Keepfaking.it’s good friend Wouter asked us today for a few blogs and websites he might be interested in as part of some digital research he is engaged in. Far be it for us to get in the way of academic pursuit, and may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb as they say. Here’s a dump of relevant sections from our Google Reader account. Excuse errors and omissions. There are tons of stuff missing but seriously, don’t sweat it, if your website is absent it probably means we check it the old fashioned way. Anyways, who reads RSS anymore.

Stuff That Matters — General News

• [RSS] A Smarter Planet
• [RSS] BBC NEWS | Richard Black’s blog
• [RSS] CleanSkies.com – The Energy and Environment Network
• [RSS] Demos Greenhouse
• [RSS] Dot Earth
• [RSS] Earth2Tech
• [RSS] environmentalresearchweb: all content
• [RSS] Future:Media:Change
• [RSS] Greener Design
• [RSS] Grist Magazine
• [RSS] guardian.co.uk Environment: Environment blog
• [RSS] SmartPlanet News
• [RSS] The Oil Drum – Discussions about Energy and Our Future
• [RSS] The Yale Forum on Climate Change and The Media
• [RSS] TheEnergyCollective
• [RSS] WSJ.com: Environmental Capital – WSJ.com

Stuff That Matters — Green Blogs + Opinion

• [RSS] AMEE – The world’s energy meter
• [RSS] Arts and Ecology
• [RSS] Casaubon’s Book
• [RSS] children of the end of History, and other tales
• [RSS] CleanTechnica
• [RSS] Crane and Matten blog
• [RSS] e-IR
• [RSS] CarbonOutreach
• [RSS] EcoGeek.org
• [RSS] EcoLabs
• [RSS] Ecology without Nature
• [RSS] Forum For The Future & Green Futures
• [RSS] Greenbang
• [RSS] Greenmonk: the blog
• [RSS] INHABITAT
• [RSS] It’s Getting Hot In Here
• [RSS] Kate’s Comment
• [RSS] Know Your Place
• [RSS] Mark Lynas
• [RSS] Monbiot.com
• [RSS] ParkHowell.com
• [RSS] Post Carbon Institute Publications
• [RSS] RealClimate
• [RSS] ReGeneration
• [RSS] SANDBAG blogs
• [RSS] Stoat
• [RSS] Sustainablog
• [RSS] The Climate Group
• [RSS] The End of Something..
• [RSS] The Lazy Environmentalist
• [RSS] Transformational Logistics
• [RSS] TreeHugger
• [RSS] Watts Up With That?
• [RSS] Worldchanging: Bright Green

Stuff That Matters — Activism|Climate Change

• [RSS] 350 Updates
• [RSS] Blog Entries
• [RSS] Climate Change Action
• [RSS] Climate Progress
• [RSS] DeSmogBlog – Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science
• [RSS] Greenpeace UK
• [RSS] Jamie Andrews
• [RSS] Jamie Potter
• [RSS] Leo’s blog
• [RSS] Low Carbon Communities
• [RSS] Lower (Carbon) Footprint
• [RSS] News
• [RSS] Stop Heathrow Expansion
• [RSS] The Pew Charitable Trusts – Newsroom
• [RSS] UK Youth Delegation

Stuff That Matters — Env Orgs + Corps

• [RSS] Social Innovation Camp
• [RSS] The Carbon Trust – Press Releases

Stuff That Matters — Social | Activism

• [RSS] Change.org’s Blog Network
• [RSS] http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheIdler
• [RSS] Next Left
• [RSS] Open Source Giving
• [RSS] Rewired State
• [RSS] Socialreporter
• [RSS] Welcome to the Fabian Society – Fabian Society – the UK’s oldest think-tank

Stuff That Matters — COP 15

• [RSS] Art Threat
• [RSS] cop15.dk News
• [RSS] Everyones Blog Posts – Arts for COP15
• [RSS] Latest Activity on Arts for COP15
• [RSS] Road To Copenhagen 2009 | News
• [RSS] TckTckTck

One of the strands of thought coming from Copenhagen lays the blame of a lack of fair and binding deal at the feet of the internal US political system, namely the US Senate.

This has brought keepfakingit right back to March and a speech we saw one of our academic heroes, Larry Lessig, deliver to the SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas. Lessig, who has worked for a decade on copyright law in the US, speaks of classic tobacco science as it now applies to climate change and in particular the health industries in the US. His thesis is that money poisons trust. But that the cesspool of corruption is not the same as it ever was. The dynamics of money and access have changed dramatically in the past 15 years.

He believes legislators’ integrity is actually higher today than any time in the Senate’s history. The corruption he speaks of is a ‘good souls’ corruption that has come from systemic faults . Senators are spending 30-70% of their time on raising money for their own, or their party’s re-election. And this opens up the cracks for the lobby industry.

Some stats. Since Bill Clinton left office the number of lobbyists has doubled and their daily rate has doubled. Using the laws of simple economics, Lessig notes that if the number and value of lobbyists is rising, they must be becoming more effective. He also notes how nobody, on the right or the left, has any interest in changing this system.

Whether you want to blame the EU, China, Obama or indeed the Senate on the failure of Copenhagen, Lessig’s points here are eminently valid. To keepfakingit’s mind this is the biggest, most important political issue in the US today. Lessig does a simple cost benefit analysis on the lobbying industry and the cost here is trust. Ultimately Lessig calls for a ‘Declaration for Independence’. How? Through citizens funding.

Pascal’s Wager is ofter referred to by climate change activists; if we’re right we save the planet, if we’re wrong, we change society for the good anyway, win-win. The situation is exactly the same in the US Senate. To take on big coal, big oil and all the other big lobby groups funding tobacco science we need institutional change. And if we get it there are a lot more benefits, for both the right and left of the political spectrum, than simply a chance to ‘meaningfully’ tackle climate change.

I can’t find a video but here’s some audio that turned up on mediatedhumanities.org.

If you have 45 minutes at all this Christmas, listen to this.

Here’s the audio of the Q&A:

There’s more info on Lessig’s campaign at http://change-congress.org.

This is one of the best interviews Franny did all week. We grabed Mark Lynas as he was leaving at a huge all night session. And Tony Juniper is in there too with his analysis of a long and depressing COP15.

Too busy working on the #stupidshow today to post any reaction or analysis on this morning’s non-agreement.

Here’s a screenshot that sums up some of the issues we’re facing as a society, and one of the many reasons COP15 has been so spectacularly unsuccessful at putting a binding agreement on the table.

BTW, tonight’s StupidShow has some great analysis from Ed Miliband, Prez Nasheed, Vicky Pope, Tony Juniper and Mark Lynas, who hadn’t slept in three days, and spent most of the night in the war room with Obama, Brown, Merkel and 20-something other world leaders.

‘Don’t buy clothes for six months. Then you can buy some of mine.’

It’s always refreshing, but all too rare to hear an A-List fashion icon say something sensible, and be anyway self aware, but Vivienne manages to just about pull it off. Brilliant.

That’s not quite true, but never letting fact get in the way of alliteration is one of keepfakingit’s most closely held maxims. The artists of course were two of the Stupid Show’s guests this evening. Thom Yorke and Vivienne Westwood. While neither have the capacity to gets us the FAB (fair, ambitious and binding y’all) treaty we need, we think both represented to the max.

We’ll have some YouTube here just as soon as its ready.

In other news from around the town, here’s Hillary Clinton’s speech from earlier.

Whatever.

Keepfakingit’s good friend @jamieandrews had this to say, hard to disagree.

Two other issues. First off, it looks like we’re making some progress on REDD. The forestry expert, Stupid Show pundit and 100% hero that is Danilo Mollicone looked like a pretty happy man this evening. If all goes well he believes he has a $25bn per annum commitment on the table. You go D! Of course that’s contingent on the larger scale deal getting done.

Unfortunately that’s about it on the good news stakes. We’re down to only 300 civil society representatives left in the Bella Center meaning NGOs and CSOs are now all but totally locked out. We had a leaked UNFCCC doc that probably wasn’t as big news as the bloggosphere thought it was. It simply stated that if we go ahead and sign what Annex 1 wants us to, we’re looking at 550ppm carbon dioxide and 3 degree warming by 2100. But you know what, we already knew that.

No, the real issue here is that with just over 24 hours to go, this is where we’re at yo.
On the show tomorrow we’re going to have a couple of pieces on the inequality that’s been on display the last fortnight. Despite the optimism and hope shown by our guy Thom earlier, keepfakingit would contend that this conference of the parties is over, and we’re going home. However, once we get over ourselves, we absolutely need to examine, from a science, activist and civil society perspective, how we step up to the plate in the next 6 months. It’s damage limitation time. It looks like we’ve lost a battle here. And while we can blame our politicians and accuse them of not being leaders, you know what, one gets the feeling more people give a shit about Tiger Woods. Let’s think about that one over the next 24. It’s going to be a late night tomorrow so we’re getting some rest. And maybe a drink.

Just in from cycling, metro-ing and running around Copenhagen with the #stupidshow team (BTW we have Vivienne Westwood and George Monbiot on the show tonight, 8pm CET). We took in most of the march, until it got to Bella, and I’ll post some photos here. It was just kicking off when keepfakingit had to move so not much to report. We did see a very professional ‘snatch’ of an activist from the middle of the crowd by some local police. But other than that not much had happened up until we had to leave to get footage back to the the studio.

Lots going on now though, both inside and out. The NGO access issue has truly fallen apart. We received a mail from Nick Berning of FOE US in the last hour. It’s published in full below and is quite upsetting.

We’ve also this morning seen the mass walkout by the people’s assembly. This was the first big non-sanctioned action of the COPinside the Bella Centre and timed to coincide with the action out side the conference centre. It illustrates the total frustration being felt by those on the insiders right now.

Just in case keepfakingit’s mother is reading this we won’t say that Canada are still acting like total fucking c***s. But they are. Seriously Canada, you have elected some bad people, and have not elected some even worse oil lobbyists. Sort your shit out.

Targets and financing are still the big two issues. But they always have been, so that’s telling you nothing at all. There are some sideshows going on that have produced some interesting initiatives, the sub-national governmental meetings, The E20, the Billion Trees campaign. But these mean absolutely compared with what’s on the table downtown at the Bella Centre.

Finally, if there are signs in the mainstream media that this thing can be pulled out of the fire at the last minute, don’t believe a word of it. This isn’t the World Cup final. There’s not going to be a last minute goal. Our reading of the situation right now is that as the prime ministers and presidents get into town tomorrow and Friday the priority for delegates, or certainly those from the developed world, is posturing.

***** UPDATE 15:20 from Steve Kretzman, Executive Director, Oil Change International at the TckTckTck FreshAir Bloggers Center in Copenhagen

• No real emissions targets being talked about inside centre.
• The Danish PM parachuted in new text today. All developing world nations inc. China are majorly pissed off. Including people who worked until 5am this morning.
• They’re feeling their work is useless and voices simply aren’t being heard.
• G20 agreed they’d phase out fossil fuel subsidies (a good thing).
• About 100 countries coming together around the 1.5 degrees (AOSIS & other small nations but good nevertheless).

Okay, here’s that FOE mail

We’ve been sitting here for two hours now, about 50 Friends of the Earth representatives, all with accreditation and secondary badges, who have been refused admission to the conference. We are sitting in the registration area, between the registration/credentials desks and the photo desks.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer came out and spoke to us awhile ago and said he wanted to resolve the situation. A few of our representatives have gone to talk to UN officials while we sit here, but our lack of access remains unresolved.

Initially there were a lot of reporters, but the UN has now cordoned us off and closed access to media.

The UN still has yet to give us a coherent reason for our having been denied access. We have been given different explanations by different officials: (1) we are a security threat or (2) there was no more room inside. It’s hard to see how the “no room” explanation makes sense, as they continued to allow other NGO observers to enter even as we were denied access. And as for the security threat, we’re a bunch of policy wonks and youth activists who have been participating in the negotiations every day for two weeks.

We’ve had both a member of the Norweigan and a member of the Canadian parliament come speak to us to lend us their support while we’ve been sitting here

One of the key roles Friends of the Earth has played at the conference has been to advocate for climate justice and the interests of the poor countries that have done the least to cause the climate crisis but will feel some of its strongest impacts. Negotiators from those countries are tremendously under-resourced here. For example, I’ve worked with negotiators who have no media officers (I do media work) to help them communicate their position. They are totally outgunned by the massive delegations of the rich countries, and now thanks to the UN’s decision to exclude us, they will have even less support inside the Bella Center to fight for a fair agreement. It’s really shameful.

Also –

Re the entry way more generally: appears that access to the conference has been almost completely shut down. We have a very clear view of the front doors and the security area, and people come through only very sporadically.’

Best,

Nick Berning
Friends of the Earth U.S.

Our French here at keepfakingit isn’t nuanced enough to give you a full word for word translation of the end of his Klimaforum speech. But we don’t think it’s needed. José Bové (MEP!) clearly leaves nothing on the table during a typically fiery delivery. And we have no doubts he had a tractor load of cow shit in the green room just in case he needed to illustrate his point a little further.

After arguements over the text of any potential agreement itself, physical access to the Bella Centre is becoming a key issue on the ground here in Copenhagen. As they say, if you’re not in, you can’t win. And it’s not the big guns who aren’t in, it’s you and me, civil society. More to the point, the NGOs whom the UN have deigned to represent us.

At this point you may be saying to yourself, ‘ah, but why do all these civil society orgs need to be there anyway, just let the political delegates get on with it.’ The answer to that is enshrined in the text of the Rio Declaration. Go check Principle 10:

Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings,
including redress and remedy, shall be provided.

The role civil society has to play here is immense. And we’re being cynically and structurally locked out. Yvo de Boer has today taken responsibility here (trying to track down reference), but that’s not a lot of good to the scores of people who have traveled around the world to take part in proceedings.

Here’s a YouTube clip of yesterday’s queue. It took four minutes to shoot, walking the full length of the queue. We had members of the Stupid Show team wait seven hours in temperatures that fell to zero degrees.

The most galling part of this situation is that it’s going to get worse as the week progresses.

Here’s an overview from @ApolloGonzales:

1) Number of passes
- Tuesday and Wednesday 7000 observers will be allowed in the building as per the current allocation of secondary passes
- On Thursday the allocation will be reduced to 1000 observers only.
It is not yet decided whether this will be done on a tertiary pass system, or by stopping anyone else coming in once 1/7 of any
organizational accreditation has been reached
- On Friday the allocation will be 90 in total

2) Access to the plenary room
- On Tuesday 450 people will be allowed access to the plenary room
- On Wednesday and Thursday it will be 300
- On Friday it will be the 90 accredited people The allocations will be decided by the constituency focal points. [keepfakingit: 90 people! This is going beyond a joke]

3) Booths
At some point all booths in the NGO area will have to come down. It is not yet decided when that will be but likely Wednesday or Thursday [keepfakingit: What the fuck!!! The UNFCCC has had years to plan this. How can they not have this figured out yet]

4) Other space
- The secretariat is speaking to Danish Radio which has big offices nearby the Bella Centre about possible use of their space to transmit what is happening in the meetings

Here’s the state of play after yesterday’s sessions in the Bella Centre.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Photo (cc) Matthew McDermott

Keepfaking it just about caught the end of the 350 / Bill McKibben / Mohamed Nasheed rally at Klimaforum last night. Wow. Nasheed is now being talked of as a true rock star of the green movement and it’s easy to see why. He has a personal political biography that’s straight out of a Disney movie, he knows how to work a crowd and he’s got some great speech writers on his team. Big thanks to 350 from where I’ve lifted the transcript below. It’s worth noting the relative simplicity of the language, yet the complexity of the issues Nasheed is clearly not afraid to confront head on.  Any why should he be, along with Tuvalu and Bangladesh, the Maldives are first under the climate change bus.

Keepfakingit is always a little weary of the reductionism that leads us to turn numbers such as 350ppm and two degrees into sacrosanct targets. The reality is that the societal change we need is way beyond digestible pseudo-scientific soundbites. But in the hands of a leader like Nasheed maybe these numbers work. If they are used to construct a larger, more inclusive framework. More on this thought a little later in the week.

Mr McKibben, fellow environmentalists, ladies and gentlemen,

Four years ago myself, and many fellow activists, sat in solitary confinement in Maldivian prison cells. We sat in those jail cells not because we had committed any wrong. We sat in those cells because we had deliberately broken the unjust laws of dictatorship. We had spoken out for a cause in which we believed. That cause was freedom and democracy.
There were times, sitting in that prison, when I felt more alone than you can imagine. There were times when I started to believe the doubters, who said the Maldives would never become free.  Sometimes it felt like the doubters were right. The dictatorship had the guns, bombs and tanks. We had no weapons other than the power of our words, and the moral clarity of our cause. Many democracy activists like us had vanished, forgotten by history, their struggle a failure.
But, in spite of the odds, we refused to give up hope.We refused to listen to the voices of doubt and discouragement. We refused to be swayed by those who could not see that change was on the way. And we were right to stand up for what we believed.
We won our battle for democracy in the Maldives.  I stand before you today as the first democratically elected President in the history of my country.
The path to democracy in the Maldives was not straight-forward. It was bumpy and full of turns. But we were determined that no matter how difficult the terrain, we would reach the end of the road. And we succeeded in our cause.
Four years later and a continent away, we meet here to confront another seemingly impossible task. We are here to save our planet from the silent, patient and invisible enemy that is climate change.
And just as there were doubters in the Maldives, so there are doubters in Copenhagen. There are those who tell us that solving climate change is impossible. There are those who tell us taking radical action is too difficult. There are those who tell us to give up hope.
Well, I am here to tell you that we refuse to give up hope. We refuse to be quiet.We refuse to believe that a better world isn’t possible.
I have three words to say to the doubters and deniers. Three words with which to win this battle. Just three words are all I need. You may already have heard them. Three – Five – Oh. Three – Five – Oh.
Three – Five – Oh, saves the coral reefs. Three – Five – Oh, keeps the Arctic frozen. Three – Five – Oh, ensures my country survives. Three – Five – Oh, makes a better world possible.
I am here to tell you that down the road in the Bella Center the Maldives team is fighting to keep Three – Five – Oh in the negotiating text.
They need all the help they can get from you. Please keep supporting them.

And the good news is that we are now part of a growing bloc of nations, all committed to keeping Three – Five – Oh as the central guiding goal of our global survival plan.
These nations need your help and support too.

I am not a scientist, but I know that one of the laws of physics, is that you cannot negotiate with the laws of physics. Three – Five – Oh is a law of atmospheric physics. You cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature. And we don’t intend to try.
This is why, in March, the Maldives announced plans to become the first carbon neutral country in the world. We intend to become carbon neutral in ten years. We will switch from oil to 100% renewable energy. And we will offset aviation pollution, until a way can be found to decarbonise air transport too.

For us, going carbon neutral is not just the right thing to do. We believe it is also in our economic self-interest. Countries that have the foresight to green their economies today, will be the winners of tomorrow. These pioneering countries will free themselves from the unpredictable price of foreign oil. They will capitalize on the new, green economy of the future. And they will enhance their moral standing, giving them greater political influence on the world stage. In the Maldives, we have relinquished our claim to high-carbon growth.

After all, it is not carbon we want, but development. It is not coal we want, but electricity. It is not oil we want, but transport. Low-carbon technologies now exist, to deliver all the goods and services we need. Let us make the goal of using them.

Let us make the goal of reaching that all-important number: three – five – oh.
We believe that if the Maldives can become carbon neutral; richer, larger countries can follow. But if there is one thing I know about politicians, it’s that they won’t act until their electorates act first. This is where you come in.
History shows us the power of peaceful protest. From the civil rights movement, to Gandhi’s Quit India campaign; non-violent protest can create change. Protest worked in the struggle for democracy in the Maldives. And on 24 October, we saw how protests across the world put Three – Five – Oh firmly on the Copenhagen agenda.
My message to you is to continue the protests. Continue after Copenhagen. Continue despite the odds. And eventually, together, we will reach that crucial number: Three – five – oh.

In all political agreements, you have to be prepared to negotiate. You have to be prepared to compromise; to give and take. That is the nature of politics. But physics isn’t politics. On climate change, there are things on which we cannot negotiate. There are scientific bottom lines that we have to respect. We know what the laws of physics say. And I think you know too.
The most important number in the world. The most important number you’ll ever hear. The most important number you’ll ever say. These three words: Three – five – oh. (Three – five – oh) (Three – five – oh).

Treehugger have a good write-up here.

Certainly the theme for Saturday in Copenhagen, if not Sunday as well, was mobilization. 100,000 marching from the city centre to the Bella Centre, location of the climate change conference, was impressive. More impressive was the diversity of the crowd. Both the international mix and range of organizations represented was phenomenal and in our experience unprecedented (we deal with this particular issue elsewhere).

While it led the mainstream news, to concentrate on the Copenhagen march is to miss the point of what is occuring around the world. According to the wonderful people at 350.org, over 3,000 actions took place globally. Take a couple of minutes to check out some of the media on their site. It’s easy for passionate NGO types to overplay these kinds of actions; 50,000 people marched in London last week for The Wave, In isolation that represents a medium sized UK demo. But add that to what’s going on in 100 or so countries within the past seven days though and a scale emerges. A scale that because of its distribution is easy to miss and easier still to ignore.

We saw Dieter Helm this November in London claim, perhaps correctly, that climate change had yet to produce a real political movement, that traditional politicians had yet to be given a mandate by their constituents. Reasons for this are legion, and it’s more than we have time for tonight to go into. However, around COP15 a light is being lit, and that light is illuminating individuals, communities and even whole nations (Tuvalu, the Maldives et al), who previous to now have not had a mainstream media cycle to jump onto. So a question for us in the NGO and media world is this: how do we turn this spotlight into that mandate Helm referred to? What do we do, and what to we tell Tuvalu to do between now the end of COP15 and Bonn, the next time we can reasonably expect international climate change negotiations to figure on front pages.

Another question then emerges. Yes we can keep shining the light, but sooner, not later, we have to throw the torch to our policy makers and let them run with the lamp. I’m recalling here a recent late night dicussion wiht @jamieandrews and @danielvockins. On whom, we asked ourselves, do we concentrate our efforts. Who are the tradionally invisible policy advisors to government and opposition we need to get to. And crucially, what do we give them for the win. For the language we need to communicate with is that of winning and losing in policy and media cycles. That’s what’s going to get the attention of the latter day Alastair Campbell’s, particularly in the UK and particularly five months from an election.

Back to COP15. 350.org and their like have done a huge job connecting the disparate dots all around the world. Using Copenhagen as the center of a web which brings in strands from all over. We all need to keep joining these. This isn’t about Copenhagen. It’s about giving all those who took part in actions over the past 48 hours the ability to mandate their leaders.

BTW, Keepfakingit will be moving on to the numbers beat Monday as the negotiations start to intensify.

[I'll link this up later, too much to do now]

Keepfakingit has been in Copenhagen roughly 36 hours now. It’s the weekend and certainly today, Sunday, there seems to be an intake of breath and an easing off of negotiations ahead of the oncoming storm of the final few days. Will we get a deal? Probably. Will we get a deal that puts us on that gold paved pavement towards a low carbon future? Your guess at this stage is as good as ours. Whether we do or not though there are some seismic shifts taking place in the way civil society’s representatives are tackling climate change.

This is exemplified perfectly by the choice of Mary Robinson as one of the lead speakers at the vigil outside the Bella Centre Saturday. Robinson as former Uachtaráin na h’Éireann (president of Ireland), represents, to some small degree, the world of politics. Robinson as former UN High Commissioner for Refugees represents a UN insider who knows how the system works and climbed to a top level post. And here’s the interesting part. Robinson as Honourary President of Oxfam represents not only a huge NGO, but a social development NGO that now recognizes climate change as the biggest issue facing it and its ilk today.

In Mary Robinson we have someone who spans three hugely important stakeholder groups at COP15. Politics, civil society and those mysterious people in the middle who are trying to tie it all together and broker a deal. The convergence of these groupings is more than timely, it is vital. That the likes of Oxfam, ActionAid and others are now focusing their collective attention on climate change in such a manner represents a big boost to that process.

However, this isn’t enough. Without meaning to be cynical, Oxfam have not eradicated developing world hunger. So as well as smarter NGOs working in unison we need more cross-over figures like Robinson. Imagine the like of Tony Blair or Gordon Brown leaving Downing street and shunning the JP Morgan directorship for an international role running , who surely has lots of time on his hands that he isn’t

And speaking of former politicians who have seen the (green) light, here’s a poem from Al Gore. Good man yourself Al.

Copey and company bow down to the Greatest Briton (image cc Lloyd Davis)

I’ve just come across this personal account of the April 1st G20 protests from none other than Julian Cope, Liverpool post punk leftover, Krautrock boffin and the original Megalithic European.

Sorry I’m a day late with this Drudion, but I was in London yesterday at the G20 anti-Kapitalist protests that focused on the Bank of England. Unfortunately, I totally fucked up my plans through sheer yokel paranoia and came away empty handed. Intending to meet up with my dear friends, the writer Gyrus and U-Know editor Merrick, at Liverpool Street Station, at 10.30am, I left our W. Country home at 6am and was in central London just before nine. Nervous that there would be thousands of people milling about, I arrived on foot at Liverpool Street a full hour early, to be confronted by hundreds of police already in place. Of course, I was dressed extremely dodgily, with my hair up in a black wig and dressed in the kind of all-purpose rural chic that couldn’t have been further from my regular Rock God image (!). The police, however, were so fucking paranoid that they conducted a Stop & Search on me at the top of the escalators at 10.20; a full 40 minutes before the march had even started. Of course, I declined to give my name and address and, having no ID or cards on me, they detained me and wrote down a description. Unfortunately, when the main cop read on the report that I was wearing a stab vest, he came over personally and demanded to look at it. I just about managed to take the thing off without disturbing my wig, but the cop told me he believed the vest was part of a stolen consignment of police uniforms and gear, and that I’d taken off the labels to hide this fact. Kiddies, I’ve had this stab vest at least two years and wear it any time I’m in the city, but the cops just used this as an excuse to do a full body search and they soon confiscated my burka, a pair of women’s tights and all of my (expensive) police body armour. All of this occurred in full view of the general public and was clearly done just to make a show of me. When I still didn’t give my name, they sat me in a van to think about it for hours and the fucking protest went off with me detained. In the meantime, dammit, an exultant Merrick was texting me from Bishopsgate telling me the Climate Camp have taken over, while Gyrus had been penned in at the Bank of England. With hindsight, I’ll admit I looked extremely dodgy. But what got me most was how the police discovered all of my gear but still didn’t realize I was wearing a 99p black eBay wig! On the Stop & Search report I’m even described as having ‘Hair: black, short.’ I can’t show you my face on the self-portrait I took as I plan to use this disguise again in the future, but Holy McGrail referred to it as Scargill Chic and pointed out that there are clearly blonde tufts visible from underneath the rug. If McGrail could suss it from the crappy mobile phone photo (shown above), then so much for the West’s so-called War on Terror. What the fuck!

That one of England’s true rock (and I mean ‘rock’ in all senses of the word) heroes was detained at the Met’s pleasure for hours on end is galling enough but that he was recognized by none of his captors is truly an indictment on the state of policing in Britain today.

Image: some rights reserved by Dom Dada

Nature magazine continued their Darwin season of talks in London tonight with a panel discussion entitled What Price Biodiverstity?.

The top caliber speakers were Professor James Lovelock, independent scientist, author of “Revenge of Gaia”. Michael Meacher, MP (Labour) & former Minister of State for the Environment and Sir Crispin Tickell, Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University. Not a joker amongst them. I’d also add the the quality of questioning from the floor was second to none, quite refreshing at these sorts of things where one can usually expect some variety of rogue element to attempt a hijacking of proceedings.

I only found out only this morning about the talk via @zzgavin on Twitter, and have time but for some brief notes here before getting on with the rest of my evening. The entire discussion took place in the context of one larger and one (debatable) less significant event. Climate change and the recession. But doesn’t (shouldn’t?) every conversation right now take place in that light.

So in no particular order:

Tiskell on the state of the biodiversity conversation: Talking about climate change is [relatively] easy, about biodiversity is much harder. We don’t even have the value system to measure it and the common man on the street simply can’t understand it. They won’t understand what we are losing until there is a cataclismic biodiversity event.

There was general agreement that the global conversation on protecting biodiversity was at least five years behind that of climate change. An example of this, in the UK we have the Stern Report on Climate Change and even a Climate Change Office. We have nothing similar to start combating the threat to biodiversity.

Meacher on our current value systems: These current systems have led to a belief that “only nature that can be made profitable should be preserved”. That’s the dangerous result of putting economic value on biodiversity

Lovelock on carbon trading schemes: Totally disastrous. As a result of carbon trading, less efficient coal stations in east Germany are producing MORE co2. These permits have been either given away of sold too cheap. Why didn’t we charge polluters, not give them credits. Carrots instead of sticks.

Tickell on industry: [they] wants to do the right thing and they will if they are given clear limits in which to operate in. Heads of industry aren’t oblivious, they know there are serious problems in the world but they want to know where they stand. [Political] leadership has to show the way here and TRUST that they can do it and we wasn’t this change.

Tickell on biodiversity in agriculture: Agriculture shouldn’t be a market activity. The market is set up to measure short term gain. It does that but does not record the long term damage industrial agriculture in particular does to land resource. Agreculture should be a community activity, enriching all around it.

Meacher on the subject of biodiversity value: even if we can come up with a bio-diversity index instead of GDP to give us a quantitive measurement of human activity, how do we make this measurement operative. How do we make companies change their business plans to fit this. How do we tie it into government budgets.

He mentioned in fact a sustainability index he had presided over in the Department of the Environment that never got anywhere because nobody had any . Meacher verged between accute peceimism and optimism at times, which struck me as sounding odd coming from a career politician. He was convincing when explaining his belief that we are now on the brink of a new world economic, environmental and cultural order.

Lovelock being the oldest and at times sounding the wisest got to round off the evening. He did so clearly, directly and without hesitation when asked if it were possible for a biodiverse Earth to survive.

Time, he said, is the biggest barrier to halting biodiversity decline and climate change. We are so far down the path that the goals of 2040 and 2050 that our institutions have set will be far too little too late.

Missed this on Friday. Tom Raftery at Greenmonk posted this overview talk by Doug Neal (Research Fellow at the Leading Edge Forum – Executive Programme and is responsible for research into Innovating through Technology). Doug was talking at the 2008 it@cork Green IT conference.

Tom covers the big points on Greenmonk so I’m going to mention just one area that’s super-interesting for me. At 18 minutes Doug talks about leveraging social pressure, some would call would call it CO2-guilt, through social networks. It’s not a hugely original idea, but, in this case one we can pump an awful lot of creativity into. I’m not talking about the Dopplrs of the world, great though they in particular are. But rather burrowing into people’s social graphs on their already existing networks and laying the problem/solution right there right then.

I know The Carbon Account tried this with their Facebook App. Who else is in this space? What can we do to push it on? Too late in the night for answers right now I’m afraid.

-edit-

Really what we’re talking about here is connecting the social graph to the grid. With smarts. Who’s doing it? Who’s up for it?

As you’ll see if you take a look over on TrashBlanc.com right now I was up early this morning visiting what I believe is London’s only annual Potato Fair. I was with four longtime patrons of the event who provided plenty of advice, but the most important piece was “get there early”. They weren’t wrong, by 10.30am I was in a bustling school féte scene straight out of the Archers.

I could write for hours about the great varieties on display, from the bog standard Golden Wonder to the brilliantly named Skerry Blue and my own personal favourite the Sharpe’s Express, but it was the sheer fact that this was taking place in the middle of London that impressed me most. George Monbiot wrote a lighthearted piece recently about his love forapple varieties. Well and good I thought at the time. But attending something like the Potato Fair and seeing the variety of potatoes alone we have in our soil is simply amazing. And it’s also terribly depressing. 95% of these varieties will never hit the shops. Tesco, Lidl and Aldi have no interest in small lots with smaller margins and the vast majority of the population don’t know what they’re missing. Shame.

Here are some photos from my Flickr account.

All your Broc are belong to us

What if your food was made by tiny little people with peasant hats and industrial aprons. Who were forced to work 18 hour days in horrible environments. Would your food be as tasty?

Thanks to Inhabitant.com for the link to Matthew Carden’s 350degrees.com. Check it out.

The Wall Street Journal asks who’s responsible for the fall in price of crude oil over the past few days: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/falling-oil-whodunnit/

Thomas Friedman in the NYT (clearly just back from strawberry picking in the Nordics) asks is it better for oil to remain high: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

Tom Raftery has been saying for months that oil is better off over $200 per barrel: http://greenmonk.net/the-sooner-oil-hits-200-per-barrel-the-better/

And back to the WSJ which claims at off-shore drilling is really a complete non-issue despite the above: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/08/12/rigged-why-does-offshore-drilling-dominate-the-debate/

This is great. Not only are Americans leaving their urban sprawls for cleaner, greener, cheaper cities, the Telegraph of all papers has a report on it.