Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Food Miles and Sustainability
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Rhea Gala, Institute of Science in Society
Food transported across the world burns up a lot of fossil fuel and contributes to global warming. “Food miles” – the total distance in miles the food item is transported from field to plate – has become accepted as a convenient indicator of sustainability; and has led to a general movement towards local production and local consumption in order to minimize them.
This raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the globalised food trade and the increasing concentration of the food supply chain and distribution in the hands of fewer and fewer transnational corporations.
UK’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has commissioned a report to look into The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development, which was published in July 2005. The company commissioned to do the report was AEA Technology, formerly part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and now a private sector company that was floated on the London stock exchange in 1996.
Given the narrow remit of the report, it nevertheless came up with some damning evidence against the dominant food system. The question is whether the political will is there to move forward from the discredited model. (21 September 2005)
Rolling Out The Blobject
Big Gav, Peak Energy (Australia)
A round-up of news on alternate transportation.
(22 September 2005)
PUC plans incentives to save energy
Marc Lifsher, LA Times
With Southern California’s natural gas bills heading toward record winter highs, utility regulators today are expected to approve an aggressive conservation program that could slash energy costs for homes and businesses by more than $5 billion and eliminate the need to build three large power plants over the next three years.
The California Public Utilities Commission’s ambitious plan would require investor-owned electricity and natural gas utilities to administer $1.97 billion of energy-efficiency incentives — substantial rebates for such things as buying high-tech refrigerators, adding home insulation and upgrading commercial boilers and air-conditioning systems — that would be paid for by ratepayers.
“This is the most important thing we can do for long-term [energy] reliability in the state,” said Susan Kennedy, the commissioner leading the efficiency proceeding. “The cost-effective thing for customers is to not spend money on electricity and gas.”
(22 September 2005)
Would you be prepared for a natural disaster?
Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor
Before government agencies can act, individuals can play a major role when facing an emergency
In the national debate Katrina has triggered over emergency preparedness, one element shouldn’t be overlooked, experts say: the critical role individuals and families play through their personal readiness and commitment to looking out for their neighbor.
To be sure, government authorities must be ready to handle the larger challenges – where to house evacuees, stocking those locations with enough food, water, and other supplies, providing evacuation services for those in need, and steering efforts to rebuild.
But individuals have a vital role to play in everything from helping to make cities and towns more disaster-resistant before a storm or flood strikes, to having “go bags” ready to grab if authorities order an evacuation.
“I spend a lot of time on public education, because I believe everyone is responsible for disaster preparedness; it isn’t just a government responsibility,” says Eric Holdeman, who heads the Office of Emergency Management in King County, Wash. “Individuals, families, businesses, schools – everybody has to be doing their piece.”
Fostering that kind of attitude can have a marked long-term effect on preparedness, says Ann Patton, an emergency planning consultant in Tulsa, Okla. “I’ve been involved with these kinds of issues at the local level for about 30 years, and the best defense against disaster is a close-knit community of people who care about each other and take care of each other,” she says.
(22 September 2005)
Projects go with the flow to reuse runoff
Catherine Trevison, Portland Oregonian
Storm water – Coming developments in Gresham will employ creative and practical solutions that mimic nature
————
GRESHAM — When the government got interested in runoff a few years ago, you could practically hear local developers groan.
No longer was it good enough to let rain simply sheet off a parking lot or roof to make its way into sewers and streams.
In the interest of clean waterways, builders had to figure out how to mimic nature by catching what regulators call storm water, treating it for pollution and releasing it at the right time.
But these days, developers are past the steepest part of that learning curve, and they’re finding creative ways to deal with rain, said Carrie Pak, Gresham’s storm water division manager.
(22 September 2005)
Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents
Reporters Without Borders
Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.
Contents:
Bloggers, the new heralds of free expression
What’s a blog ?
The language of blogging
Choosing the best tool
How to set up and run a blog
What ethics should bloggers have ?
Getting your blog picked up by search-engines
What really makes a blog shine ?
Personal accounts:
– Germany
– Bahrain
– USA
– Hong Kong
– Iran
– Nepal
How to blog anonymously
Technical ways to get round censorship
Ensuring your e-mail is truly private
Internet-censor world championship
(22 September 2005)
The handbook can be downloaded from the original article (1.6-MB PDF file).
Media coverage:
Blog guide to bypass censors (Reuters)
Handbook offers tips for cyberdissidents (CNET)
Readers curious about our linking to this are invited to remember that an open media and informed electorates are prerequisites for democracy.-LJ
Not to mention the dozens of Peak Oil and sustainability blogs that we rely on for the news and analysis that the mainstream media ignores. -BA
Update 23 Sept: What does one make of an article about this handbook that appears on the official Chinese website Xinhuanet? It’s at: Free guide to help bloggers avoid censership [sic].
