Lights Out!

An inspiring symbolic example of action against climate change has been taken by Sydney, Australia - dimming the lights in the city for an hour to raise awareness of climate change!

This action included both offices, public buildings (Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House), restaurants and hotels, and homes and apartments. Impressive for a coordinated effort across a city of 4million! A similar action was undertaken in various European cities and towns in February, including some bars here in Aberystwyth. While some might dismiss this as a gimmick, this kind of action is crucial to reminding people, especially the 'unconverted', of the urgency of taking steps towards cutting carbon emissions, and has its own practical effect too!

What's the simplest action that you can take to prevent climate change - switch it off!

Environmental Policy Steering Group

Finally! I have recieved proposed dates for the first meeting of the university's Environmental and Water Management Steering Group. This group, made up of senior managers from across the universities operational departments (residences, information services, estates) and myself from the Guild of Students, is to guide the efficient and effective management of water and energy across the UWA estate.

Its first job will be to discuss and approve, in formal terms, an energy and water management policy for the university that sets targets for cuts and so forth. Policy is important, if unsexy - it is a statement of intent and principle and something that the university management can be held accountable to in the future, so long as it is meaningful and motivated by the best intentions.

This group was established over a year ago, as part of the Carbon Trust carbon management plan but has yet to meet, despite its terms of reference calling for the group to meet once every term. I wrote to Pro-Vice Chancellor Dr. John Harries in early March asking him when the group would meet and he told me that it would do so by the end of term. Disappointingly, the term ends today and the group still hasn't met - but it should do so soon now, by the end of April at the latest.

What is a really useful reference is a report by the Welsh Audit Office - a governmental body which monitors value-for-money public service spending - in March 2005 specifically on energy and water management in the Welsh higher education sector. It provides details on management practices across the sector and highlights best practice examples. Just three universities (ourselves, Cardiff and Trinity College Carmarthen) did not have an energy policy. Finally, and unacceptably, two years after that report, we might be seeing some tangible action here in Aberystwyth.

NU-Waste?

I recently returned from the 3-day National Union of Students (NUS) annual conference at Blackpool's Winter Gardens. Elections for these were supposed to be by cross-campus ballot last October/November, at the time of the referendum on the Guild constitution, but only myself and Mustafa, the sabbatical Diversity & Development Officer stood for the five places available so we were duly elected without a contest.

Conference began on Tuesday afternoon and ended on Thursday afternoon, and in the evenings stretched until 11pm. Agenda items included the dull but important stuff on constitutional ratificationand change, how conference works and the various formal deadlines, committees and terms of reference. There were also elections for the NUS sabbatical team, and the 'block of 12' - a part-time team of twelve students who serve as an executive committee for the NUS. The finance report committee included the headline figure that NUS is £1.1 million pounds in debt! How an organization can be so badly and chronically mis-budgeted I don't know.

The interesting stuff, and what took up the biggest chunk of time were the policy motions. The first set were those to do with education - funding, the call for 'free education', international students services and life, assessment and achivement methods. The second were those on welfare issues, where there was a big kerfuffle around on a motion on antiracism, which found its way into debate around the right to wear a veil for Muslim women, and a definition of anti-Semitism.

The third set of motions, around the tagline of 'strong and active unions', focused first on a governance review that the NUS is conducting into how its democratic structures work and could be reviewed. A motion on opening the door to external trustees for how individual unions are governed was passed, as was one approving the NUS Extra card rollout, although there was an amendment passed to it to the effect that discounts that have been traditionally available on the regular NUS card should not be transferred to the £10 NUS Extra card. The NUS Extra benefits apply little to life in Aberystwyth so it is something that the Guild hasn't really pushed much this year, although the income earned covered much of the costs to send 70+ students to London for the Admission:Impossible fees and funding demonstration in London last October. Unfortunately motions to approve a mature students' and international students' officer for the NUS did not get debate time.

So with all this, and constantly pushing back the schedule, there was all of fifteen minutes to debate a dozen motions in the 'society and citizenship' zone - climate change, international development, Darfur and the Iraq war. Only one motion, with one non-contentious amendment was eventually passed as conference time squeezed to a close, on climate change, to the effect of promoting the Stop Climate Chaos coalition (see the links on the sidebar) and to move NUS towards publishing its environmental impacts. I (woo hoo) delivered the 30-sec summation for this motion - the last substantive speech of conference 2007 (and, might I add, the only member of our delegation to speak on conference floor).

Much of what stood out in conference for me was the big political split between Labour-affiliated students and student members of Respect (in the George Galloway sense), who were constantly at each other in just about every debate possible. Much of this furore was over tactics, with the Respect students advocating campus occupations and activist speaker tours, while the Labour students saying that big demonstrations were not the way to go, which struck me as a bit odd given their role in organizing the October national demonstration. I was also continually frustrated by the lack of genuinely substantive debate - most speeches consisted of 'this motion will change our lives, it stands for democracy and accountability and advocates the kind of thing that we all want to see' with barely any mention of HOW the motion was going to achieve those aims.

In the specific context of my interests and the specialized knowledge that I bring , it was disappointing for the lack of discussion and prominence of green issues but if anything, this has reinforced my determination to get something out of the NUS for next year. The NUS has been virtually silent on climate change, is not affiliated to the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, and has done barely, if any, work on greening its and university operations - working with the Carbon Trust or the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges or People and Planet, the lead organisations on the issue. Towards the end of conference a dozen delegates brought sackfuls of paper waste (from all the documents and leaflets that had been shoved in our hands throughout conference) that had been strewn across conference floor and dumped them in front of the National Executive Committee - only to be shut down by the NEC and the chair and prevented from expressing their reasons and rationale for their protest.

But at the end of the day the NUS reaches into the vast majority of universities and FE colleges across the country and provides a base with which to change environmental attitudes and behaviour and that is something that I cannot ignore, even if conference was not the most inspiring event.

Beyond Hollywood - Films to Watch

Two political-themed films at the end of the week as part of the Arts Centre's WOW Film Festival have been highlighted to me, which you may be interested in

Rang de Basanti (30/3/07 8.15pm), - depicting Indian revolutionaries challenging the British Raj in the 1920s...and
Bamako (1/4/07 5.30pm) - putting the IMF on a mock trial in a discussion of Third World debt and and impacts of globalisation

Courier Article

A short article titled 'Why We Need an Environmental Manager' that I wrote a while back has finally been published in this term's edition of The Courier - you can download the whole edition digitally (the article is on page seven).

I reproduce the article here below:

"A priority over the past academic year has been putting pressure on the university to get its act together on environmental issues and sustainability. This has taken the shape of the Go Green campaign, which identifies four key factors that would really transform the base upon which environmental improvement can be achieved.

"Full time staff dedicated to environmental management are needed, an audit of the university's environmental impacts, public support of senior management, and a publicly available environmental policy. These factors are essential to achieve long-term change and are demonstrated by other universities leading the way in environmental performance.

"One crucial issue is for the university to have full-time staff dedicated to environmental
management. An environmental manager would not end up doing everything but would fill a crucial gap in coordinating the efforts across various departments and university services. If sustained environmental improvement is going to happen, there must be someone who is directly responsible and for whom this improvement is the very essence of their appointment.

"Who will take the lead? There is a compelling need to have someone who fully grasps the 'big picture' of what is happening on a day-to-day level, who is pro-active in identifying opportunities for improvement and can communicate changes to 10,000 staff and students.

"Progress is being made, especially on cutting carbon emissions, but it is tragic that more people are not aware of these efforts. When students understand that the university is making an effort, they will respond and bring forward ideas of their own.

"There is currently an Energy Manager, part-funded by the Carbon Trust, on a part-time consultancy basis until July. The plan of improvement that he has the task of (chiefly biomass boilers and energy-efficient lighting systems) is only the tip of the iceberg and funding for this post must be continued to see changes through effectively. The University needs to back its commitment to continual environmental progress with the resources necessary to carry out the task."

Mass Lone Demonstrations.

Thanks to a friend for flagging this up - did you know that in order to protest around Parliament Square in London, you need police permission? Where's the civil liberties

A regulation of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) establishes a 1-mile radius exclusion zone for public protests around Parliament Square, in front of the Houses of Parliament. To hold any kind of demonstration, you have to apply to the Metropolitan Police six days in advance, giving details of your demonstration and have it approved. Failure to do so is an arrestable offence. This is the only such regulation anywhere in the country, and that it is right at the seat of democracy makes it even more ludicrous. Why do we need police permission to hold a lone demonstration, in a public area, especially in front of our elected representatives?

Satirist Mark Thomas is trying to coordinate mass lone demonstrations - as many people as possible applying to demonstrate on the third Wednesday of every month to illustrate the downright silliness of this law. The above link provides all the details of how you can join in and what you need to do. Yes, the police will have quite a bit more work having to process all these applications to demonstrate - but that's just the point, and they should be off doing more worthwhile things like chasing after bad guys, not having to spend time simply to re-give us the right to demonstrate .

The First Minister Writes Back...

Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan came to Aberystwyth in mid-February for a question-and-answer session, and I submitted one on what he thought the role of the HE sector to Wales' sustainable development objectives and climate change should be. My question was not chosen to be verbally answered that evening, but I have now recieved a written reply from him.

It's two pages long, so I won't reproduce it here, just sum up the main points:

- The significance of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship and how HEs need to integrate these within their institutions - creating a culture of awareness of environmentally balanced and globally sensitive process need to be undertaken.
- Working with the Assembly Government's Sustainable Procurement Initiative
- Encouraging the development of a suitable environmental management system
- HEFCW (the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales) is working on a number of action points, and a report will be produced at the end of the year
- The value of research at Welsh institutions in reference to the Assembly Government's Science Policy, towards goals of achieving a 'low-carbon economy' and 'enabling sustainable economic and social renewal' (how nice of him to send me a copy of this policy too!)
- The creation of the Low Carbon Research Institute (across universities at Glamorgan, Cardiff, Bangor and Swansea) to focus on academic research into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Cut CO2 from driving without giving up the car?

Spotted - on a billboard in Nottingham.

Flashy advertising on eco-driving from the Department of Transport in its new Act on CO2 campaign. I've also bumped into a few of these in pop-up form on the Guardian website! While every bit of awareness and individual action matters greatly, I hope that this isn't the sum of their 'big idea' on climate change while encouraging airport expansion and wider, bigger roads.

In any case, what does smarter driving entail?
- As the billboard suggests, pumped up tyres reduce the work that the engines have to do
- Less clutter in the boot - less weight that the car has to haul around
- Driving within the speed limit ensures efficient fuel consumption
- Less stopping and starting means less CO2 - gradually slowing down and starting up again
- Keep the revs down to reduce engine wear and fuel wastage.
- Idling is wasting fuel - kill the engine while waiting for 3min+.

Assembly Hustings on Monday

A student hustings for the main parties who have candidates standing in Ceredigion (Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru) for the May 3 Welsh Assembly elections will be held on MONDAY the 26th of March at 6pm in the Joint, in the Student Union - a great chance to quiz them on the issues that matter to you!

Voter registration forms will also be distributed at the evening, so if you haven't registered to vote, you can do so then!

World Water Day

Yesterday marked World Water Day 2007, when 392,000 children will have died from drinking dirty water and inadequate sanitation so far this year.

Fascinating reading is the UN Development Program's 2006 Human Development Report, which focuses on water scarcity as a critical issue underpinning sustainable development for the majority of the world's poor. Despite its arcane title, do check it out - access to clean, safe, drinking water is, quite simply, a matter of life and death. More than a third of humanity - 2.6 billion people - do not have access to the sanitation that we take for granted in the UK.

Still, there's an interesting tension that I encounter - do I choose to drink tap water, and avoid the environmental costs of bottled water (plastic, transport, purification) that retails at roughly the same price as petrol, or opt for One, a bottled water brand where money is donated to buying merry-go-rounds in Africa that double as water pumps?

The UK Department for International Development has a strategy on increasing access to water and sanitation as part of its work and has just announced increasing aid contributions towards this end. The two lead UK campaigning organisation on global water issues are WaterAid, whose current campaign, End Water Poverty insists that governments provide sanitation and water for the world's poorest people, and the World Development Movement, which is campaigning against the privatisation of public water services in Nepal by British company Severn Trent. Get involved!

Inching Forward with Recycling

I met yesterday with Alan Stephens and Eleri Thomas, who are head of House Services and Residential Services respectively, about recycling and broader environmental issues.

The upshot is that by the beginning of the next academic year, there
- will be plastic bottles/glass/tin can recycling facilities ('receptacles' seems to be the fashionable word) at ALL locations near residences where there are currently big green bins to put black-bag waste.
- within residences, there will be some form of method for collecting recyclables - whether these are plastic boxes or racks from which green recycling bags can be hung will be confirmed in due course.

Making recycling easier and more accessible - and these measures will be combined with information inside halls and from management so that not only are the facilities in place, but the message is getting out to students too. The challenge is to integrate the whole waste reduction and recycling issue within how Residential and Hospitality Services operates - let's see what happens.

From my perspective, it's about time - we can expect no less.

The Oil Bank of Scotland

PLATFORM, a campaign group focusing on the social impacts of transnational corporations, has just released a new report on how the Royal Bank of Scotland provides credit and financing to dozens and dozens of fossil-fuel projects around the world, backing further fossil fuel exploitation and contributing to climate change.

The oil and gas activities that RBS finances are not only climate-unfriendly projects, but force open pristine environmental areas and threaten the lives of indigenous peoples. RBS openly brands itself as the oil and gas bank as the bank to go to for oil and gas investors - and its support for renewable energy is comparatively miniscule. The financial backing (overdrafts, loans, project finance) that RBS provides to oil and gas projects offers assistance to projects in areas that would be otherwise financially unviable and ensures that RBS is directly involved in transforming oil and gas reserves into carbon dioxide - spurring on climate change.

The RBS' worldwide investments would account for one-quarter of UK household carbon emissions - and underlies the point also made by Christian Aid earlier in February of the crucial, but oft-neglected role that UK companies play in generating carbon emissions across th world.

So what can you do? I would urge you all to switch your bank accounts away from an RBS/NatWest one, and rather than choose just another bank that is marginally less socially-responsible, I'd recommend the Co-operative's Smile account. The Smile account follows strict ethical guidelines, so you can bank safely in the knowledge that your money isn't providing financial support to oil companies, arms dealers, human rights violators or environmentally irresponsible businesses!

Oh, and if you do make the switch - drop RBS a line to let them know. Otherwise, they might think that the reason you're switching is their interest rate...

Big Old Compost Heap

A whopping 6.7m tonnes of food are chucked away each year, according to WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a DEFRA-funded body). Fussy kids, over-purchasing, not paying attention to best before dates and the wrong storage temperatures were the most common reasons - and all this adds up to almost one-fifth of household domestic waste!

This is important for a number of reasons - decreasing landfill capacity, the greenhouse gases caused from as the food decomposes in landfill and the energy needed to transport and store all this excess food that is simply wasted. At least the surveying has highlighted that around a third of all UK households compost regularly - I wonder what Residential Services might say if I started a compost heap on the bit of grass in front of my house?

Oops

While I've finally gotten the hang of this blogging business, I've just discovered that I ended up turning the 'moderate' bit on for comments - so I've had to go through 400+ comments, most of which have been spam - but the useful bit are people's own stories of claiming back fares from train companies from an earlier post in January!

Sweatshop Labour

I saw a movie called China Blue on Tuesday evening as part of the Arts Centre's ongoing WOW film festival, which traced the experiences of a young Chinese girl moving to the city to work in a jeans factory. Produced by Teddy Bear Films, it combines documentary footage together with diary excerpts, and highlights the conditions under which jeans, and indeed much of the clothing that we wear are made - 18 hour days, arbitary salary deductions, cramped living conditions, working without overtime...

The low price fashion that we can get at the explosion of chains such as Primark, Peacock's and the Officer's Club (among many others) comes at a human and social price that is far too inconvienient to acknowledge. Short turnaround times for bringing new designs from drawing board to shop floor mean that production time is ever-more squeezed - or rather, workers are ever more squeezed to meet deadlines. The high competition to supply the market - Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Thai garment factories mean that the situation is essentially a buyer's market - the buyer sets the terms and has the freedom and flexibility to easily go to whoever can supply garments at those terms. A race to the bottom, nothing less.

But a buyer's market means that the buyer is in control, and ultimately we are the buyers. Do we then draw out that age-old tactic of a boycott? Not without trying to engage and pressure the companies that we purchase from first. Last weekend, People and Planet members in cities up and down the country leafleted Primark customers to ask them that Primark ensure that child labour is not used and basic working conditions maintained in the production of their clothes, and that worker rights are respected. A report by the Environmental Justice Foundation on the working conditions of cotton pickers in Uzbekistan, called White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton, and Fashion Victims: The True Cost of Cheap Clothes at Primark, Asda and Tesco, released last December by War on Want, make for some shocking reading.

Truly ethical, guilt-free clothing brands are readily available now, but still only form a fraction of the market. Getting mainstream supplies to switch wholesale to guarantee production methods, such as Marks and Spencers have done with Fairtrade cotton (40 tonnes a year!), is the best way to transform livelihoods. So I was doubly disappointed to realize that an Elections Committee T-shirt I was wearing (or the Headway t-shirts used to welcome freshers to Aber) today has been produced by Fruit of the Loom - which has been the target of campaigns at Oxford and York universities for working condition violations at its Mexican factories.

Grrr. More to follow in the coming weeks.

Guild Elections...

A reminder that Aber Guild of Students elections are on THURSDAY at various locations across campus - in the Union, Penbryn reception, Cwrt Mawr amenity block, Old College, Llanbadarn refectory, Llandinam concourse, and a mobile voting van that will be visiting the various halls in town. You can cast your ballot, depending on which box, between 10am and 7pm - and the count begins shortly thereafter! By way of interest, candidates for the Environment and Ethics post (first time there's been an election in 3 years!) are Laura Parrack and Jenny Mace - and I think that's just about all I'm allowed to say here!

You can check out candidate manifestoes and clips from today's candidate hustings from the AberGuild website.

New Climate Change Bill!!

And so, what began as Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign in 2005 is now taking the shape of parliamentary legislation in a draft Climate Change Bill published today. A major step forward, especially in its headline objective of enshrining into law the commitment to cut carbon emissions 60% by 2050.

The devil, of course, is in the detail, but today is a big moment that I'm proud to have been part of (together with numerous other Aber students) in lobbying MPs to throw their support behind the push for the Climate Change Bill. What will the current proposals achieve? I'll leave that up to the concise summaries provided by the BBC and the Guardian. Environment Secretary David Miliband even explains it all for us in a 2-min YouTube video clip!

And of course, you can join in the clamour for a strong Climate Change Bill that 'does stuff' through the Friends of the Earth website to contact your Member of Parliament.

Knotweed? Not that I can see...

An interesting and admittedly puzzling article in yesterday's Wales on Sunday that 'extremists are waging war on a Welsh university [Aberystwyth] over experiments on animals'.

"The anonymous anti-vivisectionists have launched a campaign against the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, claiming the institution carries out "cruel and pointless" tests. They are also targeting the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER), which has a research farm in Aberystwyth and enjoys close working links with academics.

"Yesterday, the University of Wales said it did not carry out research which caused suffering to animals. Its website says students do take part in dissection and studies tissues of freshly killed animals.

"Communicating with Wales on Sunday by e-mail, the activists say their campaign is well underway. Action so far, they say, includes spreading highly destructive Japanese knotweed over parts of the university grounds and sending 1,000 letters of complaint to the university.
They claim to have poured smelly acid into university toilets, changing rooms and a library, texted university staff with abusive messages and spray-painted red graffiti on the drives and gates of their homes. IGER signs are also said to have been sprayed with slogans.

"The group says university staff and IGER workers have also had their personal car details used to apply for lots of car insurance quotes to clog up their home and work phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

"University spokesman Arthur Dafis refused to confirm if the institution had been hit by extremists. However security staff at IGER said their facility had been hit.

"Mr Dafis said: "The University of Wales does not undertake any scientific research that causes suffering or distress to animals, and all work is, of course, covered by the required Home Office licences."

Well, I haven't heard or seen anything about this - although I probably wouldn't know if staff were being harassed. Or I don't know what Japanese knotweed looks like so I can't tell you if I've spotted it around university grounds. Any reports of sightings would be welcome!

Coming Soon...

Wastewise Wales...coming soon to a university near you!

New recycling bins for glass and plastic bottles are in place - and a quick peek inside shows that students are using them and you're sticking in the right stuff too! More can banks should be along the way in the next month...

All the recycling points are now being progressively tagged with the above Wastewise logo in the hope that students will recognize some continuity in current efforts on waste reduction and energy awareness. The new recycling points should be complemented by upcoming initiatives in residences and academic buildings too...

Tough Targets, Tough Monitoring

The news that government departments are failing to meet their own green targets is disappointing, but perhaps not too surprising. The full details of the Sustainable Development in Government 2006 report can be broken down by both department and by subject field, and is available online and presented in a fairly easy-to-read form at the Sustainable Development Commission's website.

Just as the impact of Government is fairly significant in its sustainable development implications for the entire country (650,000 employees, 0.5% of the entire UK CO2 output, 2% of the UK's landmass), so too is UWA to the Mid/West Wales region (10,000 students and staff for a start) and what I have found the most useful is the extent of the detail that the Government's sustainable development reporting scheme provides. After all, commitments can eternally float around in the air unless they are pinned down to measurable, time-bound and reported targets and there are currently none that are a formal part of university policy. These are the details which the Sustainable Development Commission have used to assess progress (which it acknowledges is heavy on the environmental side and less on the social side):

- An environmental management system (EMS) to report publicly on improvements with verified data for 100% of the office estate
- Travel - CO2 emissions from transport reduced by 10% compared with four years ago.
- Water - consumption per full-time equivalent staff member down to 7.7 cubic metres
- Waste - annual 1% reduction in landfill waste and 5% increase in recycling.
- Energy - cutting carbon emissions, improving energy efficiency and 'green' energy procurement
- Sustainable Procurement (purchasing and contracts)
- Estates management - sustainable development a major factor in new buildings and major refurbishments
- Biodiversity - improved condition of SSSIs
- Social activities (no, not the number of pub crawls) - volunteer projects, tackling social exclusion, etc.

And of course, targets are reviewed annually and adjusted accordingly. A model to follow?

Strategic Planning

A cursory glance at the university's 2006-2011 strategic plan is perhaps a fair illustration of the importance of the environmental sustainability agenda to current thinking about UWA's long-term future.

A section that deals specifically with how the Welsh Assembly's sustainable development objectives are being met seems, to me, a bit vague - and it is worth noting that a reason that this section exists in the first place is to meet, at least nominally, a HEFCW (HE Funding Council for Wales) requirement to mainstream sustainable development into university planning. In full:

Sustainable Development
"We will seek to ensure that our activities are sustainable through maintaining a broad portfolio of research (1.2) and teaching (2.3‐2.4 and 7.1) to maximise and sustain our level of recruitment, in particular seeking to ensure the sustainability of subjects of specific strategic importance to Wales (1.3). We also note our activities aimed at sustaining the level of research income (1.4). Our work to ensure that a strategic, sustainable approach to the provision of an IT infrastructure is noted (8.1 – 8.4).

"We note also our work to ensure a sustainable Estate, including addressing long‐term maintenance issues (9.6) and developing a University Energy and Water Management Policy (9.7). We are fully committed to improving our performance in relation to the 14 Key Performance Indicator Trigger Metrics provided b the Funding Council as a measure of sustainability (9.2). "

If, at the very least, sustainability is thought to be as where economic, societal and environmental considerations meet, I find it hard to see how the first section meets that aspiration at all. Sustainability, in that section, appears to me more the ability of the university to continue for the long-term without collapsing into itself - things like recruitment, research funding, and technological innovation. The bracketed numbers refer to specific paragraphs in the main text of the strategic plan and by way of illustration, I've picked out two of them:

2.3 Continue to review and enhance the portfolio of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in order to enhance the student larning experience and achieve our HEFCW funded number and our internal targets for taught postgraduate recruitment.
2.4 Continue to explore possible new areas in non‐traditional and lifelong learning in order to widen access to HE.

So where does any element of environmental sustainability fit in there? It may be an implicit point, but unless you went looking for it you would thinking of 2.3 and 2.4 in terms of environmental sustainability. The second section of the 'sustainable development' description appears to be only marginally more useful. Paragraph 9.7 is the only area that explicitly addresses what we would instinctively think of as belonging to the sustainable development agenda:

9.7 Improve energy management through developing the partnership with the Carbon Trust and developing and implementing a Univerity Energy and Water Management Policy.

I could go on and on - no mention of sustainability in the environmental sense in UWA's mission statement, or even remotely in the nineteen priorites that it sets out for the 2006-2011 planning period. I really don't think that I'm being too cynical here. Have a look at the plan yourself and tell me if you think I'm drastically misreading it. It seems simply like an outline for development - forget any idea of sustainability. More will follow on the particular point of an energy and water management policy.

Petition Reply on Cardigan Bay oil and gas drilling

I signed an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website calling for the Government not to grant licenses for oil and gas exploration in Cardigan Bay due to the potential detrimental effects such activities would have on the marine wildlife, with knock-on effects on the West Wales tourism economy. The paper copies of the petition were presented to the Prime Minister's residence a couple of weeks ago by campaign coordinator Leila Kiersch and MP Mark Williams. I have now recieved a response from the Prime Minister to the petitions:

"The Government recognises that the oil and gas sector is one of the UK's most important industries and our role in awarding offshore oil and gas licences is to promote the continued development of the North Sea whilst respecting and minimising the impact on our environment.

"Four blocks, in Cardigan Bay and the Moray Firth, which are close to, or on, certain Special Areas of Conservation that were applied for in the 24th Oil and Gas Licensing Round have been the subject of representations regarding dolphins located in or near them. In order to consider these concerns in more detail the Department of Trade & Industry announced on 1 February that it is deferring a decision on whether or not to award licences for these 4 blocks. A separate Appropriate Assessment will be undertaken in relation to these blocks and will be consulted on before any decision is made.

"There are no job implications since no activity has taken place."

Blah, blah, blah. Funny that, I thought tourism was also an important industry.

Fairtrade Fortnight events in Aber

Just a summary of all things Fairtrade happening in Aber over the next week...

- Cotton on to Fairtrade - Shailesh Patel, a Fairtrade cotton producer from India, will be in Aber on Friday evening (9 March) at 7pm to speak about his experiences and the difference that switching to Fairtrade makes to his livelihood. This will be held at Merched y Wawr Hall, Vulcan Street and entrance is free!

- Fairtrade breakfast - A Fairtrade breakfast buffet at the Treehouse restaurant on Saturday 10 March from 9.30-11.30am.

- China Blue - a cinema about explotative manufacturing practices in the clothing industry, showing at 6pm on Tuesday 13 March in the Arts Centre cinema. This will be followed by a discussion about what we can campaign on to end these practices.

- Fairtrade Fashion - a Fairtrade fashion show on Friday 16 March at 7pm at the Morlan centre, Queen's Street, featuring designs from People Tree and other ethical clothing providers. Entry is 5 pounds.

For more details contact Arnold Smith, of the Aberystwyth Fairtrade group, at 01970 611769.

Why the university doesn't run on green electricity

Two years ago People and Planet members were running a Green Electricity campaign on campus, trying to persuade the university to switch to a 'green electricity' supplier, and one of the posts here from the fall highlighted how due to a change in supplier, the university was recieving a marginally higher proportion of its electricity from renewable sources.

The reason why the university as a whole hasn't made the switch to green electricity is financial, and goes back to a government mechanism called the Climate Change Levy. This is a tax of 0.43p for every kilowatt of non-renewable energy that is consumed by non-domestic users. UWA does not directly purchase its own energy supplies, but does so through the Energy Consortium, a group of HE institutions who procure their supplies together.

The mixed-usage of electricity at the university, for residential and business purposes, however, means that UWA is liable for different levels of the CCL. For instance, 'domestic' consumption of electricity is only charged a 5% VAT rate, whereas 'business' use is charged at 17.5%. Supplies that only attract a 5% VAT rate are also exempt from the CCL. When the contract to supply electricity was negotiated last autumn, the cheapest tender was recieved from a supplier (Scottish & Southern) that did not offer variable percentages of green electricity supplies, thereby preventing the consortium from choosing a green electricity option. I have been told that choosing the green option would have cost UWA £29,900 more than the current not-very-green option.

For domestic/personal consumers, last December the National Consumer Council produced a report into green electricity tariffs that wades through the jargon and different concepts involved. Its main guidance to consumers is to be wary of the claims that electricity companies make, as these are largely self-regulated, and it also provides a fairly accessible, but detailed assessment of the various options that the electricity companies provide.

Eeek!

Headline news today on an audit report prepared by scientists from University College London - The current pace of UK Government policies will fail it meet its target of cutting carbon emission by 30% by 2020. Instead, this target will not be met until 2050 - which then calls into question its current 60% target for that period.

The audit, available in full from the UCL website here, projects that a cut of 12-17% will be reached by 2020 (against a 30% target). There are two particularly important points - the first is that the Government's predictions are based on an optimistic assessment of the effectiveness of voluntary policy programmes - and the second is that the 'easy win' cuts have already been made.

On the first, a prime example is the Code for Sustainable Housing which sets ambitious targets - but is entirely voluntary. Enforcement of such voluntary programmes is difficult, and whether the targeted savings will actually be made involves a fair bit of wait-and-see. On the second, the big savings - switching from coal to natural gas, the decline of heavy industry - have already been made and there will be hard work ahead to continually make carbon trimmings that all add up.

No wonder they say Mondays are the most depressing days of the week...

NUS Wales Conference

I've just returned from the NUS Wales spring conference in Llandrindod Wells - in a very comfortable setting in a three-star hotel spending two days meeting and discussing policy with students from HE and FEs institutions across Wales.

My big Welsh political idea on sustainable development in Welsh HEs that I briefly described a few entries ago was passed, after I introduced the motion, without any opposition (I should add that all new policy motions were passed without opposition). Student unions submit a priority list of motions that they want to discuss ahead of the conference itself, and it was a pleasant surprise to see the motion that I drafted appear as third on the list (out of ten)!

Stephen Brown, NUS National Secretary, was at the conference on the second day to deliver a short report on NUS UK activities and take questions. I asked him about progress with an Environmental and Ethical campaign, particularly after the conference that I went to last October and even electing a NUS E&E committee then. The response was that he would check things with the campaign convenors, which is fair enough, but the general explanation was on how NUS doesn't have the resources to run extensive campaigns on issues such as E&E and evaluating how NUS operates in avoiding overstretch is a key governance priority.

Other elections at the conference (apart from Aber guild president Ben Gray becoming NUS Wales president for the next year) inclued those for a block of three members from Higher Education students. I initially didn't put my name forward because of the uncertainty of my future plans beyond the next couple of months, but after nominations were re-opened when only one candidate stood for the three vacancies, I changed my mind and thought 'why not'. After all, I would have liked to follow through my motion on sustainable development and be involved with some of the other issues that the NUS National Executive Committee (which is what the block of three elections were to) would deal with. A rush of candidates for this second round of voting (five candidates for two spots) meant that unfortunately I wasn't elected - although I did make it to the final round, losing out my less than a quarter of a vote.

There are two thoughts that have struck me since the conference - that there are tremendous opportunities for NUS Wales to exploit and take advantage in terms of Welsh politics, to make itself a real political force where its lobbying works. The second is the scope for non-traditional concerns - that is, everything but tuition fees, educational grants and allowances, and private funding - and how in what is still a fairly nascent Welsh political landscape there is space for NUS Wales to move into to say 'look, students feel this way that you should...'

I remember Help the Aged pointing out that it is the grey vote that will decide the outcome of the Assembly elections because the 55-64 age group are significantly more likely to vote than any other demographic. I see no reason why, that one day, NUS Wales could point out the same for students.

Walking the walk?

In the midst of the hullaballoo about Al Gore's home energy usage (convieniently coming after a double-Oscar win for An Inconvienient Truth), I turn to Mark Lynas, who more or less sums up much of my thoughts on the issue:

"Hands up anyone who isn't a hypocrite. Come on, own up. Who out there actually lives by every one of the principles they profess to uphold? And why has it suddenly gone so quiet? When it comes to ourselves, it seems, we are quick to realise that life is full of grey areas and being pure and virtuous is never as easy - nor even as desirable - as it might appear. That does not stop us sitting in judgment of others, however, particularly those whose message we are unwilling to hear, and who, deep down, we would dearly love to see exposed as two-faced and, well, hypocritical.

"Hence Al Gore's "exposure" yesterday. "As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," complained Drew Johnson of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, highlighting that Gore's mansion in Nashville uses 20 times as much energy as the average American household. Yes, the TCPR is a right-wing anti-environmental lobby group. But even so, its barbs hit home.

"The reason is simple: it is hard to trust someone who says one thing and does another. When I first saw Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, several people in the audience were muttering darkly about the irony of him taking so many flights to promote a message that would require people to, er, reduce their flights. As someone who writes books and gives talks on climate change myself (both of which occasionally require me to fly), I have noticed how people often delight in pointing to the contradictions inherent in my own lifestyle. "Still jetting around the world to save us from climate change?" asked an acquaintance snidely last week.

"So why this obsession with hypocrisy? The motives of the rightwing campaign against Gore are obvious: if the accusers can smear the man, then they can also undermine his message. Similar campaigns have been run against London's mayor, Ken Livingstone - arguing that he uses too many taxis, for example - in order to undermine his effectiveness as one of the only political leaders in the world to show real vision and leadership on climate change. Likewise, the charges levelled against Prince Charles for flying to the US with a large entourage to pick up an environmental award, as well as knocking McDonald's while selling high-fat Duchy Originals pasties, foster the impression that the Prince - and his green obsessions - are all a bit ridiculous.

"At a deeper level, the effects of this blame game can be even more damaging. There is perhaps a "chilling effect" to the hypocrisy witch-hunt, where prominent people who might support green causes keep their mouths shut for fear of having their energy bills fished out of their bins at night by some snooping tabloid hack. Each time a potential "green hero" is shot down in flames, we all feel that little bit more cynical about politicians, leaders and society in general. Cynicism breeds selfishness and a de facto acceptance of the status quo - no cynic ever led a movement for positive change. In this sense, charging someone with hypocrisy serves to reinforce denial: "You're a hypocrite, so why should I do what you tell me?" Or the more disempowering: "If even you can't do it, how can I?" The practical outcome is that lightbulbs go unchanged, lofts uninsulated and bicycles unridden. And greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar.

"This denial response is also why, on the other hand, no one likes a greenie who is not a hypocrite. Climate activists I know who do walk the walk (eschewing all flights, for example) look prim and obsessive, as if they are out of touch with the concerns and pressures faced by ordinary people. It is fine for BBC Newsnight's "ethical man" to be a tongue-in-cheek reporter, but if it is the head of Greenpeace who is totally pure and virtuous, then that is seen as just annoying.

"The charge of hypocrisy against environmentalists may also be illegitimate as well as irrelevant. In my view, Gore was right to rack up thousands of air miles in his campaign to raise awareness of climate change: the political shift he has helped to engineer, particularly in America, has been truly profound, and is one of the few real causes for optimism on climate change today. If he had stayed at home in Tennessee with the lights and heating off, wearing organic woolly jumpers and feeling generally good about himself, we would have a lot further to travel in terms of awareness-raising than we do now. Being a purist may be comforting, but it is unlikely to change the world."

My summary - nothing ventured, nothing gained. This relates to the upcoming Guild elections too - and some will question why the candidates for my Environment and Ethics position will be giving out leaflets and putting up posters - shock, horror, using paper and cutting down trees! If you don't put anything forward, you're not going to get anything back in return.

The State of Recycling

The easiest and also one of the most practical green things to do - recycling! Here a summary of ongoing activity on recycling on campus:

- Around 40% of waste from academic buildings is recycled
- The university has received £2,800 from Welsh Assembly Government grant funding as part of its public sector waste reduction programme, and this funding is being used to purchase new recycling bins around campus (see below).
- The longer-term goal for Residential and Hospitality Services is to ensure wherever black-bag waste disposal points are located, there are accompanying facilities for recycled material.
- New plastic bottle and tins/can recycling facilities are being introduced at the Cwrt Mawr car park, behind the TV/Film building, and byPenbryn blocks 4/5 and 8/9 (pictures to follow soon).
- The University works with a number of external organisations in managing recycling. These organisations include Aberystwyth Recycling Centre, Action Aid,Ceredigion Recycling and Ceredigion County Council.