'The BP oil is all gone!' Oh really?

Why did it seem very unlikely that the massive oil spill could magically disappear.

Naomi Klien has the inevitable evidence against.

http://www.thenation.com/article/157723/search-bps-oil

Modest suggestions for anyone trying to save the world

Recently I've become much more interested in Twitter as a speedy, wide-ranging and often very funny news source. It's not the vacuous status update many think it is, and if you choose to follow the right people (probably not 'celebs') you get an informed (mostly) and vigorously debated (often) take on breaking news and issues that may not get great coverage in the mainstream. Selective filtering and healthy scepticism are required, but it's easy to find some real gems to read. My previous post of Johann Harri's article is a case in point - and so is this little gem for anyone keen on organising any kind of 'Change' campaign....from saving the world to beach clean-ups. 12 invaluable steps for the supine activist.

Note to self: must get off my arse and DO more. Thanks Shihab for the reminder.

For sale - Cameron's green credentials

Johann Hari writes in the Independent, 'Why do the Tories think timber companies want to buy the forests? To abandon the work they do and become druids?'

Can you hear the silence of the huskies? When he was rebranding the Tory party, David Cameron promised us he would lead "the greenest government ever". Since he came to power, he has broken every environmental promise he made – and then gone much further. He has opened up the coasts of Britain to the deep-sea drilling that worked so well in the Gulf of Mexico, and put a "for sale" sign outside every single remaining forest in England. Yes, as his own Environment minister puts it, Cameron is determined to "dispose of public forest" – and the timber companies and holiday parks are preparing their opening bids.

In order to raise £2bn, the Government is selling all 650,000 acres of our forests – a privatisation that even Margaret Thatcher blanched at. These are the most popular outdoor spaces in Britain. They are the last places where millions of people can go to escape their anxieties and glimpse what Britain looked like to our ancestors for millions of years. They are the site of some of our most potent national myths: what would Robin Hood say if he knew Sherwood Forest itself was now on the market? Is Cameron really taking the Sheriff of Nottingham as his role model? This is in direct contradiction to what Cameron told us he would do before the election. In 2007, talking about forests, he promised he would "take a more effective and strategic approach to safeguarding a priceless – and irreplaceable – natural asset." He said the countries that were cutting forests down were "barmy". The Government says there is no danger to the forests in selling them to timber companies and the other highest bidders. They say they will still be standing, they will be cared for as well, and the public will have just as much access. Does this match the facts?

It is true that once a company has bought a forest, it will still need planning permission to cut the woods down. This is a crucial brake. But – wait – Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has just announced he is "remov[ing] the structures of control" and making it "much easier" to get planning permission across the country. Planning is being massively deregulated, just as the forests are sold.

Not every buyer will cut them down, but some will. Why do the Tories think timber companies want to buy them – to abandon the work they do in every other country on earth and become druids? Confronted with this point, the Government admits there is a "possibility of established forest being bought by energy companies who would proceed to chip it all for energy recovery" – and then swiftly insists there is nothing to worry about.

The forests that remain will be less well maintained and harder to access. The Forestry Commission looks after our woods today, and 100 per cent of it is maintained to the international Forest Stewardship Standard. By contrast, only 25 per cent of private forests in England are looked after this way. After the sale, they will become more degraded, less biodiverse and less likely to survive for the long term.

And you will find it harder to get to them. The Government says that the legislation passed in 2000 granting us all the "right to roam" will mean we can enjoy them just the same. But the public only has a right to access woodland classified as "freehold". According to The Ecologist magazine, half of privately owned woodland is barred to the public.

It gets worse still. The Forestry Commission works very hard to make our woods accessible to everyone. It builds car parks, bike tracks, visitor centres, picnic areas. When the land is privatised, most of that will go. They can put a massive fence around the forest, they just can't put up a sign that says "keep out". Look at what happened to Riggs Woods in the Lake District, sold a few months ago. The car park has been shut down, the picnic area has been dismantled, the visitors' centre closed, and all you see when you go there now is a large, bolted gate that, legally, you are allowed to clamber over. And for what? To preserve our forests costs just 30p per taxpayer a year. Selling them off for ever will raise just half of the sum that one corporation – Vodafone – did not have to pay after the Tories came to power out of what Private Eye estimated was its total tax liability. (Vodafone denies this figure). So if you go down to the woods today, you'll find the best metaphor for Cameronism. Change your party's logo to a lovely green tree – then sell off all the real trees to corporations. Oh, and then say you are "empowering volunteers" by doing it.

The Prime Minister has said the forest sell-off "empowers local communities" to take over the forests for themselves as part of a "Big Society". Yet sources within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say that, unsurprisingly, only about 1 per cent of the sales are anticipated to go to local co-operatives or green groups. The "Big Society" is a fluffy fig leaf for dismantling and demolition.

But, amazingly, this may not be the biggest environmental vandalism of the Cameron years. The Conservatives have just authorised the launching of deep-water drilling off the coast of Shetland. The White House investigations are only now uncovering quite how disastrous this tactic was in the Gulf of Mexico – but it would be worse in the Shetlands, where the very harsh, cold and windy conditions would make a clean-up dramatically harder and more expensive. It would have to be bigger too: Chevron has admitted that if things went wrong it would release 77,000 barrels of oil a day – 25 per cent more than went into the Gulf.

The Health and Safety Executive warned that serious accidents on British oil rigs almost doubled last year. These are the very warning signs that preceded the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Even if the oil is excavated "safely", it will then release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and destabilise our climate even more, which doesn't sound very safe to me. As if that wasn't enough, Cameron has also authorised drilling for shale gas off the coast at Blackpool – an extremely controversial practice that is suspected by many scientists of poisoning water supplies at several sites in the US.

Britain's forests and seas do not belong to David Cameron. They belong to us. As Bill Hobman, the former chairman of Forest of Dean District Council, says: "Mr Cameron should show us the deeds to the forest. How can they sell something they don't own?... This is a wonderful part of the world and shouldn't be auctioned off to the highest bidder to have their own little bit of heaven. We will fight this all the way." The fightback will be ferocious, and, like the inspiring fight against super-rich tax-dodgers, it unites people from the Tory shires with amazing left-wing activist groups like 38 Degrees.

This is a fight about what we value as a country. Do we want to preserve Britain's most beautiful places – forests and seas that were alive for our distant ancestors, and should be alive for our distant descendants – or do we want a few rich corporations to make a little bit more money from destroying them? David Cameron has made his choice. Now we need to make ours.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

You can sign the petition to save our forests: click here.

For updates on this issue and others you can follow Johann atwww.twitter.com/johannhari101 or you can get links to all his articles by following his Facebook fanpage here. www.facebook.com/pages/Johann-Hari/52060383293?ref=ts

Southampton water in the snow

South Devon Coast

just some nice pictures taken on a crisp early Autumn day in South Devon

Big steps

It is easy to moan that nothing will change until consumers demand that it changes, but sometimes it takes a a big company to say 'we wont wait - we'll do it' to drag everyone along with them; usually though it needs to be a VERY big company to actually make a real impact.

Proctor and Gamble makes Pringles, Bold, Crest, Iams, Olay, and lots and lots of other products you probably buy all the time (or maybe assiduously avoid). Regardless, it's the world's largest consumer products company, and this week, it revealed an ambitious "new long-term vision": It plans to eventually run on 100 percent renewable energy, use 100 percent recycled or renewable packaging, and send no waste to landfills.

Large companies have made bold promises in the past, but this is extra bold. What's encouraging, though, is that P&G has committed to incremental, 10-year targets along the way. The company is aiming to get 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, for example. It will take a while for it to get there, but P&G deserves credit for setting the bar where it should be: up at 100.

(retweeted/aggregated/lifted/nicked from Good

The Government Responds...

Earlier in the year I signed a Surfers Against Sewage petition on the No 10 website urging the government to do more about marine litter. "Volumes of marine litter are dramatically increasing year after year. Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has successful marine litter campaigns targeting manufacturers, mobilising large-scale grass roots direct action and increasing public awareness on this ever-worsening problem. However, with each new high tide comes a new marine litter line impacting on our beloved beaches and surf spots.

Current anti-litter legislation such as The Environmental Protection Act 1990, MARPOL and the Port Waste Reception Facilities regulations are not providing the levels of protection needed for the coastline.

SAS believe that marine litter is coming from a wide variety of sources, including; beach users, sanitary related debris, industry, and fishing. SAS and other environmental NGOs have found that almost 70% of this litter is plastic. Plastics have a devastating impact on the marine environment over a long period, as well as economic impacts on local communities and the fishing industry.

As an SAS supporter, I urge you to implement a National Marine Litter Strategy to combat this worsening issue and help protect our coastlines."

And their response....a we're not doing much, and will continue to do not much.... or as they put it;

"The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the government department responsible for the marine environment and recognises the importance of tackling marine litter to achieve the Government’s vision for ensuring our seas are clean, healthy and safe. Defra’s strategy for dealing with marine litter encompasses a range of national, European and North East Atlantic initiatives.

Within the UK, it is against the law to drop or throw litter anywhere in the open air, including beaches, and Defra already supports a number of initiatives to reduce litter including providing funding to support Keep Britain Tidy which runs the Blue Flag and Quality Coast award schemes in England, and Fishing for Litter - a Defra funded project to land and dispose of litter caught up in fishing gear in SW England. This pilot project has recently been expanded to include the port of Appledore in North Devon.

Defra’s ‘Charting Progress 2’ report, an integrated assessment of the state of UK seas, to be published this summer, draws attention to the limited evidence available regarding the problems litter can pose for habitats and species in the marine environment. The wide range of sources, number of entry pathways, ease of transport by currents and wind, as well as insufficient knowledge on the impacts of litter in the sea, make it a complex issue to address.

Marine litter has also been highlighted in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008). All Member States, including the UK, are required to put in place a programme of measures by 2016 to ensure that ‘properties and quantities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment’ by 2020. The European Commission has appointed a group of experts through its Joint Research Centre to review the current research on the impacts of marine litter and consider possible indicators for monitoring and assessment. This report has just been completed and is being used by the Commission as a basis for developing methodological standards and criteria which Member States will use as a basis for assessing the scope of the problem, with a view to putting in place any measures that may be necessary.

Defra considers that the framework set out by the Directive offers the best opportunity to consider what action is necessary to tackle the problem of marine litter. As one of the next steps in taking this forward Defra is hoping to explore the issues associated with marine litter in a workshop to take place this Autumn. We will be inviting key stakeholders and hope that you will attend to represent your organisation."