Climate Change

There's a great opinion piece in today's Independent, in which Johann Hari argues that leaving the fate of planet to consumer choice and voluntary action isn't going to work. His words echo those of George Monbiot and Mark Lynas, and he looks to government to force us all to use less stuff:

In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily.

Ken Livingstone wants it for London, Hilary Benn is giving money to it and Adam and Debbie are bringing it to Ambridge. After a couple of millennia in the sidelines, anaerobic digestion has finally hit the big time (well, The Archers, anyway) - which is why we've chosen it for this second edition of the Weekly Geek.

Every year, we bury thousands of tonnes of waste food in landfill sites around the UK. We produce almost one and a half million tonnes of sewage a year (don't do the maths - it's disturbing), which is mostly spread on land, incinerated or buried as landfill. And we produce enormous amounts of agricultural waste on our farms. All of this waste breaks down to release greenhouse gases as it decomposes.

Excellent news reaches us from the Philippines where a ban on old-fashioned incandescent bulbs has recently been announced.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced plans for phasing out inefficient bulbs by January 2010, adding the Asian archipelago to the growing list of countries, including Ireland and Japan, which are slashing their emissions by shifting to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). So pressure is building up on our own government - and indeed the entire EU - to bring in their own mandatory efficiency standards for light bulbs.