930s when the gloom-mongers were banging on about Hitler. "Oh do shut up."

When the cold snap finally arrived and snow fell even on balmy London, it damaged a lot of early blossoms and ruined my three daffs - out a month early. I wore my overcoat for two days, its third outing this winter. True, I was on sabbatical in Australia for a while. But wait for this.
Much of Australia has had a drought for 10 years and you feel they are living on the edge of far greater climate change than we are. So no surprise when we woke up in Melbourne on Christmas Day to find the central heating had kicked in: they get what they call fast "cold changes" down there, winds from the Antarctic.

But a festive snowfall upstate overnight? In mid-summer? Handy, and helpful to dampen down some of the brush fires, which have been burning for months, but not good. Especially when another branch of the family was reporting little or no December snow in Toronto which is usually good for 15 or 20 inches.

Moscow too had a mild start to its annual big freeze, I read. Ditto New York. And so on. Every day there is a new report confirming serious fundamental problems with the polar ice caps or desertification in China. Britain's government promises a climate change bill. So do the newly-empowered Democrats in Washington.

Even George W Bush is starting to shift his ground, though few seem to think his modest plans to reduce US oil dependency is adequate to the situation, geopolitical as well as climatic, or that his alternative automobile fuels will do more than keep expensively subsidised American farmers happy.

But hey, let's not pick on George W again. Tony Blair and his ministers like to say we must act at many levels, international, national, local, individual. Do most of us do better? I suspect not. On the London Underground the other day I saw a Thames Water ad urging customers not to put the dishwasher on until it's actually full of dirty dishes. Do people really do that? Oh dear.
But who am I to talk. I can use public transport to go to work because I live in a city, so it's easier. But I keep a car rusting outside the house for increasingly less frequent use. Ok, there are five family members on the insurance, which isn't bad. But we all have so many bad habits.

You may drive a ridiculous gas-guzzler (those 4s4s aren't even very safe) or sign that petition on the No 10 website against the inevitability of road pricing. EasyJet may have introduced much cleaner planes than its cheap-flight rivals, but many of us still fly them and Gordon Brown's latest tax does not distinguish clean from dirty.

I've long noticed that young people like to say they now think globally but still tend to leave the lights on locally. That matters in our house where I've only just realised - stupid me - that those handy 50 watt halogen light bulbs we've been installing (so much better light) get hot because they're using a lot of juice. So much for my energy-saving bulbs in other rooms.

One way or another, I suspect most of us are a bundle of green contradictions. In Australia they are too, but they are also further into the debate. It's always been on the edge, most of it so dry. But public opinion polls put climate change as the No 1 issue and even prime minister, John Howard, is starting to take notice. Here's one you may not have heard about - yet: Do you know what "grey water'" is?

Nor did I. But it's the stuff you used once, in the dishwasher or the washing machine. It's not sewage, but it's not drinkable either. In Oz it is increasingly recycled as grey, though you draw it from purple taps so there's no mistake. It's for washing the car (I don't do that myself) or other lowly tasks.

Believe it or not, but on Boxing Day, The Australian newspaper carried an interesting poll below the photo of Peter Tuffley (who had never seen snow before) walking his girlfriend, Andrea Innes, through a winter wonderland (in summer). The poll reported that 70% of Australians would now be prepared to drink recycled sewage to help combat the national water crisis.

Yes, I realise that our own Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) made a similar proposal here as recently as October, as have others. Actually the ICE said we'd have to drink the stuff too. Hands were raised in horror, they always are. And it's raining outside as I type. But the south-east is still gripped by its worst drought for a century and is now said to have less water per head than Egypt. We all have lots to talk about - and soon.

Printing Cover Sheets

Last Oct/Nov I was in touch with Information Services regarding how computers can be automatically powered-down at night, evenings and weekends when people are not using them. I know many people notice this and it seems a terribly profligate use of energy. I was told that a hardware upgrade was going to take place this summer which would make it likely that an auto-power down system could be implemented.

A different query that I've just made has also been referenced to the summer - this time, the network printing systems. Every time you print a page on the university network, it comes out with a cover sheet. Now, at least this system makes some sense - at times when everyone's coursework seems to be due at the same time, print jobs come flying thick and fast and if it wasn't for the cover sheets, they would get horribly mixed up. Green bag paper recycling bins are also put right next to printers for users to dump their cover sheet once they've picked up their print job.

There are also many times, however, when the cover sheet simply isn't necessary - when I'm the only person in the room (evening, weekends, early mornings) and no-one else is printing stuff off. In this case, the cover sheet serves less of a purpose, and is particularly annoying when I've only got a couple of pages to print. The university stands to save quite a bit from cutting down on paper consumption in this way. I've now been told that it is likely that when an upgrade of the printing system takes place over the summer, the current arrangement will be altered so that users will have to stick their library card into a reader, then the print job will hurtle out, eliminating the need for cover sheets as the user will be standing right by the printer. It could be a variant of this, and don't ask me the technical bits of how all this will work yet...

Nothing is set in stone yet and I wouldn't take any of these - energy and paper - for granted that they will definitely happen. I'll follow this up towards the end of the year, but at least these issues are being considered by Information Services.

Tip Top Buildings

Tackling climate change and carbon emissions need tackle a crucial sector - buildings. Buildings are the defining characteristic of the urban lifestyles that most of us live, a tangible demonstration of our impact of the environment around us. We live in houses and work/study in offices and spend large chunks, if not most of, our time in buildings.

The gold standard for how 'green' buildings are is a system for what's called BREEAM - the Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method (you can see why they abbreviate it...). BREEAM is more than just being 'green' - it takes a more holistic vision of sustainability at its centre, to move beyond legal requirements for health and safety to actively promoting resource efficiency, biodiversity, waste minimization in the context of the building.

Buildings are rated along a four-step scale of Pass, Good, Very Good and Excellent, and this rating takes into account the entire sequence of the building project - pre-construction (design), construction (recycling, cutting down on waste) and post-construction (maintenance). A prominent example includes the National Assembly for Wales Senedd in Cardiff being 'excellent' and the various schemes extend across all kinds of buildings, including, as I discovered today - prisons. Full specifics of the various BREEAMs in wonderful detail are available on their website, including how points are awarded to reach the different ratings.

One goal of this blog has been (at the risk of sounding too presumptious) to set out a vision for sustainability at UWA. The Go Green campaign (environmental policy, dedicated full-time staff, environmental audit and senior management support) is a crucial part of how sustainability can be embedded in operating structures and processes. BREEAM would be a key element of turning sustainability from principle to practice, for both new buildings and refurbishment projects.

I would expect and hope that all future building projects on campus meet a BREEAM 'very good' or 'excellent' rating. It is obviously more difficult to achieve given the quality of the existing buildings on campus and tearing down all the old, 1960s-era buildings isn't going to happen overnight. But gradually improving sustainability will lift the overall quality of the physical buildings that make up UWA, lead to lower running costs, and reflect a response to the environmental challenges in our world.

I am obviously happy to hear that the refurbishment of the Cledwyn spur on Penglais campus, which is, as I understand it, a full refurbishment bar building a new building, will be targeted to reach a 'very good' standard. This is a reasonably short project - over the summer to be ready by the beginning of the next academic year and I will try and put up more detail as I recieve it. A refurbishment of Penbryn blocks 1/2 beginning soon is contracted to a company called Dalkia, and their environmental policies and regulations appear fairly reassuring.

No trade-off between ethics and profits

The Guardian today reported that the Co-op's Insurance Sustainable (CIS) trust is at the very top of performance charts for investment funds, demonstrating that being green doesn't mean that investments have to take a back seat.

The ethical and environmental criteria applied to companies and businesses in which CIS invests means that it is limited to only 170 companies of about 600 that are open to all funds. And for the year to the end of January, investors were provided with a return of 29.3% compared to the average for all funds of 13.3%. Socially responsible investment both rewards companies that take the lead in setting ethical standards, and allows customers the comfort and security of knowing that their investments are not contributing to human rights abuses, environmental irresponsibility, or the tobacco and arms industries.

Somehow there is a common conception that to go eco-friendly we must shun the benefits of the modern world and return to the caves. Socially responsible investment doesn't automatically mean lower returns: the example of this fund - and it is not the only one - illustrates how living ethically can be in sync with making money.

See An Inconvienient Truth for free!

The Student Union will be putting on a free showing of the Al Gore movie on climate change, An Inconvienient Truth, this coming Monday 12th Feb at 10pm in Bar 9!

Don't miss this chance for a quick, engaging 90-min introduction to the scale of the climate challenge and what faces the future of humanity!

Not the cleanest company in the world...

The government has confirmed that weapons manufacturer BAE Systems is facing not just one, but six corruption probes over its activities and practices in foreign countries.

UWA's investments in companies that export arms to authoritarian and dictatorial regimes is not its own direct investments, but rather staff pension funds. I'm still trying to work my way through this, but I understand academic staff to be part of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension fund. While USS nominally has a socially responsible investment policy that came out of a People and Planet campaign a number of years ago, this does not enable it to disinvest from firms and industries that are perhaps beyond the ethical pale - tobacco and the arms trade come to the top of the mind.

USS arms trade investments for which monetary values are available are as follows, from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade:
BAE Systems £118 million
Cobham £15 million
Rolls Royce £46 million
Smiths Group £46 million
VT Group £3 million

The FairPensions campaign group ask that members of USS write in to express their dissatisfaction with continued investments in the arms trade, projects with questionable environmental and social implications, and association with gross human rights abuses around the world. You can do so via to this address:

Mr. Colin Bubsy
Communications Manager
Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd.
Royal Liver Building, 2nd Floor
Pier Head
Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd.
Liverpool L3 1 PY

Making Sustainability Mainstream

There is an article on the Guardian website today on sustainable timber products and how despite a growing turn to timber certification schemes for retailers, especially FSC, most of their staff remain blissfully unaware of what these policies and schemes mean and what distinguishes them from other non-certified products.

It got me thinking about the process of institutionalizing sustainability - or how cultures and habits are changed throughout organizations. As dry as that may sound - institutionalization or internalization or embeddedness - this process is perhaps the most important move in any step towards sustainability. What it means is the 'how' and 'to what extent' the people involved in the day-to-day activities of the organisation understand and practice sustainability.

After all, having an exemplary environmental policy is of limited use if lecturers or student know little of it and refer to it in no way. In which case, it wouldn't be too many steps away to simply call it 'lip service'. Institutionalization involves sustainable practices becoming standard practices, an accepted part of the everyday activities, something that is considered from the beginning rather than tagged-on as an afterthought.

The core factors, I think, are awareness and agency. Awareness sees sustainable messages being communicated intelligently and frequently. Agency involves offering opportunities to put these messages into practice - from the simple stuff such as more recycling bins, or adjustable heating controls, to big picture issues such as making procurement considerations over the entire lifespan of the product, rather than the immediate price-tag. Think green and do green. Institutionalizing sustainability is not an overnight process, and at an university is complicated by its transitory population - a third of its core constituency changes every year. Sustainability has to become a core value to how the university operates, and that need involve efforts to both educate and facilitate. A sustainability commitment at the senior management level has to filter down through to staff, and to the image of the university presented to students.

Messages to the VC

At refresher's fair last week in the Student Union we started a photo petition for the Go Green petition - of people holding up messages to the Vice-Chancellor regarding the university going green. And for good measure, we tossed in a few green wigs, which have come out splendidly...

Ditching Dirty Development

The UK's Department for International Development is responsible for distributing and monitoring Britain's overseas development assistance - some £6 billion annually, which is around 0.5% of GDP. A campaign by People and Planet, called Ditch Dirty Development, is focused on ensuring that British overseas assistance does not contradict its climate change goals and policies.

The campaign calls for DFID producing an energy and climate change strategy for its funding programmes, to be focused around two key areas:
- Ensuring that DFID activities contribute to reducing CO2 emissions in the developing world, through phasing out support for fossil fuel extractive projects, and increasing support for renewable energy sources
- Increasing access to energy in the developed world by promoting decentralised and low-carbon energy alternatives.

Cutting carbon emissions here in the UK must be complemented by cutting carbon emissions elsewhere around the world, and UK public money must be focused around achieving that aim of a low-carbon economy, both in Britain and abroad. DFID, however, currently supports large oil and gas extraction projects through World Bank funding - which does little to alleviate poverty, but rather serves only as further oil and gas exports for developed countries. The proportion of World Bank funding to renewable energy projects - especially small-scale, self-owned projects that can help sustain local communities - has also been decreasing, in real and proportional terms.

DFID, using the clout that Britain holds at the World Bank (one of the top five shareholders), needs to ensure that its aid money to support development efforts also supports efforts to do so without contributing to climate change. People and Planet will be ramping up this campaign in the coming weeks - keep an eye out!

Green Gesture Politics

The increase in air taxes that Gordon Brown announced in his pre-budget report last November came into effect last Thursday - and are probably the worst form of gesture politics that I've seen recently.

In trying to address the impact that aviation makes upon the environment, the new tax increases - which are expected to produce up to 1b in tax revenue - have ended up in a political no man's land between genuine sustainability and environmental dismissiveness. Research from Oxford university researchers have suggested, as have numerous surveys over the past few years, that the new taxes are far too low to make a significant effect upon deterring customers from flying. And the hoo-haa created by the airlines is likely to be repeated as and when these taxes are increased in the future, increasing the political costs of doing so.

I would say that if you're going to raise taxes as a measure to better reflect its environmental costs, you do straightaway up to a point that will genuinely make a difference. There will be criticism from the airlines, but that will die down after a while as passengers get used to the taxes. The Chancellor has been trying to portray a greener shade of Brown - but the manner in which these taxes have been raised (including the relatively short lead-in period) has been half-hearted at best.