Islington leads the way on new allotments

Great news over the garden fence in Islington where a derelict car park in Holloway is being transformed into 30 new allotments (see photo below of Cllr Ruth Polling and her digger!).

Central London boroughs like Islington and Camden are the only ones who have an opt out from the 1922 Allotments Act which requires councils to provide food growing sites if six or more ask. Despute that opt-out Islington Council is spending £1m over 2009/10 to encourage community food growing. The Edible Islington campaign has already created 30 new food growing projects in schools and established 60 community food growing sites across the borough.

Residents on the council's allotment waiting list are now being contacted and invited to take on one of the new allotments on the Holloway car park site.

What a contrast with Camden. As a result of all the work we – lots of us – have done on raising awareness about the need for food growing there is massively more demand for allotments now compared to 2006. When I was elected the waiting list was about 5 years which I thought was too long and so didn’t join. By last autumn it was an estimated 50 years so Camden closed the lists.

There has been no new allotment provision in Camden for decades although there are more food growing areas. They are mostly mini-orchards or community allotments – like the Hancock Nunn housing estate in Belsize (see below) – rather than traditional “one-person–one-plot” sites.

Camden could be doing a lot more than it is but there’s still a lot going on here, especially on housing estates, which is where most of the potential sites are. We have more than twice as much potential green space on our housing estates than we do in our parks and open spaces. There’s also been an attempt to map potential food growing sites using satellite data although I tend to think that residents know where the potential food growing spaces are – they just need help to negotiate with the owners and understand what works where and when.

Havana now gets 50% of its fruit and veg from inside the city limits because it went through a catastrophic collapse of its fossil fuel-based economy in 1991 when the Russians stop supplying oil. The Cubans were forced to use every roof, every balcony, every wall, every scrap of urban land to grow food – and all organic because there were no oil-based pesticides and fertilisers. (BTW Transition Belsize is screening the film of the Cuban story tomorrow night.) In the UK Middlesbrough Council has done excellent work over the last few years to position itself as an enabling body on food growing.

We need to be creative in an urban environment like Camden. For example, I think vertical surfaces are probably our best potential new growing space after housing estates so we need the council to start think about how it helps residents with the skills needed for vertical food growing. Or we need to help ourselves via the Transition groups:

Transition Kensal to Kilburn
Transition Belsize
Transition Bloomsbury

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Sustainability Councillor of the Year

It was very kind of the Local Government Information Unit to make me Sustainability Councillor of the Year at their first national councillor awards ceremony.

The press release says judges described me as “a “real terrier” and noted that: "He is someone who won’t let you forget about the climate change agenda. He is a very visible champion of these issues and his local persistence has made him well known in Camden and beyond.”

But best of all was Cllr Richard Kemp, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats at the Local Government Association who welcomed the news that Lib Dem councillors had won three of the nine awards up for grabs with these immortal words: “All three of these councillors are young, energetic and thoroughly liberal.” Young? Me? I just use a good moisturiser I think you'll find!

Here's the quote I sent the LGIU:

“I haven’t found these last four years easy. Trying to effect dramatic change in a council as a backbencher is a bit like trying to shift the Titanic from its fateful course. Thankfully we’re starting to change direction. But there are more icebergs ahead.

"Too few councils understand the implications of the coming end of cheap oil (“peak oil”). Too few politicians walk the walk as well as they talk the talk. Councils are not yet open enough to new ideas like those coming from the Transition Towns movement. But there are hopeful signs. In many cases councils are doing what’s right for their community and the planet even when external signals are telling them to do something else.

"I firmly believe that councils and communities, working together, can make a huge difference on the climate change and peak oil agenda. So let’s get on with it.”

Passivhaus Conference is huge success

I'm delighted to say that the Camden & Islington Passivhaus Conference on Wednesday seems to have gone down really well. The proof of the pudding will come in the eating however. Let's see whether councils now feel able to require the Passivhaus standard in their planning rules.

Here's the press release from cuttingthecarbon:

The Liberal Democrat shadow Climate Change and Energy Secretary, Simon Hughes MP, this week vowed to become the first politician to live in a Passivhaus home so energy efficient it wouldn’t need central heating. Mr Hughes, who was speaking before a packed audience of planners, building control officers and architects at the inaugural Camden and Islington Passivhaus conference, called on councils to introduce the Passivhaus standard into their planning rules.

The Passivhaus standard was created by German engineers and architects more than 20 years ago and is now widely used for building and refurbishment in Europe. Thick walls, triple glazed windows and a heat recovery system form the basis of a Passivhaus building. The Building Research Establishment (BRE) recently said the only way to reach zero carbon buildings (Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes) was by using the Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency.

The Camden and Islington Passivhaus conference – the first of its kind in the UK – was organised by cuttingthecarbon, a climate change and peak oil consultancy and Passivhaus specialists bere:architects. The founder of cuttingthecarbon, Alexis Rowell, is also a councillor on the London Borough of Camden and Chair of its all-party Sustainability Task Force.

Cllr Rowell said: “I was amazed by the demand. All 160 places on the conference went within a few days. We could have filled Camden Town Hall several times over. This is incredibly encouraging for those of us who want to see the Passivhaus standard used more widely in the UK. There’s clearly a real hunger out there for information about Passivhaus.”

The conference, which was held at Camden Town Hall in Kings Cross, was backed financially by Camden and Islington Councils. Cllr Greg Foxsmith, Executive Member for Environment at Islington Council, said: “I’m delighted Islington was able to support this venture. I hope there will be more conferences like this but most of all I hope it will inspire people to feel they can create seriously low energy buildings.”

Delegates were taken to visit the first two Passivhaus developments in London – in Ranulf Road in West Hampstead, being built by Islington’s bere:architects, and in Aubert Park in Highbury, being built by Camden’s 4orm architects.

Camden Council’s Leader, Cllr Keith Moffitt, who welcomed participants to the Ranulf Road Passivhaus, said: “I’m extremely proud that Camden is home to one to the UK’s first Passivhaus buildings. This is exactly the sort of thing we want to see more of in Camden – development or refurbishment that saves energy and cuts greenhouse gas emissions.”

Justin Bere, the architect who designed the Ranulf Road Passivhaus said: “Passivhaus is about removing 85% of the energy requirement of a building and maximising the comfort of the occupants. A Passivhaus building now costs between 0% and 7% more than conventional build but less if lifetime energy bills are included in build costs. We are also building affordable passivhaus social housing in order to address problems of fuel poverty and cold, draughty homes, particularly for the elderly. Our first prototype passivhaus social housing will be built in Wales this Summer. Getting Britain to build to the Passivhaus standard will be demanding, but I’m convinced it can be done.”

Simon Hughes MP, the keynote speaker, said: “I will be writing to all Lib Dem councils to ask them to introduce the Passivhaus standard because it’s clearly the way forward. There is no other serious energy efficiency and comfort standard out there. Fuel prices are only going one way – up. Creating homes as energy efficient as this will help people out of fuel poverty and will mean the UK needing to buy less energy abroad. I want to see the UK’s building stock made low energy within ten years and Britain energy independent by 2050.”

Mr Hughes stressed that building up expertise on the Passivhaus standard in the UK would create thousands of green jobs. He also said: “I am going to launch a competition in my constituency for architects to build me a Passivhaus home and I promise you I will then move into it.” He called on all delegates to do the same.

Cllr Rowell, who was named national Sustainability Councillor of the Year yesterday, said: “I organised this conference because I wanted to dispel some of the myths around Passivhaus – like the idea you can’t open the windows – and because I want to encourage councils to put the Passivhaus standard into their planning rules. The UK building industry needs to acquire the skills but that will come when planners, building control officers and architects start to feel more comfortable with Passivhaus.”

Speakers at the conference included representatives of all four Passivhaus certifying bodies in the UK – BRE, Inbuilt LTD, Passivhaus Buildings and WARM: Low Energy Building Practice.

How many more cyclists have to die?

A cyclist is apparently fighting for his life in a Camden hospital after being involved in a collision in Chalk Farm yesterday morning. According to the Ham&High newspaper the driver opened the car door as the cyclist, believed to be in his 60s, was riding past.

How many more deaths and serious injuries to cyclists will it take before we accept that our streets are not safe for cyclists? When will we get to grips with the question of how to install properly separated cycle lanes? That's what those who are too scared to cycle want as a recent Sustrans campaign showed.

For us to move forward on this will require brave politicians to step up to the plate - or perhaps into the road! Politicians like the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, who ordered that lines of parking be removed where necessary to facilitate separate cycle lanes.

Most of all we need to re-vision London as a city for pedestrians and cyclists and not for the motor vehicle.

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Green Drinks and other Transition Belsize news

Belsize Green Drinks and Book Swap is tomorrow night (Wed 3 Feb) from 8pm upstairs at the Sir Richard Steele pub on Haverstock Hill.

Next week’s eco film - Wed 10 Feb, 7.30pm at the Sir Richard Steele - is The Power of Community, the film about how Cuba survived life after oil. If you haven’t seen it, then I highly recommend it. The Keynote Listener will be Ed Fordham, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn.

On Wed April 14th Transition Belsize will be holding a Transition Husting for all the parliamentary candidates together. This will involve them watching “In Transition”, the film about where the Transition movement has got to so far, and then explaining how Transition fits with their view of the world and their party’s policies. And there’ll be some time for Q&As as well.

Green gas contracts

Great news - Ecotricity are now offering green gas contracts. They’re going to make gas from food waste and supply it into the national gas grid, in a way that mirrors their work in green electricity. See here for how you can switch your gas contract.

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Why Cap & Trade is so pointless

Ever wondered why governments and big companies are so keen on Cap & Trade, the rapidly growing and utterly useless market in carbon allowances? Check this out from the Story of Stuff.

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Camden electric car club trial begins

Hurrah! Camden launched an electric car club pilot today in partnership with Hertz. (See photo below of me with Cllr Paul Braithwaite, who's passionate about improving air quality, and Cllr Chris Knight, the Executive Member for Environment.)

An electric car club trial is something I first called for two years ago. It makes perfect sense. At the moment we don't have the on-street parking space to allow everyone who wants one to have an electric car. The technology isn't ready. Batteries currently need to be charged for at least six hours in a 24 hour period. That would effectively mean giving resident their own on-street charging point which clearly isn't possible given the pressure on parking. So at the moment the only people who can have electric cars are those with off-street parking.

Car club cars go back to the same spot so they are ideal for combining with electric charging points. And on average they spend 60% of a 24 hour period in their parking place so they should always be charged. Hertz's partners are working on some technology that would allow them to see how much charge the car has in it when it gets back to its stand. If the charge is low, then car club members will be directed to another vehicle.

I was hoping that this trial would crack the problem of residents forgetting to plug in the cars by automatically starting the charge process when the cars are returned, but sadly it doesn't. This still requires a cable which could get unplugged or cut. But it's a great start. And what a joy to see a four door electric car that a family could genuinely use as a run around.

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Methane is escaping from the Arctic seabed

This story is really quite worrying. According to Professor Igor Semiletov, who leads the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS) at the University of Alaska, methane leakage from the Arctic seabed appears to have dramatically increased.

Semiletov's team say they have recorded methane levels in the atmosphere around the region 100 times higher than normal background levels, and in some cases 1,000 times higher.

Methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but 33 times if you include its indirect effect on tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapour. The Arctic methane was formerly trapped in water ice (methane hydrates), but global warming, which is far stronger at the poles than elsewhere, is causing it to melt.

There is thought to be up to twice as much carbon trapped in the form of methane hydrates than there is in the atmosphere. The great fear is that billions of tonnes of it will be released suddenly as melting occurs and that this will tip the earth into runaway climate change. This is what many scientists now think happened during the Permian-Triassic extinction when more than 95% of all species on the planet were wiped out.

What lessons can Belsize and Camden learn from the recent snowfalls?

For the second year running Belsize has been turned into an ice rink making it virtually impossible for anyone to walk or drive safely through our neighbourhood.

After last year’s snow the Council increased its stocks of grit for winter, but they – like every other council in the country – have been completely overwhelmed by the current conditions. Gritting has been going on more or less around the clock throughout Camden for weeks, but unfortunately most of Belsize is low priority because most of our roads have comparatively little traffic and our pavements have lower footfall.

It’s perfectly possible we will get more winters like this in the coming years as global warming increases. Climate change models predict much wetter winters and more extreme weather events so it’s reasonably likely that most cold snaps will lead to large snowfalls in future.

I have asked Camden’s Head of Streets and Sustainability to consider three things in the light of the current circumstances:

• The introduction of more self-serve grit bins in an area like Belsize so that residents can take action themselves if necessary
• A re-evaluation of Camden’s winter resilience plan incorporating the likely future effects of climate change
• Whether we are getting the balance right between the needs of pedestrians and motor vehicles in emergency situations like these

I think we as a community also need to take some responsibility for the changing conditions by equipping ourselves with the right footwear, snow chains for cars and possibly a shovel per house. I'm also going to get a sledge and possibly some cross-country skis!

And for those who are struggling with poorly insulated flats, can I recommend the Transition Belsize Draught Busting Workshop? This is aimed at helping residents to make their homes more energy efficient at very little expense. The next Transition Belsize Draught Busting Workshop will be on Sunday 17th January from 2pm to 4pm. For more details see the Transition Belsize website .

The snow means global warming is over, right?

A number of people have tried to suggest that this week's snowy weather is proof that global warming is a myth. The Conservative MP Ann Winterton was rightly jeered when she said this in the House of Commons. She's quite wrong, as are those at the other end of the belief spectrum who claim the cold snap is evidence that the Gulf Stream has suddenly stopped (and that Hollywood is better at predictions than weather forecasters!).

Here's what the Met Office has to say about the current snowfalls: "In most winters, and certainly those in the last 20 years or so, our winds normally come from the south-west. This means air travels over the relatively warm Atlantic and we get mild conditions in the UK. However, over the past three weeks the Atlantic air has been ‘blocked’ and cold air has been flowing down from the Arctic or the cold winter landmass of Europe.

"The cold temperatures in the UK have also been accompanied by snow. This is because areas of low pressure have been running in from the north-east, tracking across the North Sea and picking up moisture along the way. When they come over the land, the water falls as snow due to the cold temperatures."

Writing in The Times, weather expert Paul Simons alleges that there is a big change afoot: "There are signs of a sudden shift in the temperature of the stratosphere, several miles high in the atmosphere. For reasons not entirely clear, the temperature of the stratosphere has increased and this has impacted down into the lower atmosphere, where most of our weather occurs."

I have no idea whether that's true. It sounds like a theory that needs a bit more research.

Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying: "Snowfall ... could actually increase in the short term because of global warming. We have all heard the expression 'too cold to snow' and we have always expected precipitation to increase. All the indicators still suggest that we are warming up in line with predictions."

That makes sense to me. Climate change models predict wetter winters. And that almost certainly means snowier winters for the foreseeable future. So we'd better get used to it.

I think I might get some cross-country skis. They'd be a lot more use than shoes for getting around Belsize at the moment!

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Is James Hansen's new book the most important ever written?

It's not a literary masterpiece nor is it easy to read, but might it be the most important book ever written? Dr James Hansen, the NASA scientist who has done so much over the last 30 years to try to warn a sceptical United States about global warming, attempts to explain why most climate predictions are understatements.

Here are four key thoughts from "Storms of my grandchildren - The truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last change to save humanity":

1) Ice melts much faster than it forms and everyone (especially the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is underestimating the speed of melt of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Business as usual (continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current rate or faster) will lead to sea level rises this century that will devastate coastal cities.

2) Aerosols (particulates created when fossil fuels are burnt) scatter and absorb sunlight, reducing the amount that gets to the ground, and are masking the true effect of manmade climate change. When we finally get around to improving air quality there will be a hefty global warming payback.

3) Plants, insects and animals can't keep up with the speed of change. Climatic zones (isotherms) are moving towards the poles 35 miles per decade. But plants, insects and animals are only going at 4 miles per decade. We are heading towards a mass extinction of species.

4) Ocean heat content is the key variable in climate change science partly because it affects the rate of melt of sea ice, but mainly because of frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the seas which could bubble up as a powerful greenhouse gas with relatively little heating. It is now thought that the last mass extinction, the end-Permian event which eradicated more than 90% of all species 251 million years ago, was caused in large part by melting methane hydrates.

It's a dispiriting read, especially the sections detailing the lengths to which the Bush Adminstration went to prevent Dr Hansen from speaking out and to obfuscate the work of climate scientists. Worst of all perhaps, Dr Hansen says Barack Obama "doesn't get it". The omens are not good.

Images from the Climate March & Wave

With Lib Dem Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Simon Hughes, in his dashing Roger Moore circa 1970 ski salopettes:

With Transition Belsize:

And with my alter ego from Transition Brixton, Duncan Law:

Happy New Year all!

Four things we can do post-Copenhagen

Copenhagen was no Christmas present to our children or to the planet.

The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” negotiated by the US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil is a fudged, inadequate, non-binding deal, which the UN Conference on Climate Change did not agree and which has weakened the structures of international decision-making. The “Accord” speaks of the need to keep global warming below 2ºC but does nothing to achieve that goal. Indeed the cuts currently on the table take us past 3ºC and into runaway climate change territory. It is a voluntary agreement that nobody need observe; a stitch-up by those who created the problem; a bad deal that is worse than no deal.

So what do we do now? Here are four suggestions:

1) The UK, the country that brought in the Climate Act, the world’s first legally binding carbon pollution targets, should continue to lead from the front by increasing the cuts it’s proposing to 40% by 2020 and making them happen without recourse to techniques like carbon offsetting.

2) We, the people, need to get on with building a greener future from the bottom up via self-help movements like Transition Towns or campaigns like 10:10.

3) The UK government should re-establish its carbon rationing committee, which David Miliband set up when he was briefly Environment Secretary and which Hilary Benn scrapped, and it should specifically look at David Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas concept (TEQs) as a way of decarbonising the economy and preparing for the end of cheap oil.

4) While TEQs are being tested the UK government should set high carbon taxes and send the proceeds to citizens in the form of a equal payment per person.

That way we will take responsibility for the mess we have helped to create rather than wasting time blaming China or the United Nations process as the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband seems inclined to do.

Scientists say climate change is speeding up

The Copenhagen Diagnosis is a report which was published to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference in December 2009. It is aimed at providing policymakers with a synthesis of the latest climate science published since the last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report serves as an interim evaluation of the evolving science midway through an IPCC cycle. The last IPCC report was published in 2007 and the next one is due in 2013. The Copenhagen Diagnosis was written by 26 authors, many of whom were lead authors of chapters in the 2007 IPCC report.

The most significant recent findings are:

Surging greenhouse gas emissions Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilised at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2ºC. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2ºC warming.

Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19ºC per decade. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short- term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.

Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.

Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of summertime sea-ice during 2007-2009 was about 40% less than the average prediction from the climate models underlying the IPCC 2007 report.

Current sea-level rise underestimated Satellites show that the global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) is 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.

Sea-level prediction revised By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by the 2007 IPCC report. For unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 metre. The upper limit has been estimated as a 2 metres sea level rise by 2100. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilised and several metres of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

Delay in action risks irreversible damage Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognised.

The turning point must come soon If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2ºC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilise climate, a decarbonised global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 tonne of CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

You can download the full report here.

Snowmen against climate change

Merry Christmas everybody!

Camden's gold star Passivhaus opportunity

Camden has just been named best council in the country based on its Audit Commission corporate assessment. So you might think I’d be happy. Well of course I am. And proud. But I’m worried that the new school in Swiss Cottage and the proposed new civic offices in Kings Cross will not be exemplars in terms of energy efficiency. I’m worried that we’re missing a golden opportunity to prove that we are the best council in the country.

Our draft Local Development Framework (planning rules) says that developers should aspire to the Passivhaus standard, which was devised by German engineers more than 20 years ago as a way to create buildings so energy efficient that they don’t need central heating. Thick walls, triple glazed windows, the warmth of human bodies and electrical appliances - these are all you need in a Passivhaus building.

I recently went on a Passivhaus tour of Frankfurt, where all public buildings have to be built to this exacting energy efficiency standard. My colleague Cllr Paul Braithwaite has just returned from a similar trip to Austria where several regions now require new buildings to be Passivhaus. And last week Cllrs Abraham, Oliver and myself (see photo below) attended a packed Passivhaus Schools conference at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) just over the Camden border in Portland Place. We heard, among other things, how schools in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium now have to be Passivhaus, both new and retro-fit.

Mairi Johnson, the Director of Design at Partnership for Schools (the public-private delivery vehicle for the Building Schools for the Future programme), said there was no earthly reason why Camden couldn’t build a Passivhaus secondary school in Swiss Cottage. Indeed she said she’d welcome such an exemplar in central London. Officers from Hampshire, Haringey, Oxfordshire, Powys and even Edinburgh council were at the RIBA conference. All of them are about to build new schools and are considering using the Passivhaus standard. Sadly no officer from Camden attended.

You might think that since Camden aspires to put “sustainability at the heart of everything it does”; since our Local Development Framework says developers should aspire to Passivhaus; and since so many Camden councillors are pushing for Passivhaus; that our new school and civic offices would both be Passivhaus. Camden’s Executive Member for Schools recently said in Full Council that the energy efficiency standard proposed for the new school was equivalent to Passivhaus. It’s not true, but if it were true, then why wouldn’t we just specify Passivhaus?

Camden’s first Passivhaus home is currently under construction in Fortune Green. Meanwhile in Islington a Camden architect is building five Passivhaus houses in Highbury. Wales has led the way on this; the first Passivhaus-certified office/residential development is in Powys and the Welsh government has just awarded contracts to architectural firms for a series of Passivhaus homes.

The Buildings Research Establishment, BRE, who are now able to certify Passivhaus buildings in the UK, has recently published a useful primer explaining the benefits of the standard. It explodes a few Passivhaus urban myths like the idea that you can't open the windows in the summer (which still does the rounds at Camden Council).

The BRE document also says: "The fabric performance requirements required for level 6 of the Code [for Sustainable Homes] are based upon the PassivHaus standard. With the exception of flats, it is not generally possible to achieve Code Level 6 without adopting a performance specification [meaning energy efficiency standard] similar to PassivHaus.” In other words, there is no other way to reach zero carbon homes without using the 20+ years of research work that has gone into the Passivhaus standard. There is no other serious energy efficiency standard out there so let's stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

Passivhaus buildings are between zero and 7% more expensive than building regulations. However if you add lifetime energy bills to the build cost, or even 20 years of energy bills, then they are cheaper. Unfortunately in Britain lifetime energy bills are rarely included to the build cost. We are a nation of short termists.

But perhaps worse than the short termism is the impression I repeatedly get from talking to planners, developers and civil servants that Passivhaus is seen as not suitable for British climes and frankly a bit German. This sort of mumbo jumbo confirms the key message of the Passivhaus Schools Conference at RIBA – the obstacles to Passivhaus are not economic and technical, they are political and psychological.

Camden won no green flags (the Audit Commission’s equivalent of gold stars) for environmental sustainability in its recent corporate assessment. Eighteen other councils around the country did, including our neighbours in Islington and the borough that is, I think, the greenest in London – Sutton. We are some way behind the curve in terms of eco action despite everything that I and the Sustainability Task Force have proposed over the last three years.

Given that fact, it seems to me that the new school in Swiss Cottage and the proposed new civic offices in Kings Cross represent a golden (or maybe gold star) opportunity to set the record straight. Let us aspire to do the best we can, to live up to our reputation as the best council in the country, and truly put sustainability at the heart of everything we do.

What planet is Mark Lynas on?

Six Degrees – Our future on a hotter planet by Mark Lynas is one of the most important books I have ever read. I have given away something like 100 copies of that book. It is fundamental to my understanding of why we need to take immediate and dramatic action on climate change.

However I started to worry about Mark when he flip-flopped his way to a new position on nuclear saying that it was suddenly a critical part of the solution even though a new round of atomic power stations will never be opened in time to solve the 2016 energy gap, will be incredibly expensive and will only ever produce a tiny proportion of our electricity. Not to mention the waste of effort and the effort of dealing with the waste.

Another infamous flip-flop came after he said that flying was tantamount to a suicide bomber inflicting mass casualties. He later retracted that line saying that “flying isn’t analogous to child abuse”. Which is it, Mark?

Now he says China singlehandedly derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. How does he know? Because he was there. Where? In the room where the so-called “Copenhagen Accord” was negotiated by a group of countries led by the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. That meeting took place outside the framework of the main UN conference. It was a sidebar designed to create the illusion that a successful deal had been struck.

As I’ve said before it the “Copenhagen Accord” is a fudged, inadequate, non-binding deal, which the UN Conference on Climate Change did not agree and which has weakened the structures of international decision-making. The “Accord” speaks of the need to keep global warming below 2ºC but does nothing to achieve that goal. Indeed the cuts currently on the table take us past 3ºC and into runaway climate change territory. It is a voluntary agreement that nobody need observe; a stitch-up by those who created the problem; a bad deal that is worse than no deal.

But the hasty and chaotic negotiations that led up to the “Copenhagen Accord” cannot be allowed to wipe out what came before.

The US has put 28% of all the manmade greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and yet the US negotiator at Copenhagen refused to accept any responsibility for historical emissions. China is responsible for 8% of all historical emissions and much of those are the West’s outsourced emissions.

The US offered almost nothing in terms of emissions cuts. 17% on 2005 levels translates into 4% on 1990 levels which is the baseline everyone else is working to.

The US spent most of Copenhagen saying it wasn’t going to give a penny to China and that China needed to allow inspectors in to verify its emissions. China gave way on both these issues – saying it wouldn’t take western money and it would allow some independent verification. And the £100bn Obama promised to contribute to turns out to be mostly loans or rehashed already promised funds.

The meeting Mark was in as an adviser to the Maldives was not the UN conference – it was a conference wrecking sidebar, which may have done lasting damage to multilateral decision-making structures.

And how does India escape the general opprobrium when Ed Miliband described it as a such a key player in the run-up to Copenhagen. India’s leaders are remarkably shortsighted about climate change. At 2 degrees of global warming India will be decimated by sea level rises, more frequent hurricanes, a dramatically altered monsoon and a massive reduction in melt water available for for irrigation coming off the Himalayan glaciers. Yet post-Copenhagen India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has been strutting around delighted because the “Accord” commits his country to nothing and “doesn’t infringe India’s sovereignty”.

Mark Lynas may have been in the “Copenhagen Accord” negotiations and may have seen Obama struggling to negotiate with an obstructive “second tier [Chinese Foreign Ministry] official”, but I think he’s suffering from the effects of an illness known as Western spin if he thinks China singlehandedly wrecked the Copenhagen conference. The truth is that everyone is to blame for the fiasco that was Copenhagen and nobody more so than the US, the only country which could really change the direction of travel of all the rest.

A letter to my MP Glenda Jackson about the catastrophe that was Copenhagen

Dear Glenda,

In my opinion Copenhagen was a catastrophic fiasco. Here’s why:

• The US refused to accept responsibility for its historic emissions which amount to 25% of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
• The host nation Denmark tried to bounce developing nations into dropping the Kyoto Protocol, under which the developed countries still have emissions reductions commitments
• Denmark were also exposed trying to pull together a secret deal struck with only a few rich countries
• The EU failed to lead from the front by offering to increase its emissions reduction target (from 20% to 30%) and is still only offering about half of what scientists say we need by 2020 (a 40% reduction on pre-industrial levels)
• A leaked UN analysis showed that developing countries were offering higher emissions cuts than developed countries
• The money offered to developing countries was woefully inadequate and turned out to be mostly already promised funds or loans
• The rich countries were quick to blame China for the impasse but unwilling to take adequate responsibility for the mess that they have caused
• Barack Obama flew in to universal acclaim but offered nothing new to break the logjam and flew out before the end saying a successful deal had been reached when it hadn’t and still hasn’t

The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” negotiated by the US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil is a fudged, inadequate, non-binding deal, which the UN Conference on Climate Change did not agree and which has weakened the structures of international decision-making. It speaks of the need to keep global warming below 2ºC but does nothing to achieve that goal. Indeed the cuts currently on the table take us past 3ºC and into runaway climate change territory. The “Copenhagen Accord” is a voluntary agreement that nobody need observe. It is a stitch-up by those who created the problem. It is a bad deal that is worse than no deal.

It is a certainly no Christmas present to our children or to the planet.

Can I please ask you to convey my concern to the Prime Minister and to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband. Whilst I recognise that they worked tirelessly to achieve something at Copenhagen, I’m afraid that as far as I can tell the only thing they did achieve was to get the UN conference to note the flawed “Copenhagen Accord”, a document that has almost certainly made it harder to reach a lasting and meaningful international agreement on combating climate change.

The only useful thing which seems to have emerged from the wreckage was that in the final analysis no government in the world denied the existence of manmade climate change nor the importance of trying to combat it.

I would like to know what exactly the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change think they are going to do now.

Rgds, Alexis

192 governments agree in Copenhagen that climate change is manmade and dangerous so why doesn't the BBC?

Copenhagen was a bad, fudged, inadequate, non-binding deal, which not everyone signed up to and which has weakened the structures of international decision-making (see here for the Friends of the Earth view and the George Monbiot view). But one important thing did come out of wreckage - in the final analysis not one government in the world denied the existence of manmade climate change nor the importance of trying to combat it.

That contrasts strongly with the position of the BBC which is utterly hamstrung by its fear of being seen as a campaigning organisation and by the addiction of its news editors to controversy not consensus.

Here's one typical example - in BBC Environment Correspondent Roger Harrabin's posting about Copenhagen yesterday morning he said: “A survey a while ago showed that 18% of scientists thought the Intergovernmental Panel [on Climate Change] had exaggerated. This gives hope.”

This seems to be the survey he's talking about. I find it hard to understand how Roger Harrabin thinks this survey: a) is in some way scientific given that it was based on responses to an email or indeed that it "shows" anything at all; b) discredits the incredibly rigorous IPCC process; and c), most ludicrously of all, “gives hope”.

As an ex-BBC journalist I understand the constraints that Roger is working under. The BBC is utterly paranoid about not being seen as a campaigning organisation or being used by campaigning organisations. Its news editors, like news editors everywhere, prefer controversy to consensus. But I think the BBC has a moral duty to do better than that on an issue which threatens the very existence of the human race.

To say that there is scientific disagreement about manmade climate change in 2009 is the equivalent of believing the earth is flat. To give Lord Nigel Lawson equal status to respected climate scientists on this subject is utterly irresponsible. To allow climate deniers like Andrew Neil and Jeremy Clarkson to get away with the rubbish they spout on BBC programmes is morally repugnant.

The fact that the BBC gives climate sceptics more credence than they deserve is, I think, a principal reason why the public are confused and why it is so hard to achieve serious political action on climate change. There's plenty of room for argument about what we do, about whether our current economic and political system can solve the crisis, and about when or if we unleash runaway climate change, but not on the basic facts. BBC journalists and presenters should be saying that there is no scientific dispute about the existence of manmade climate change loudly and clearly in every report and programme.

Our children will not thank the BBC for the irresponsibility of its current position on climate change.

Refuting those who maintain the earth is flat

A friend, doing her bit to ratchet up pressure on the world's hapless politicians in Copenhagen, asked all her friends to sign the "Save Copenhagen" online petition that was doing the rounds last week. One wrote back to her to say:

"Claire - I am not convinced by the evidence on climate change. Even if global temperature changes are increasing, I am not convinced that there is enough evidence that it is due to human activity or even that carbon dioxide levels are a CAUSATIVE factor. Temperatures have risen and fallen by 7 degrees at least 10 times in the past 1 million years, obviously not due to human activity.

"The problem is that there are a huge number of hysterical people who are blind to the actual evidence. These people are often anti capitalist and anti everything. I also think it is important that people are allowed to voice their views and are not regarded as ‘heretics’ when they refute the evidence. An example is that Ed Milliband said that it should become ‘socially unacceptable’ to argue against climate change. This I regard as extremely dangerous and against the general principles of freedom of speech. Therefore, I hope you don’t mind me declining to take part in your petition but I hope that we can respect each other’s views."

My friend then writes to me "Hi Alexis, How would you counter this argument?!" Here's my reply:

"Hi Claire - The world has been hotter in the past (slightly – four times in 800 million years) but the level of greenhouse gases has never been anything like as high as it is now. We know there is a causal relationship between global average temperatures and greenhouse gases although it can go both ways ie CO2 does not always lead temperature, sometimes temperature leads CO2. Look at the graph - a child can see that there’s a link.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s climate scientists, who put together a report every four years based on all the previously published science, and who have to achieve an unheard of level of consensus between themselves for a global group of scientific specialists so that governments can sign off their conclusions, puts the likelihood that the current round of global warming is manmade at more than 95% probable. Would you fly in a plane if the world’s aeronautic engineers said it was more than 95% likely to crash?

"Your friend is, I think, the one who is hysterical. All the evidence points in the same direction. The only people who deny that this bout of climate change is manmade are either nutters (like Lord Lawson) or powerful interests defending the status quo (fossil fuel companies) or publicity-seeking fake climate scientists (like Bjorn Lomberg) some of whom are funded by powerful interests to muddy the waters in the same way that “scientists” were once paid to create doubt about the dangers of smoking by the tobacco companies.

"No serious climate scientist will deny that climate change is happening and that it is manmade. The only points of contention are what exactly happens next, in what order, and when will we lose control of the process? Will the the Amazon burn up at 2ºC of global warming or 3ºC? Will the methane that is currently locked under the frozen tundra of Siberia and Canada get released at 3ºC or 4ºC? Can we still control the process at 4ºC (as Lord Adair Turner seems to think although it’s not clear on what science that is based) or, more likely somewhere between 2ºC (which most climate scientists now privately say is inevitable) and 4ºC?

"The nutters, the powerful interests and the fake scientists all have their reasons for creating doubt. The media hates consensus and so fans the flames of confusion by pitching Nigel Lawson against a respectable climate scientist and suggesting that there is still a debate over whether climate change is happening or whether it is manmade. It should be intellectually unacceptable to argue against MANMADE climate change.

"There will still be plenty of argument about what we should do. I personally don’t believe that capitalism or democracy can deal with climate change or the end of cheap fossil fuels, the other looming catastrophe of our times (at least for the industrialised world). We are living with an economic model that requires growth and growth is seen as in some way an end in itself. It is not – growth does not make us happy, it just gives us more stuff.

"As a nation we have not got happier since the 1960s. It’s the same throughout the industrialised world except those societies, like Denmark, where highly regulated capitalism has created a much flatter income distribution and a more interventionist social model. I’m a trained classical economist but I no longer believe in capitalism in a world that does not price the biosphere.

"I would like to see a model which includes the need to live within the natural limits of the earth i respectful harmony with its other inhabitants (plants and animals); where community resilience, the ability to withstand external shocks (like Tesco no longer being able to supply strawberries in January because the oil price has hit $600/barrel) is more important than Just-In-Time global production; and where wellbeing or happiness is once again (as it was for Jeremy Bentham et al) the primary role of governments not pointless measures of growth or money supply or industrial production.

"So in conclusion I think you should not “respect his views” on manmade climate change as they are wrong. He is a flat earther in this respect. If he wants to have a discussion about what comes next or about whether capitalism can mutate (yet again) to deal with this crisis, then fine. But his doubts about manmade climate change are not respectable – they are mad."

Copenhagen is failing

The United Nations Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen are failing. The outcome is likely to be a terrible fudge. The headline emissions cuts agreed will not be the 40% by 2020 that green NGOs are calling for. Rich countries will allow themselves to carry on business as usual by permitting carbon offsetting, which offloads the problem we created on to poorer nations; by backing carbon capture and storage, which is unproven; and by and investing their hopes in carbon trading, which, thus far, has achieved nothing except give greedy, unscrupulous bankers and traders another way to steal our money. Idiot ruses like counting mega monocrop plantations as rain forest are likely to be allowed. And the amount of money agreed by developed nations to fund the greening of the developing world will not compensate them for the damage we have done and will do to their countries.

It is a human disaster recounted by George Monbiot more eloquently than I ever could in his latest post "This is about us".

The only thing I can suggest at this stage is that everyone signs the "Save Copenhagen" petition organised by Avaaz, the independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making.

It is not the human race's finest hour.

Another fabulous foraging fiesta

Last Saturday Transition Belsize held the first of four seasonal foraging workshops on Hampstead Heath. The aim is to train up a group of expert foragers so that we can help others to understand the pleasures and hazards of wild foods.

You might think that mid-December would be a barren time for food on the Heath, but it wasn't at all. We came back with thirty edible plants and concocted a marvelous meal of roots, leaves, greens and fungi. Yum!
See the Transition Belsize website for details of more skills workshops like this one.

100 councils sign up to 10:10 in 100 days

Today, the 100th day of the 10:10 Campaign, Edinburgh became the 100th council to commit to reducing its carbon pollution by 10% in 2010.

100 councils responsible for services to 18m people, nearly one in three of the UK population. 100 councils aspiring to do what scientists say we need to do if we are to avert runaway climate change. 100 councils inspiring others to make the same commitment to a lower carbon future.

Local authorities are the unsung heroes of the 10:10 Campaign. Our emissions are measured. Our decision to cut them is verifiable. We are answerable to our electorates.

We should not delude ourselves – the first 10% is by far the easiest part of the journey. We need to hit 40% by 2020 and more than 80% by 2050. These are immense challenges and few of us can really have grasped the enormity of the changes that lie ahead. But we have proved that we can make the right start and that we can lead the way.

If we can do it, then so can every other organisation, every business and every household in the UK.

Toronto's laudable efforts to reduce CO2 do not make up for the destruction caused by Alberta and the Canadian government

I’m delighted to hear from the Mayor of Toronto that his city is making significant cuts in its emissions and is fully participating in the C40 group of cities working to combat climate change. However the fact remains that the destruction being caused by Alberta and the Canadian national government far outweighs anything being done by Canadians as individuals or cities and is in danger of destroying Canada’s longstanding reputation as a bastion of progressive values.

Canada is the centre of the oil tar sands industry (see photo below) which is converting natural gas and fresh water into oil and causing untold environmental destruction in the process. Canada is in breach of its Kyoto obligations and has abandoned any attempt to reach those targets. (Canada’s emissions have risen by 26% since 1990, the Kyoto baseline.) Canada has consistently tried to block a Commonwealth agreement on binding emissions cuts for industrialised nations. Canada is actively trying to derail the Copenhagen climate negotiations.

I would like to see the British government: support the expulsion of Canada from the Commonwealth; use every opportunity to chastise the Canadian government for its actions; force British nationalised banks like RBS to disinvest from the oil tar sands business; and sanction companies doing business in Britain like Shell and BP if they continue to be involved in the oil tar sands business.

All Canadians should take responsibility for, and seek to do something about, the fact that Canada is now the biggest threat to our chances of averting runaway climate change and to our hopes of striking a post-Kyoto deal.

Most rural living isn't low carbon

I was down in Devon with my other half recently trying to decide whether we could live down there on a small holding one day and if so where exactly we'd want to be.

We hired a car because: a) we were almost killed last time we went down there on our bikes; and b) Devon is big. We drove 502 miles in ten days and used 39.25 litres of diesel. Driving around was all a bit of a shock to me because I gave it up years ago. Actually I didn't do any of the driving - she did it all. But still - being in a car was a shock to the system.

But what was a much bigger shock was how much carbon dioxide we created. To work out how much CO2 a diesel car emits you have to multiply the litres of diesel by 2.64. So for us that gives a total of 103kg of CO2, or about 50kg each. That really shocked me because my rule of thumb is that, if we're to keep global warming to under 2ºC, then everyone on the planet needs to create no more than a tonne of CO2 per year. So our driving in ten days was 1/20 of our annual allowance!

We probably drove a bit more than the average countryside dweller, but probably not much more. Most people in the countryside seem to drive everywhere, which is not surprising as there are really no alternatives. Unless you live in or near a small market town, or your community has created a degree of self-sufficiency, rural living is not a low carbon option. I'm not saying that we should all move to the cities - just that the end of cheap oil is going to be a shock for everyone.

Canada is risking its image and its friends

A few days ago I wrote to the Canadian High Commissioner in London to berate his country for the climate destruction it is causing, and the diplomatic negotiations it risks derailing, with its continued production of oil tar sands. Now George Monbiot has broken his self-imposed flying ban to go to Canada and add his voice to the protests. Canada is in serious danger of destroying its image as a guardian of civilised, progressive values. And of losing its friends. See here for a video about tar sands on the Greenpeace website and for ways you can protest.

Being energy audited for free

I've just been energy audited as part of the Belsize Home Energy Efficiency Programme pilot for the whole of London. Up to 1,000 households will each receive 10 energy and water efficiency measures installed for free. The aim is to test the concept for the whole of London.

I have to say that the installer struggled to find much to put into our flat. She ended up giving us an hourglass shower timer and a multi-plug which has a little remote control enabling you to turn off electrical appliances rather than leave them on standby. Her visit did however prompt me to install the chimney balloon that I’ve had for a while!

One thing I didn’t know which came out of the visit was that Camden Council offers landlords up to £10,000 to fit more efficient boilers as well as loft, cavity wall and solid wall insulation so I've put our landlords on to that.

If you would like a free energy efficiency audit of your home, then please contact the Small Steps team at Camden Council on 0800 801 738 or by emailing info@smallstepsenergyvisits.co.uk.

John Denham MP thinks Manchester is a leader on action on climate change. What?

I'm delighted to hear that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, John Denham MP, thinks strong leadership, clear vision and ambition from councils could deliver reductions in carbon emissions of millions of tonnes annually. My feelings exactly, which is why I'm writing a book about how communities and councils can promote a low carbon future.

In a speech at the Local Action on Climate Change Summit last week, Mr Denham outlined his vision for radically enhancing the role of councils with greater autonomy and powers to drive low carbon living - changing the expectations of what local government is and what it does for people. He said: "The challenge of tackling climate change presents local authorities with an opportunity to take centre stage and lead the way in not only finding solutions for their own local area and delivering for their local residents but in helping the nation meet its commitments to driving down carbon emissions."

"Councils already play a crucial part in making the shift to a low carbon economy," he added, "but there is capacity for them to go further than their current responsibilities. Getting this right will require local government to think differently, be ambitious and embrace innovation. In return central government will need to provide support, make sure unnecessary barriers to action are swept away, and be ready to give local authorities which are ready to go further and faster, and have a plan for doing so, the tools to do the job."

But then he completely blew it by praising Manchester for leading the way. MANCHESTER? They have just announced that they are planning to cut their emissions by more than 40% by 2020 which is great, but they haven't actually done anything yet. I can't think of one thing Manchester has done on the climate change and depletion of natural resources agenda. By contrast councils like Kirklees, Woking, Islington, Sutton, Oxford, Richmond, Milton Keynes, Eastleigh and Birmingham are so far ahead that they're off the map.

Come on, John - you're right that councils can play a huge role, but let's praise the right people for taking action not the ones that are simply talking about it.

Can we still avert climate chaos?

Nasa's James Hansen was the first to point out the perils of climate change to the US Congress. In The Observer today, he began a heated debate with experts from around the world, from China to the threatened Maldives, and argued that our leaders had to be shaken out of their complacency. But will they show enough courage at next week's Copenhagen summit to take the first steps to saving the planet? Read more here.

Eco refurbishments - chalk and cheese

Earlier this week I went on a fascinating trip to Islington to see two developments that were like chalk and cheese. The first was an eco refurbishment of a small ground floor flat in a Victorian conversion done by United House who do a lot of the Decent Homes work in Islington and Camden. It was a brave stab at creating low energy home, to be applauded because nobody asked them to do it or paid tem. But it was also a typical British low energy building – no route map, a fascination with gadgets and lots of trial and error.

They had installed a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system that was far too big for the two-roomed flat and a micro-CHP boiler which gave off a constant noisy hum like the generator it was. These two boxes took up a good chunk of the tiny kitchen. The micro-CHP uses natural gas to create electricity when there’s demand for central heating or hot water. It also has a normal condensing boiler built in as a back-up. At £6,300 it’s an expensive bit of kit that would take about 50 years to pay back.

Meanwhile the front windows had been double glazed and the exposed walls had had a new super-thin solid wall insulation fitted. All good. But the rear windows were still single pane so heat was going straight out like water down a drain.

At the other end of the same road I’d been invited to see a Passivhaus development under construction (see photo above) so I took the United House folks and Islington’s Executive Member for Environment, Cllr Greg Foxsmith, with me. We were given a tour of the five Passivhaus homes that are being built to be so well insulated and airtight that they have no need for central heating. The hot water is to be provided by ground source heat pumps.

Of course this was not a refurbishment of a Victorian house, it was a new build, but still it was an interesting contrast because the Passivhaus standard gives such a clear route map – both for new build and refurbishment.

Brent Cross 2 - an eco calamity

With the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen looming, the UK - the first country to introduce legally binding carbon emissions reduction targets - should be showing strong leadership. Yet here in north London plans are afoot to drive a coach and horses (and cars and trucks) through the spirit of the Climate Act. In Barnet a glossy greenwashed blueprint drawn up for a controversial £4.5bn Brent Cross-Cricklewood ‘new town’ has gained outline planning permission. It is shaping up to be an eco disaster.

The regeneration scheme, which has already been rejected by Camden, will generate 29,000 extra car journeys per day. A more light railway is not only not paid for as part of the plan but, incredibly, is ruled out by it. Whereas Canary Wharf has attracted both the Jubilee Line extension and the DLR, this is a 1980s car based recipe for gridlock. Given that we are at or near the peak of global oil production, and therefore at the end of the era of cheap oil, it is hard to see how a car-based solution can possibly make sense.


Residential buildings will only achieve level three (out of six) under the Code for Sustainable Homes. That’s pathetic when you think that all buildings are supposed to be zero carbon (level six of the code) by 2016. The scheme fails to comply with the Mayors’ Planning Guidance on Zero Emission Developments as developers say it is not “technically or commercially viable” for the entire scheme to follow the rules.

Many believe the current scheme is simply a way of extending Brent Cross Shopping Centre, a proposal that was strongly opposed and thrown out by Judicial Review in the late1990s. Do we really need more retail expansion on this scale? The recent reduction of other elements of Phase One, but leaving the doubling of the shopping centre untouched, seems to support this view. No other phases are guaranteed to be built by the developers.

The adverse impacts arising from this scheme (the large increase in noise, traffic congestion and air pollution) extend beyond the London Borough of Barnet boundary. It should not be left to Barnet councillors alone to decide on these plans. As one of the largest developments in Europe it will impact across London.

I support the increasingly vocal calls of the “Coalition for A Sustainable Brent Cross-Cricklewood Plan”, Friends of the Earth, politicians, residents and other campaign groups across Camden, Barnet and Brent for this project to go to a Public Inquiry. Let the experts decide. I doubt they would decide to build anything grotesquely unsustainable as the current plan.

Trying to recycle the right way

I've spent a lot of time and effort over the last four years battling against recycling tonnage targets. They give councils an incentive to collect the maximum number of tonnes at the cheapest price. Our obligation stops there. We have no incentive to take the planet into account.

I've just been to a new Materials Reprocessing Facility (MRF), Bywaters at Bromley-in-Bow in East London. MRFs are supposed to separate recycling after councils have mixed it up in commingled (or commangled) collections. A huge amount of energy goes into trying to separate commingled recycling and a lot of manual effort as well.

It's much better than the last one I went to in Greenwich where they couldn't separate paper and glass. There the paper was so contaminated by glass shards that no British papermaker would accept it so we ended up paying people to ship it to the Far East where I guess it was burnt in furnaces. The Bywaters MRF can separate out glass which is a big step forward. And almost all the paper that Bywaters reprocess goes to British papermakers.

However it remains the case that we simply should not be sending glass to MRFs - everyone except the disabled or elderly should be putting it in on-street bottle banks. That way it goes straight to a bottlemaker. If you send it to a MRF as part of the commingled collection, most of it ends up as roadfill which is a complete nonsense. Think of energy that's used, and the CO2 that's created, trucking the recycling, putting it through a MRF, trucking it to a glass reprocessor, and turning it into aggregate. In environmental terms it would actually make more sense to put glass in a landfill site (because it's inert) than put it through a MRF.

The second good thing about the Bywaters MRF is that it can sort mixed plastics. It uses optical lasers to sort plastics out into PET, HDPE and the rest. The first two are sold as a resource. The third type - low grade mixed plastics - is also sold but it needs to go to a specialist plastics reprocessor for further sorting. We don't have any of those in the UK as far as I know.

Tetrapaks are still a headache - both for me and for Bywaters. They extract them by hand, then Tetrapak ship them to Sweden for reprocessing, or rather for burning mostly. The problem here is not Bywaters - it's us and what we're used to. Tetrapaks are part of modern life, part of the packaged up, throwaway culture. Tetrapak will make arguments like "it makes more sense to make a carton than a glass bottle" or "trucking Tetrapaks uses less energy than trucking glass bottles". They reckon they manage to separate some of the elements of the carton and reuse them. Me, I'm not convinced. As far as I can make out most of the carton simply goes into an energy from waste facility (an incinerator) in Sweden.

Camden is moving to a four stream system for recycling by April 2010 which has taken a long time but which I'm basically happy with:
1. Food waste - which will be anaerobically digested to produce biogas and compost;
2. Paper and card - which will be sent direct to a papermaker;
3. Plastics, metal and glass - although we will encourage residents to put their glass in the on-street bottle banks so that it goes straight to a bottlemaker;
4. Residual or black bag waste - but hopefully there won't be any of that!

Copenhagen and Cumbria - not waving but drowning

On the one hand we have 1,000 year floods in Cumbria and on the other the world's politicians failing to reach agreement in Copenhagen on a deal to avert dangerous or runaway climate change. Makes you think doesn't it? Not waving but drowning, I'd say.

Bringing Passivhaus out of the closet

The new Passivhaus home being built by bere:architects in West Hampstead is starting to take shape.
The foundations are now in. The exposed pipes have to be perfectly positioned in order to match up to the wooden shell which is being made in Austria. In the photo below you can see the thickness of the super-insulated walls being made in the Austrian factory.

Passivhaus buildings have been around for more than 20 years on the continent. In Frankfurt all new public buildings have to be Passivhaus. In Belgium all new schools have to be Passivhaus. Over here we have one Passivhaus office/home in Wales and a few more across the UK that are on the verge of certification.

The main constraints in Britain at the moment are: a) the inadequate skills base; b) the lack of suitable building materials; and c) the fact that lifetime energy bills are rarely included in the build cost. Passivhaus buildings are between zero and 7% more expensive than building regulations. However if you add lifetime energy bills to the build cost, or even 20 years of energy bills, then they are cheaper. Unfortunately Britain is a nation of short termists.

But perhaps worse than the short termism is the impression I repeatedly get from talking to planners, developers and civil servants that Passivhaus is seen as not suitable for British climes and frankly a bit German.

Fortunately the Buildings Research Establishment, BRE, who are now able to certify Passivhaus buildings in the UK, has recently published a useful primer explaining the benefits of Passivhaus. It explodes a few Passivhaus urban myths like the idea that you can't open the windows in the summer. It also says: "The fabric performance requirements required for level 6 of the Code [for Sustainable Homes] are based upon the PassivHaus standard. With the exception of flats, it is not generally possible to achieve Code Level 6 without adopting a performance specification [meaning energy efficiency standard] similar to PassivHaus.”

In other words, there is no other way to reach zero carbon homes without using the 20+ years of research work that has gone into the Passivhaus standard.

There is no other serious energy efficiency standard out there so let's stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

How much food can be grown on a balcony?

It’s mid-November and I’m still feeding people off my balconies. Last week I had ten members of the Transition Belsize Energy and Transport group round for dinner and served them salad with fresh peas in it. Yesterday I made pestos from rocket and nasturtiums. At the weekend we had scrambled eggs (not from next door’s hens sadly!) cooked with nettles and fennel. Amazingly there are still a few alpine strawberries and cherry tomatoes on the back balcony.

Of course I can’t produce all the food that our two person household needs. I reckon I’m producing about 5-10%. But 5-10% is already a lot and I get a lot of pleasure out of it. It’s down time for me. In the last year my balconies have produced potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, rocket, broccoli, lettuce, peas, endive (chicory), beetroot, radishes, carrots, nasturtiums, nettles, coriander, rosemary, tarragon, basil, mint, sage, shallot onions, chives and fennel.

"You must have huge balconies" is what most people say when I tell them that. But I don’t. I reckon I have about 8m² including the window sills and the balcony parapets. I’ve used permaculture stacking principles and every scrap of space. It’s amazing what you can do if you design it carefully.

Sadly the blueberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants didn’t fruit this year, and I didn't manage to master the art of growing rhubarb in a pot on a first floor balcony in North London, but hopefully those will all be wins in 2010!

Belsize Green Drinks & Eco Night

Transition Belsize have started a regular Green Drinks on the first Wednesday of the month, and an Eco Film Night on the second Wednesday of the month, upstairs at the Sir Richard Steele’s pub on Haverstock Hill. The first few have been well attended, fun and interesting. The next Eco Film Night will be a screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s eco documentary “The Eleventh Hour” on Wed 11 Dec starting at 7.30pm. There’s more about what Transition Belsize are up to on their website.

Food growing, library hours, Give&Take among options for Belsize LAF vote

The Belsize Local Area Forum will decide what to spend its £10,000 annual budget on at the next meeting which is at Sarum Hall School, 15 Eton Avenue, next Tuesday (17 Nov) starting at 7pm.

The options which came out of the last meeting were as follows:
1) Advice, seeds and tools for people wanting to grow food (on window sills, on balconies, in gardens or on housing estates)
2) Advice, seeds and tools for food growing plus a Belsize website and a printed map of our area
3) Feasibility study for opening Belsize Library more often using volunteers and adding more services eg council info desk, cafe, playgroup etc
4) Refurbishment of an empty shop as a permanent Give&Take staffed with volunteers
5) Donation to local youth work charities the Winchester Project and St Marys Youth Centre

If you can’t go on the night, then please text us your choice to 07786 202 844 starting with the word Belsize, then a space, then your choice and say why (in no more than 160 characters).

At next Tuesday’s meeting all of the opinions received by text will be included in the discussion, followed by a vote on the five ideas. 07786 202 844 is a normal mobile number, so it only costs the same as sending a text to your friend’s phone. You will not be signed up for anything if you do text us!

1,000 homes in and around Belsize to receive energy efficiency help

Great news – Camden Council has won a bid to make Belsize and the surrounding area a Home Energy Efficiency Programme pilot for the whole of London. That means up to 1,000 households will each receive 10 energy and water efficiency measures installed for free. It’s to test out the concept for the whole of London.

Those who have hard-to-heat homes which need solid wall insulation and double glazing will also be signposted towards a new Pay-As-You-Save pilot, which I spent a year arguing for with the government, and which will start at the same time. Basically the PAYS scheme will mean Camden lending money to homeowners who will pay it back out of energy bill savings or when they sell the property.

I think this is great news for Belsize and indeed, if the two pilots are successful, for London and the UK. If you would like a free energy efficiency audit of your home, then please contact the Small Steps team at Camden Council on 0800 801738.

Why I'm not a fan of Amazon

Last week I ordered six books and three DVDs from Amazon in one go. I expressly asked for the purchases to be grouped into one order to save on packaging. So far I have received five packets and a grotesque amount of packaging with one DVD still to come. What was the point of me asking for my purchases to be sent in one order? That sort of thing simply shouldn't be allowed.

George Monbiot is wrong on used cooking oil

George Monbiot is quite right that burning virgin vegetable oil in cars or power stations is crazy, but he’s wrong when he says that used cooking oil is the only sustainable biofuel – at least not for councils who are collecting food waste.

Over the last 18 months Camden Council has been running two of its vehicles on biogas made from rotting food waste. According to research that we commissioned, so long as it’s all burnt (which means keeping engines well-tuned), biomethane from food waste comes top of any list of sustainable fuels. In terms of carbon emissions it’s 80% better than diesel and a bit better than used cooking oil. But where biomethane beats used cooking oil hands down is in terms of air quality. Burning diesel creates tiny soot particles which cause lung diseases, blood-related diseases and even exacerbate conditions like diabetes. Used cooking oil is even worse than diesel in terms of emissions of particulates. Both fuels should be banned in towns and cities because they are sending us to an early grave.

In Camden we are looking to move our entire vehicle fleet to a combination of biomethane from food waste and electricity from renewable sources.

I should add that biomethane is absolutely not a solution for the world’s 800m cars – there isn’t enough of it and hopefully there will be a lot less of it in the future when consumers and supermarkets either learn, or are forced, to stop wasting so much food. But we will always have some food waste and so for councils it makes sense to turn it into a sustainable vehicle fuel that produces no noxious emissions.

Climate change & peak oil – they’re Yin & Yang

We have barely scratched the surface of the psychology of climate change, but before we go too far can I make a plea for it to be studied in tandem with peak oil, which the UK Energy Research Centre recently concluded would be with us before 2020, and which the UK government has not yet woken up to.

Climate change without peak oil is like Punch without Judy, gin without tonic, Rodgers without Hammerstein. Cheap fossil fuels created manmade climate change. Expensive fossil fuels, or learning to live with life after cheap oil , will be a key part of the solution.

Those of us who have been using the language of the apocalypse to explain why action is urgent now find ourselves changing our tune. Sometimes that’s because of the Transition Towns movement and its emphasis on looking forward positively to an age when we have dealt with climate change and learnt to live without cheap oil. Sometimes it’s because we’ve read the market research which says that Britain understands that there’s a problem, but isn’t being motivated to take action because the threat is perceived to be too far off and because of muddled messaging from the government and the media.

A vision of a positive future, where the dragon has been slain and the princess has been won, will work for some. For others the message will need to be about cutting carbon pollution, ending energy waste, saving money and taking control of our lives from energy companies who have us over an oil barrel. And another group will take action if it seems fun and fashionably.

But then there’s the rebound effect. There’s a growing body of research which suggests that when energy efficiency measures are installed the energy bill savings are taken in terms of higher thermostat temperatures or, worse, cheap flights. The Camden Eco House, a refurbished Victorian property, was meant to reduce emissions by 80% but it didn’t because the new occupants, a large family from Camden’s long housing waiting list, pushed the thermostat up to 25°C!

Undoubtedly we can all be clearer about explaining climate change and peak oil, in ways that make people psychologically more likely to take action. But I suspect that for most people behavioural change is likely to come with price rises. Either we wait for peak oil to push the cost of energy up as it inevitably will, or we bring in carbon taxes and hope for the best, or we institute a system of carbon rationing or tradable energy quotas which to my mind is the fairest solution and the only one that will get us where we need to go.

Either way, climate change and peak oil – they’re Yin and Yang!

Greening walls and changing perspectives

Another day, another green wall. This one's in Regent Street. It's what's called a second generation green wall, set slightly away from the wall to provide a layer of insulation/cooling and to make it easier to maintain. It's fed by rainwater not tap water, which is good because London has less available water per person than Sudan, Syria, Istanbul or Jersualem.

I've been trying for more than a year to get Camden's Housing Department to green a housing estate like this, but so far nobody's listening. Or, to put it another way, as Frank Zappa memorably said: "The mind is like a parachute - it doesn't work unless it's open."

Fortunately some students from the Central St Martin's School for Art & Design are doing a project on whether greening housing estates like this can change indicators like anti-social behaviour, fear of crime, and deaths among the elderly from excessive heat or cold. Hopefully their work will help build a consensus for action. If not, then I'm sure I can persuade one of London's greener councils, Islington, Sutton or Richmond, to test the theory out!

Penalise cyclists on pavements yes but for goodness sake make it safer to cycle as well

I completely agree with Cllrs Freeman and Marshall (quoted in last week's Ham&High) that more needs to be done about cycling on pavements. I myself have tried to get the Belsize Police Safer Neighbourhoods Team to issue penalty notices to a man who persistently cycles on the pavement through our area with two large, unleashed, black dogs. He represents a menace to pedestrians and his dogs are terrifying for parents with young children.

However, I do think that equivalent attention needs to be given to the safety and health of cyclists who brave our roads. Bike boxes (advanced stop boxes) at traffic lights are a joke – they are used as much by motorbikes and cars as they are by cyclists. When will the police start issuing tickets to motorists who enter the bike boxes?

And, as I keep pointing out, pretty pictures of bicycles painted on roads don’t make them safe for cyclists.

But most of all I’d like to see trucks removed from our residential roads. These are the biggest killers of cyclists in London – responsible for more than two thirds of cyclist deaths.

Trucks are also the heaviest polluters because they use so much diesel, which is 5% better than petrol in terms of carbon, but SEVENTEEN times worse in terms of air quality. According to Prof Frank Kelly of Kings College London, living in this city is equivalent to a lifetime of heavy smoking.

The latest evidence is that it doesn’t just lead to lung diseases like asthma - diesel soot particles are so minute that they get into our bloodstream and cause heart diseases. And for those with diabetes pollution seems to worsen their ailment.

So yes, we should penalise the few who cycle on pavements, but we should also look at the bigger picture and make our streets safer for cyclists and the air cleaner for us all.

Greening the Town Hall roof

Here's a good story I forgot to tell. This summer we put a green roof on Camden Town Hall. I believe it's the first to go on a listed town hall in this country - narrowly before the one that's due to go on Islington Town Hall! The green roof was suggested by Cllr Rebecca Hossack, a Conservative who I had great hopes for as a fellow eco warrior until she flew to the US to run the New York Marathon to raise money for...planting trees over here!

Still, the green roof on the Town Hall idea was a good idea so all credit to her for that. It's one of two things the Task Force has spent its tiny one-off £25k budget on. The other was a pilot with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) aimed at getting our suppliers to disclose their carbon emissions and publish their strategy for reducing them. That's now become CDP Public Sector and apparently all UK and US government departments have signed up to the process which is awesome. And it all started with a tiny little pilot in Camden!

Anyway back to the green roof on Camden Town Hall. It's not the sort of installation we'd require on new buildings because the Town Hall roof is not strong enough for what's called an extensive green roof. That means a good depth of soil to soak up and retain rain water rather than allowing it to drain away and potentially contribute to flash floods. An extensive green roof also keeps the building's occupants warm in winter and cool in summer, and is good for biodiversity.
Our green roof is little more than a blanket as you can see from the photos but it's better than nothing. We'll be allowing public access in due course and I'm hoping to get bee hives put in up there as well so watch this space.

Overthrowing the car and lycra-clad cyclists

"We must overthrow the cult of the car and the Lycra-clad vanguard of aggressive men, if more of us are to take to our bikes." Not my words, those of Times columnist, Janice Turner, but I couldn't agree more.

"Only when the fear is gone will big jessies stop riding on pavements, maniacs stop charging red lights, the streets be reclaimed from cars, and cycling from angry men with tiny bums." Read more here.

Peak Oil before 2020 says UK thinktank

There is a "significant risk" that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are "at best optimistic and at worst implausible".

So says a major new report that puts the excitement over recent ‘giant’ oil discoveries into perspective and directly contradicts the British government’s position. It also warns that failure to recognise the threat of peak oil could undermine efforts to combat climate change.

The report, entitled 'Global Oil Depletion: An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production', comes from the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent group funded by the Research Councils, whose mission is to resolve contentious technical issues and deliver clear guidance for policymakers.

If you don't have time to read the full report, then read the synopsiss by David Strahan, author of "The Last Oil Shock", on The Ecologist website here.

If it's yellow, don't let it mellow!

Here's another favourite of mine - the waterless urinal. Instead of having a trap underneath where urine collects and smells unless it's flushed away regularly, with these there's no trap - the urine just flows straight out of the building to the sewer. No trap, no smell, no need for flushing water. All that's needed is a bit of a wipe down now and again! Brilliant.

Carrying your garden on your back!

People often tell me they don't cycle in London because it's not safe and I completely agree with that. But sometimes they tell me they don't cycle because they have too much to carry around. Having seen this gardener's bike parked in my street the other day I simply can't agree with that! Where there's a will, there's a way, I say!!!

Lib Dem MP attacks govt for blocking 10:10 motion

"I have just come back to my office after voting for the Government to sign up to the 10:10 campaign.The motion, put forward by the Liberal Democrats, required the Government to commit to making sure all public bodies reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% by 2010.

"I voted for the motion, but sadly the Labour Government marched its backbenchers through the voting lobbies to defeat it. I am very frustrated that the Government are not willing to provide leadership in this area in the run up to the Copenhagen conference. However, I want to assure you that I will keep fighting on this issue.

"Climate change is something anyone who is committed to social justice should feel passionately about. If we don’t take action now it will have a devastating impact on the poorest people in the world and the consequences are terrifying.

"MPs need to hear from the public on this issue. Let’s keep campaigning to make sure that eventually the Government listen.

"Best wishes, Sarah

"Sarah Teather MP, Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East, Shadow Minister for Housing

"PS. I have also personally signed up to the 10:10 campaign, and hope if you haven’t already done so, that you will think about doing the same."

Labour government blocks 1010 motion

The Labour government tonight blocked a Lib Dem sponsored motion calling on Parliament, government departments and the public sector to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in 2010.

The vote was supported by the Conservatives but was defeated by the government who had a majority of 79. Instead they voted through an amendment supporting the aims and ambitions of the 10:10 Campaign but sidestepping the question of whether the UK public sector should have to reduce emissions by 10%.

Here's the Labour amendment:

"This House welcomes the 10:10 campaign as a motivator of public action to cut carbon emissions through individual and collective behaviour change, recognises the value of such campaigns to build public support for action by governments to agree an ambitious effective and fair deal at Copenhagen, recognises the significant effort made by individuals and organisations to cut their emissions through the 10:10 campaign, supports the world first Climate Change Act introduced by this government and the system of carbon budgets that enables Britain to set itself on a low carbon pathway, notes that carbon budgets ensure active policies by Whitehall departments and the public sector that deliver long term sustained emissions reductions not just in 2010 but through to 2022 and beyond, supports the efforts of local councils to move towards local carbon budgets by signing up to the 10:10 campaign, welcomes the allocation of up to £20m for central government departments to enable them to reduce further and faster carbon emissions from their operations, estate and transport and further welcomes the cross-cutting Public Value Programme review of the low carbon potential of the public sector, which will focus on how the sector can achieve transformational financial savings through value for money carbon reductions"

They missed a real opportunity to show leadership in my opinion.

Fifty-six councils, with a responsibility for providing services to more than 10m people, have so far signed up or committed publicly to 10:10.

In his speech in today's debate the Conservative shadow energy and climate change minister, Greg Barker MP, said that he would be encouraging Tory councils to sign up to 10:10. That sounds like good news. At the moment only 12 out of 209 Tory councils (more than half of all local authorities in the UK) have signed up or committed publicly to 10:10.

An open letter to Glenda Jackson MP about 10:10

Dear Glenda Jackson MP,

I do hope you’ll feel able to vote for the 10:10 motion in Parliament this Wednesday. The motion calls on Parliament, government departments and the public sector to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in 2010, compared to 2009 levels.

As you will know Gordon Brown, the Cabinet and the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinets have already signed up, as have many hospitals, schools and councils. It would be fantastic if you, an MP in the borough where the 10:10 Campaign was born, could send out a clear message of support on Wednesday.

10:10 is about cutting carbon pollution, ending energy waste, saving money and taking control of our lives from energy companies who have us over an oil barrel. It’s also about giving the British government the support they need going into the UN negotiations in Copenhagen to make the case for the sort of dramatic slashing of emissions that scientists say we need to avoid runaway climate change. The more of Britain that signs up to 10:10 the easier it will be for the UK government to argue that all nations should make deep cuts in carbon pollution.

10:10 is simple, it’s direct, it’s now. We need everyone on board. Please help us.

Rgds, Alexis

Cllr Alexis Rowell Coordinator, 10:10 Councils
& Chair, Camden Council all-party Sustainability Task Force
www.1010uk.org

"Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds, sometimes only a little bit.” Willis Harman, social scientist, academic and visionary.

Central heating now, energy efficient homes later

A few weeks ago I was asked to take part in a radio programme about whether it was time to turn the central heating on. It was a relatively humorous affair with me relating how it was a “hot” issue in our household because I had been encouraging my other half to pile on the pullovers and run up and down the stairs once an hour!

Well I can now announce that on Sunday 17th October at 11am I admitted defeat and turned on three radiators to take the chill off autumn. Later that day a friend and neighbour, who’s just had his house refurbished and insulated, told me they hadn’t turned the heating on yet – they haven’t needed to.

So here’s our problem. We rent our lovely but draughty flat and although we have a very good relationship with our landlords they have absolutely no interest in spending the money to insulate it properly. In the end we agreed to share the cost for one particularly leaky set of French windows in our kitchen and now, for the second winter running, I will literally put sticking plaster (masking tape) around the other windows and then cover them with cling film to keep our energy consumption down and our flat warm.

I’ve spent the last 18 months talking to the government about this problem. Two-thirds of Camden’s homes are pre-war solid wall properties like ours. Installing solid wall insulation and good quality replica Victorian or Georgian double glazing will be expensive. Camden Council has committed to insulating every cavity wall and roof in the borough for free, but we don’t have the money to do the solid walls and double glazing.

For once the government has listened and has just announced a pilot scheme allowing local authorities to make interest-free loans to residents for solid wall insulation and double gazing. Residents would then pay the money back through energy bill savings. That would mean landlords like ours could sign up for insulation without having to pay because we, the tenants, would pay gradually over time. Equally homeowners who don’t have spare savings could borrow the money and pay it back when their energy bills go down or when they sell the property. Now that’s what I call a win-win-win – a win for residents, a win for property owners and a win in the battle against climate change.

Buying time for the bees

When bees leave their hives en masse and disappear, when predators like wasps steer clear of the abandoned hives, then something is very wrong. But what? A crisis known as Colony Collapse Disorder has affected beekeepers around the globe, with some reporting losses of more than 90 percent of their colonies. And there are no dead bees to be found. Bees are disappearing all over the planet and no one knows why.

For the past five million years, the bee has been a creature of special sanctity, representing many things such as the human soul, industry, cooperation and the sacred feminine. Our relationship with bees also denotes the most ancient form of agriculture. Pre-historic petroglyphs depict women on honey hunts and Ancient Egyptian farmers floated beehives on rafts down the Nile to pollinate their crops.

And yet today, we live in a state of cognitive disconnect, where reality doesn’t link up with what we think we know. The average consumer has little understanding of where food comes from and no idea that bees are a crucial link in the food chain. Many think food comes shrink-wrapped in plastic from a supermarket and that the bees are merely stinging insects that make honey, when in fact they are responsible for pollinating one third of the food we eat, including most of the fruit, vegetables and nuts.

So why are the bees dying and what can we do to reverse this alarming trend? Are industrial farming practices, chemical pesticides, too few pollen-rich flowers, new diseases or all of the above to blame? Nobody quite knows, but what’s clear is that if we don’t do something about it soon, then the human food chain will be in trouble.

Cities appear to be bucking the trend and providing what may be a final sanctuary for bees. While scientists and beekeepers struggle to solve the problem in the countryside we may be charged with keeping bees alive. That’s why we need to install as many beehives as possible in London. Putting them on the new green roof of Camden Town Hall would be a great start.

The Everyman Belsize Park and Transition Belsize are screening the new film “Vanishing of the Bees” on Sunday 29th November at 3pm followed by discussion with the film makers and local beekeepers.

Making the streets safer for pedestrians & cyclists

Farokh Khorooshi, the chair of the Fitzjohns Residents Association, deserves a medal for the work he does to improve quality of life for Hampstead residents. Two years ago I chaired a group of residents, councillors, parents and cyclists whose aim was to make Fitzjohns Avenue and the surrounding area greener, safer and less congested. Some of the things we proposed are now coming to pass - for example, a 20mph limit policed by average speed cameras and a school bus system.

Mr Khorooshi (seen above picking with his first grape crop!) was part of the Fitzjohns "blue skies" group and he more than anyone deserves credit for ceaselessly pushing for action on the things we suggested. Turning Hampstead Village into a shared space environment where the pedestrian is prioritised - a central plank of Mr Khorooshi's Hampstead2020 concept - was one such idea. Introducing an electric car train to move people around the Hampstead area was another.

The one thing we did not get was properly separated cycle lanes. I don't believe we can expect to see more people cycling (and especially not parents) unless we make it safer to do so. Painting a picture of a bicycle on the road does not, we think, make it safe to cycle.

Transition Belsize is aiming to map the NW3 area in terms of separated bicycle lanes we would like to see, particularly on key school commuting routes. When we have a draft plan we will take it to schools, parents and residents to seek their backing. We will then be pushing for the next Camden Council administration to put in properly separated cycle lanes and clamp down on irresponsible driving behaviour by truck drivers who are responsible for the majority of cyclist deaths in London.

This administration has put in bike stands all over the borough which is good. But I hope the next administration, which will be formed in May 2010, will actually make it safer to cycle.

Closing down coal

Great news that E.ON have cancelled plans to build a new coal-fired power station in Kent. Now let's hear the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband say that no new coal-fired capacity will be allowed unless power stations are fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, and that if CCS cannot be made to work, then they will be closed.

So far there have been a few small-scale CCS experiments around the world, but nothing to say that it is a viable industrial solution. The really sensible thing to do would be to test the technology on our existing gas-fired power stations. In the mean time the government would do better to concentrate on cutting demand, increasing energy efficiency and boosting renewables rather than pin its hopes on "clean coal".

Zero waste Camden

Reading the CNJ letters page last week I might be forgiven for thinking I actually control recycling policy at Camden Council! I don’t – more’s the pity - the Tory Executive Member for the “Environment”, Cllr Chris Knight, does. My role, as Camden Eco Champion, is to suggest ways to cut the carbon out of Camden and to highlight the environmental mistakes the council is making.

Eamon O’Sullivan writes in to say that he only recycles paper and glass because he doesn’t trust the end destination of our recycling. I know how he feels having spent the last four years trying to persuade those in power to turn our recycling system into something that actually benefits the planet rather than the other way round.

Over the next six months the council will be rolling out food waste collections to the whole borough. And starting in April paper and card will be collected separately from the rest of the recycling so that it can be sent to a British paper maker. If you want to do the best possible thing for the environment, then please make sure you put your glass in the on-street bottle banks as this goes direct to a British bottle maker.

Robin Mackay Miller expresses concern that Camden may be considering fining householders for not recycling properly, but I can reassure him that Camden has absolutely no plans to follow Conservative Barnet down the route of penalising those who don’t recycle. In my opinion the key is to make it easier for people to recycle not more unpleasant for those who don’t. I also think we have a lot to do to make our on-street recycling centres more attractive. If you make them look like rubbish bins – which ours do – then people will treat them like rubbish bins.

Making it easier for people to recycle involves a certain amount of research into what they are and are not recycling. Adam Leys questions whether council officers have the right to look through his kerbside box but remember that when your recycling is removed it gets crushed up in the back of a truck which makes it hard to analyse later. This is absolutely not about snooping on individuals - it’s about understanding what people are recycling and what they’re not so that information given out by the council about recycling can be fine tuned.

1st October 2009 was a huge day in our household because the council started collecting all types of mixed plastics not just plastic bottles. As a result there’s almost nothing that we can’t recycle. Our food waste goes into our wormery to be converted to compost. Our paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and metal go to on-street recycling centre near our house.

By next April I hope that all residents will be able to recycle almost all of their waste. Zero Waste Camden – I like the sound of that!

Belsize Green Fair is a great success

When we lost control of a trolley loaded with turf at 8am on Haverstock Hill on Saturday morning, and it hit the side door of a taxi, the omens didn't look good! We'd bought public liability insurance the day before so it wasn't a huge problem, but it didn't feel like a great start. However I was wrong to worry because the Belsize Green Fair was a huge, huge success.

Hundreds and hundreds of people enjoyed the educational, informational, ecological and action- oriented stalls on offer. We had beekeeping, farmyard animals, foraging, story telling, face painting, composting, natural herbal remedies, climate change games, clothes making, a 5k Fun Run, a Give&Take, bike repairs, local food, a quirky vegetable competition, a pizza oven made out of mud and straw (cob - see photo above) and loads more besides.

At the last minute I decided to enter the Fun Run - which just goes to show how relaxing the day was for me. Sadly I didn't make it on to the podium - except in my capacity as the person handing out the prizes. But I did sort of win the quirky vegetable competition - in a very quirky way.

The winning entry was a Jerusalem artichoke that looked just like a mouse with a long tail. It was a grown by a friend of mine from a seedling I gave him which came from a seed artichoke given to me by my colleague Cllr Arthur Graves!

So all in all a great day. Add to that the 400 or so people who went to eco films during the week and I'm hugely happy. Now all we have to do is get on with it and make our homes energy efficient, collect all the rainwater we can and grow our own food!

Politicians should practice what they preach!

I’m delighted that the Ham&High has seen fit to draw attention to the gap between politicians’ words and their actions on climate change. It seems to me that this is a key issue facing all elected politicians. If we are to rebuild trust with our electorates, then we have to mean what we say and we have to follow through in our own lives. If not, we are hypocrites and the public will rightly see through our fine words.

I don’t see how we can ask the public to change their lifestyles – to drive less, to fly less, to eat less meat, to campaign for action on climate change – if politicians don’t walk the walk. I was delighted to see Camden’s councillors unanimously backing the 10:10 motion at full council earlier this month, and committing the Council to cut its emissions by 10% in 2010, which is what scientists say we need to do to avoid runaway climate change. But, and it’s a big but, I think it’s really important that the lifestyles of elected representatives reflect their public rhetoric.

For example, the Tory parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Chris Philp, has a Range Rover (for climbing all those steep hills in Hampstead) and a Porsche (for speeding round our 20mph zones).

In the words of Bertrand Russell: “We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and another which we practice but seldom preach.” My fear about the Conservative Party of David Cameron is, to paraphrase Otto von Bismarck: “When they say they agree with a thing in principle they mean they have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.”