Out of all the things New Labour has done this is the one that tries my patience the most.

A new fleet of nuclear power stations was today backed by the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, as he outlined the UK government’s plans to fast-track major energy infrastructure projects, also including “clean coal” power stations and wind farms. Adam Vaughan, The Guardian.

What makes Miliband and his cohorts think it a sensible idea to try and solve global warming by creating a vast amount of highly toxic waste for which our best and only solution appears to be digging a hole and burying it. Further, how much of a solution to global warming is nuclear power? By the time initial construction of the plant, extraction, processing and transportation of uranium ore to the plant and then storage and transportation of nuclear waste a plus many other activities have been considered how much of a CO2 saving might their actually be?

Clean coal is another farce there’s nothing clean about coal, again we’ll be digging holes and attempting to bury gas – that’ll work well – it’ll leak out into the atmosphere but only after we have wasted a huge amount of energy trying to prevent it happening – we might as well save ourselves the trouble and just burn the coal without capture – OK I made that up because as it stands no-one has any idea how clean coal will work – plenty of theories but no commercially viable working examples – coal is not the answer.

And no wind-farms aren’t the answer either – to be effective wind turbines ideally need to be close to the point of consumption – this means turbines in our parks, green spaces and back gardens or the hills overlooking our cities, towns and villages – not massive great farms miles from anywhere.

Still instead of spending billions of pounds of taxpayers money on these schemes what about spending the money on retrofitting the countries aging housing stock with green technologies – not only would we greatly reduce our energy needs and CO2 emissions but it would also provide much need employment and a welcome boost to our fractured economy – still it seems I’m whistling in the dark.

Watch this

Now what’s wrong?

There is no scientific evidence of climate change or there is a division of scientific opinion on the issue and the ad should not attribute global warming to human activity or how about the dog drowning is inappropriate for children because it will upset them and is scaremongering. Source: The Guardian

Just some of the complaints the Advertising Standards Agency received.

You know there’s always going to be division in scientific opinion, however the vast majority of scientific evidence points to climate change – just type “climate change evidence” into Google. As for upsetting children has the complainant read any of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales? Lunatic in chief Steve Green has even set up a petition.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop wasting taxpayer’s money on climate change propaganda designed to frighten our children. Number 10.

I think it’s designed to shame parents not frighten children, but that’s nitpicking, you know the scientists could be wrong – lets hope so – but I repeat – the reality is that the weight of scientific evidence suggests if we don’t do something now then those of us who survive are doomed to a miserable future.

Amazingly the petition has 489 signatures – lunatics every one of them.

For most of us, food shopping involves the local supermarket and in that respect Tristram Stuart isn’t any different, except you won’t find Stuart at the checkout instead he’ll be round the back rummaging through the supermarkets bins for his food. Stuart is one of a growing band of freegans who protest against global waste – Stuart’s got a point about waste:

Most people would admit that wasting food is not good. But surely, they’d say, the problem can’t be that serious? Isn’t rooting around in rubbish bins a somewhat extreme – and unpleasant – reaction? Stuart would disagree. In his new book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, he sets out in forensic detail exactly why we should all be worried by the problem. In his view, food waste is the big unspoken environmental crisis of our times, right up there with more familiar concerns such as deforestation, water scarcity, even global warming.

Addressing food waste, he says, is a vital step when it comes to sorting out many of these other problems, and it’s hard to disagree with his logic. If we waste less food, we’ll need less land to grow it on, and hence will cut down fewer trees; we’ll use less water to irrigate that land and less carbon to transport and process the food it produces. On a more basic level, food waste is an issue of equality. If we didn’t waste so much food, there would be more available, which means fewer people in the world would go hungry.

Much of the evidence that Waste uncovers is startling. In Britain, we are remarkably profligate with our food. Most of us are probably used to laughing about our personal failings – that packet of pre-washed lettuce turned to mulch in the fridge, that half-eaten loaf gone mouldy in the bread bin. But when such individual wastefulness is aggregated, the figures become less amusing. A 2008 survey by the waste organisation Wrap, based on studying a sample of household bins, found that we collectively throw away 6.7m tonnes of food each year. (Stuart, in fact, says that the Wrap figure is too high, because it includes things like orange peel, but his estimate for “avoidable food waste” is still 5.4m tonnes.)

An easier way to get a handle on this is to think in terms of individual items. As a nation, we chuck away 484m unopened yoghurt pots each year, 1.6bn untouched apples (or 27 per person) and 2.6bn slices of bread. That doesn’t even include the food we waste at work or leave on our plates in canteens and restaurants. All in all, we chuck away roughly a quarter of the food we buy.

What many of us don’t properly realise is that this consumer waste represents just the tip of the iceberg. Although individuals contribute a massive amount to food waste, even more occurs further back along the supply chain. A huge amount is wasted during or immediately after harvesting, especially in developing countries, where poor transport and other infrastructure mean that food often perishes before it gets to market.

Then there are the unwieldy and complex workings of the global supply system: to get from its source to our plates, much of the food we eat undertakes a journey of epic proportions, involving carts, ships, planes and lorries, warehouses, processing plants and supermarket distribution centres. At each stage of this journey – inevitably, perhaps – a proportion gets wasted. When all this is added together, Stuart says, it is possible to estimate that more than a third of global food supplies is wasted (with the proportion in rich countries being as much as 50%). At the same time, nearly a billion people on the planet live close to starvation. William Skidelsky, The Observer.

See food waste is killing us – still I couldn’t rummage through the bins like Stuart.

“The government’s disjointed approach is deterring the private sector investment needed to get our energy system up to scratch, bolster security and cut emissions,” said CBI deputy director general John Cridland.

“While we have generous subsidies for wind power, we urgently need the national planning statements needed to build new nuclear plants.

“If we carry on like this we will end up putting too many of our energy eggs in one basket.” BBC.

However, if the CBI is right and we’re too wind focused then the alternatives are surely be solar and wave power, not toxic nuclear power or the fantasy that is coal and carbon capture. We have to move away from burying our waste in holes in the ground, because these dumps will come back to haunt as when they inevitably start to leak. Unsurprisingly the CBI is in thrall to the big business’ of coal and nuclear power – too coal and nuclear focused.

The Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon, describes how ranches responsible for illegal deforestation sell cattle to slaughterhouses controlled by a handful of Brazilian companies. These ship beef or hides to facilities in the south of Brazil and process them for export. They are often processed again in the importing country.

Greenpeace says records show that cattle from hundreds of farms across the Amazon are mixed and processed in this way, making it currently impossible to trace the origins of products. “In effect, criminal or ‘dirty’ supplies of cattle are ‘laundered’ through the supply chain.”

The investigation focused on three Brazilian companies, Bertin, JBS and Marfrig, which operate slaughterhouses and together control a third of Brazilian beef exports. Greenpeace says satellite images and trade records show that all three companies – part-owned by the Brazilian government– source cattle from farms that have carried out illegal deforestation in the Amazon. It says exports from the south of the country near São Paolo are “polluted” with products from animals raised on deforested land.

Britain is the second largest importer of processed Brazilian beef after the US, taking 50,000 tonnes last year.

Greenpeace says Marfrig facilities export processed beef to Green Isle Foods, an Irish subsidiary of Northern Foods. Product labels show Northern Foods supplies convenience foods that contain the Marfrig meat to Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, the report says. It says Tesco and Marks and Spencer sell tinned Brazilian beef supplied separately by JBS.

Tesco and Marks and Spencer denied the meat came from the Amazon. Marks and Spencer said: “We do not accept and have never used any beef from the Amazon region. We have been working with our Brazilian beef supplier for over 20 years and through the traceability measures we have in place we can ensure that all the product supplied to us by them is from the exact location we specify.”

Sainsbury’s said it used “a small amount of Brazilian beef in our frozen and canned range”. Morrisons said its suppliers provided documents to prove beef was not linked to Amazon deforestation. Asda said it was confident its beef did not come from the Amazon. It said: “If that isn’t the case we’d take that very seriously indeed.”

A Tesco spokesman said: “Our canned beef is sourced from São Paolo, which is about 3,000 km away from the Amazon. I have also been informed that the cows cannot travel more than 300km.”

The report says: “While the blue chip companies behind reputable global brands appear to believe that Amazon sources are excluded from their products, Greenpeace investigations expose for the first time how their blind consumption of raw materials fuels deforestation and climate change.”

Northern Foods said: “The only Brazilian beef we buy for our Green Isle business is cooked beef from a single site in São Paulo state, not in or near the Amazon basin, and not sourcing materials from sites in or near the Amazon basin. The supplier we use, Marfrig, provides certificates to verify the farm source for this plant.”

Marfrig said it only bought cattle from farms not included on a Brazilian government prohibited list. “We have not been informed of any such violations by Greenpeace so cannot comment.” David Adam, The Observer.

Don’t’ they talk rubbish, for instance the Tesco’s spokesman’s “cows can’t travel more than 300km” – a derisory reason for assuming Tesco products don’t contain beef from farms on illegally deforested Amazon rainforest – how far is Brazil from the UK – São Paulo to London is 9,470km considerably greater that the 3,00km the Tesco spokesman quotes. Just using Brazilian beef makes a mockery of Marks and Spencer’s slogan Plan A, because there is no plan B let alone beef from farms on deforested rainforest.

The evacuation of the Carteret Islands have begun. This morning I stood on black volcanic sand, pressed up right against the jungle, and watched a small white boat powered by a single outboard engine run in against the shore. On board were five men from the Islands, the fathers of five families, who have come to finish building houses and gardens already begun in a cleared patch of jungle at Tinputz, on the east coast of Bougainville. When these homes are ready the five will return to the Carterets, to fetch their wives and children back. Life, they hope, will be better for them here. On the Carterets, king tides have washed away their crops and rising sea levels poisoned those that remain with salt. The people have been forced to move. Dan Box, The Ecologist.

And so almost without note by the world’s press the entire population are forced from their homes by rising sea levels – the climate change disaster has begun.

I don’t know what your towns like, but I guess it’s like mine – the pavements are blighted with chewing gum. Chicza have produced the world’s first organic biodegradable chewing gum.

Unlike conventional chewing gum, which contains petrochemicals, the organic chewing gum does not stick to clothing or pavements. And once disposed of, it will crumble to dust in about six weeks, dissolving harmlessly in water or being absorbed into the soil. Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian.

Personally I don’t much like chewing gum, and haven’t tried it so I can’t comment how it compares to more traditional chewing gum. Currently Chicza is only available in Waitrose so it’s not going to challenge the leading brands quite yet – still it’s a start and if it’s successful then maybe all gum will become biodegradable.

Now what are we going to do about the remaining mountains of litter on our streets?

This weekend at 8:30pm is WWF’s Earth Hour where people from around the world will be turning off their lights for an hour making known their stance against global warming and lobbying world governments to take effective measures against climate change – sign-up here.

It’s sort of hard to believe but environmental campaigners in America say.

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.

“This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous,” said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council. Source: The Guardian.

Now is the Natural Resources Defence Council receiving funding from the Motor manufacturers? You have to wonder. Still in reality, we still need to cut down on our car usage regardless of the type of toilet paper we use.

When you take your old television to the local council for recycling or pay to have it recycled by the company supplying your replacement you don’t expect this.

Greenpeace fitted a broken unfixable television set with a tracker and took it to Hampshire County Council for recycling.

Instead of being safely dismantled in the UK or Europe, like it should have been, the council’s ‘recycling’ company, BJ Electronics, passed it on as ’second-hand goods’ and it was shipped off to Nigeria to be sold or scrapped and dumped. Source: Greenpeace.

Not what you expect from your local council – who on earth can you trust? So what’s the answer? As Greenpeace suggest – avoid using hazardous components would be a start.

Hat Tip: Chicken Yoghurt.