Dave's Diary

Brown's Not Green

Brown's Not Green (letter to the Sun, Feb 2008)

A recent conference of (medical) doctors on climate change discussed how the developed world has probably got as little as 5 years left - to come off our terminal addiction to drinking and smoking fossil fuel – or the kids get it! Some prognosis.

If we don’t act now and deliver early carbon savings, then in a very few years we will look back at 2008 headlines with wonder: how on earth did the biggest story of all time pass us by!  Will the children understand how we were too busy to do anything for their Home (planet) while we still could?

Or, if by then we've acted well, and showed the world how we can have fun and get fed ('off fossil'), we'd have freed our children from a death sentence.  Wouldn’t that make Britain great again?

There is plenty of power left in The Sun - please shine some good (fossil free) light on all this.  It's good to talk about the funny weather!

Dave Hampton

Marlow, Bucks

A matter of finding the energy? Printed: Metro 2 Jan 2008

Would Einstein have the energy?

Most people consider Einstein intelligent. Yet we ignore his advice. He told us “you don’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.”  So for energy he would NOT be looking at coal, nuclear or other centralised models of big dirty old thinking: the ‘power’ relics of yesterday’s men.

Rather he would look to empower local communities, hooking them up to the solar grid, co-creating human-scale local renewable energy – a web of power. It is the many, our communities and our children, that benefit from the renewable energy revolution, not the few who are ‘in power’.

Our abuse of fossil fuels currently makes the outlook for children bleak. But there are jobs, money and survival in renewable energy. ‘They’ will not offer it.  We must demand clean energy – nothing less - and so rebuild the future.

Dave Hampton

In Motown, car-makers will be singing the Blues this Christmas

Sent a few days before Christmas.
 
This week Bush announced (Energy Bill) that all US cars would achieve 35mpg by 2020. Twenty years ago I sold a car, because it only did 35mpg.  Cars can do 70 mpg today. By 2020 any car I own will beat 140 mpg, so avoiding 75% of the CO2 ‘cloud’ of a vintage 35mpg car.
 
Bush remains good news for 'big oil'. The US may carry on exporting pollution, but it will soon be unable to export its cars, or anything else.
 
In Motown this Christmas they will be singing the Blues, when they could be making the cars of the future.

Pissing in the wind (farm)

To Independent - 3 January 2008

I smiled at John Appleby’s cynical imagery (letters 2 Jan) that asking wind-farms etc to reduce CO2 emissions is like emptying the Thames with a teaspoon, and is thus pointless!  Yet what would he have us do in the face of climate crisis?

I’d rather be laughed at for ‘bailing out’ on the Titanic, than accept defeat that my kids ship is going down.  The will to live, and to protect offspring, may prove a strong one in 2008.

The truth is that our ocean of air (our atmosphere) is dangerously full of CO2, and yet we each keep peeing in the pool. We contribute many ‘buckets’ daily, removing not one teaspoon.  Sea change always starts with one drop in the ocean.  Millions of vigorous tea-spoon scoops can be seen as pointless, or inspirational. It’s just a point of view.

One last thing. Windfarms are clearly not about profit, or the UK would have ‘zillions’ by now. They are about our children, and THEIR planet’s future, and us as such, are grossly under represented. I’d love one in my back yard.

Dave Hampton

Marlow

THE NEW PRO-LIFE PURPLE PARTY

UNITED IN CARBON / CROWDED HOUSE

(submitted to Metro - October 2007)

I had a good dream last night. MPs in a crowded House of Commons were irritably milling around, dodging the leak in the Palace roof. Suddenly one called out: “Sod party politics! Who wants to do something about the climate crisis!” Within a couple of minutes a small group had formed, galvanised, and agreed a clear plan of action to try to secure a decent life chance for today's young children.

My dream team had Mssrs Challen, Cameron, Huhne, Lucas, Miliband, to drop but a few names. But in truth there is a whole rainbow of carbon conscious leaders, of every political hue, whose distinction is their willingness to boldly face the climate future, rather than cling onto our fossil past.  Since the name "The New Party" has been taken (by a group of right wing climate skeptics with very outdated views)  I propose The Purple Party.

The sooner we drop the old party 'visions' and divisions, the sooner we start cutting the carbon and fixing the planet. It really is time to start; there's no more time to lose.

Dave Hampton

Marlow

Bucks

Probably the best climate policy in the world!

The climate policy we need

by Dave Hampton, the carbon coach, and Dr. Caroline Lucas MEP, Green Party

(The FT chose not to print this - submitted 12 Dec - no comment!)

Sir, Dorette Corbey MEP (letters, 8 December) was right in her diagnosis of the barriers to progress at the Bali climate talks - but did not go far enough in her prescription. The idea of key developing countries taking on voluntary greenhouse-gas-intensity targets for major industrial sectors, and receiving market and technology incentives to exceed these targets, is a good one. But this must be part of an explicit acceptance of responsibility for our bloated western emissions.

Justice is the principle that lies at the heart of the global solution most favoured by free-thinking people across the world. Known as ‘Contraction and Convergence’ or ‘C&C’, this carbon-costed plan, the opus of the Global Commons Institute, has fast-growing global popular support because it is pure common sense.

Rapid progress towards equal and viable ‘per capita’ carbon shares is the only fair (and hence consensually workable) goal worth talking about.  Angela Merkel backs this. In the UK, the LibDems, the Greens, and the Mayor of London are behind it. Globally it is highly respected. It is the framework within which other ideas such as sectoral targets must sit.

C&C is the ‘climate plan’ for the children’s future, it is the ‘carbon compact’ of our time! History tells us that constitutions founded on equity and justice are more likely to stick. For the children’s sake, it is time for the whole world to unite around C&C – probably the best climate policy in the world.

Dave Hampton, the carbon coach, and

Dr. Caroline Lucas MEP, Green Party

Letter Printed in Indy December 18th 2007

After Bali, we need bold leadership

Sir: "If you are not going to lead, please get out of the way." With this phrase, a delegate from Papua New Guinea shamed the USA into signing at Bali. But what about the UK government, whose rhetoric on the international stage is not matched by its recent actions at home?

Why isn't low carbon an explicit strategic objective for all the UK's activities? We seem to have a government in denial. Its 2012 emissions targets have been abandoned. It wants to expand airports, something we will regret "investing" in before the work is even complete. To pay for nuclear power, it robs investment in energy-saving and renewable energy, which together would save more carbon, more quickly. It divides its responsibilities hopelessly between different departments, each now busy developing incompatible sets of hoops for us to jump through backwards, in pursuit of what should be a single policy objective.

After Bali, can the Prime Minister provide the leadership required to kick-start a low-carbon economic miracle in the UK? Can he inspire us to save energy and carbon in a hurry? It can be done: there is much waste to be avoided and many opportunities for profitable investment.

With a clear lead and the simplest set of integrated policy incentives, everybody's energy and imagination could be fired up - at the individual, family, community and organisational levels. What an example for the UK to export to the world at this critical point in human history!

Bill Bordass

London NW1

Dave Hampton

Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Recent letters to the Indy

Once a green hero always a green hero

or

As each green hero retires, ten new ones are born

Sir: Ironically, I was touched, moved and inspired by Ian Harrison of Halifax’s letter (5^th January 07) retiring himself as a one man giant blow-out carbon bonfire, in response to the truth and leadership vacuum around climate crisis. I don’t intend to follow his example, but I am heartened by his passion and humanity.  He remains a green hero to me, for staying in the conversation.

The Independent has been in the heat of the kitchen for a while now.  It is still hotting up. For our Home planet, the writing is still on the walls, and the truth still in very few papers.  Please stay the course Indy.  Don’t let up.  There will be life after fossil.

Humour is a powerful ally in the emergence of new truth.  Many of us greens need to burst our own bubble.  The joke is that with or without children, stressful or no, most people DO still give a damn about the plight of the planet, and will back any honest attempt to lead on this.  The 'climate movement' (for want of a name) is growing exponentially.

As Gerry Garcia of pop band The Grateful Dead used to say “Someone somewhere has to do something.  It’s just incredibly pathetic it has to be us.”   Thankfully, many of us, including Al Gore perhaps, must once have been Garcia fans!

 

The future of our world is in safe hands – ours.

Dave Hampton

the carbon coach

Marlow, Bucks

Sir

Great green children

Oh dear.  Another reader (Dee Quinn, letters 4 Jan) proposes ‘have one child fewer’ as the ultimate green resolution! Dee is right that humans are giving our planet a hard time. Does that make suicide an even greener option? I think not. There is a heavy bleakness in the air (as well as far too much carbon dioxide) as we enter ‘007.

Last year everyone was shaken AND stirred about the climate crisis.  Some contemplate the awesome specter of species death. We have not been here before. But if we give up on life itself, then it is indeed ‘game over’.

We are in this together, sobering up, with headaches galore after the “longest ever party” :  a century of fossil fuel abuse.  Anger, anguish, cold turkey too.  Facing up to the notion that our current comfort is killing the children hurts like crazy. But there is plenty of joy left – and smart greens don’t kill it. Al Gore’s film ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ works because it is truthful and uplifting.

I’m just one human, urgently seeking a much greener and lighter path and footstep.  Last year my family’s carbon cloud was a sizeable 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per annum per head.  There are 6 of us. This is shamefully 50% more than nature can stand if everyone lives the same way, but it is much lower than UK average. (5 tonnes)  My target is 1 tonne.  Yesterday (4^th) was national ‘Come Off It day’. On the 4th of every month I enjoy a carbon detox – thousands of others are trying it too. www.comeoffit.org

In China a ‘one child’ policy led to the obvious but largely unforeseen by-product of ‘only-child’ psyche. Also, do we dare we request China has one child fewer! Of course not.

No, the problem is not ‘them’.  It is us.  Of our global number (6 billion) the massive majority live within totally viable ecological limits. We do not.  The 1 billion we live like do not. But our unwillingness to shift the bad habits of a lifetime and to cut the carbon is starting to melt.  It will do so for all childrens sake.

Dave Hampton - the carbon coach

Marlow

Letters to The Times

Climate Conversations - 4th Sept 06

Sir, Through your pages may I express deep gratitude to the authors of "A changing environment" (Letters, Sept 4th) for their unity and tenacious leadership around the worlds biggest terror threat: climate chaos. They surely speak for many. We are all in this cooking pot together.  We cannot buy our way out.  Yet we still throw fuel on the fire.  As MP Colin Challen says, we will have to create solution faster than we create problem (CO2 pollution). 

Terror threats dominate world news.  Yet the real villain, climate crisis, slips through the media net unhindered. Until we fix the childrens' home planet, all talk of passing fads, petty crime and partisan politics, is wasted breath. Why is no one is talking about this, The issue of our Times.

Terror Threat Ignored - 2nd Sept 2006

sir, I agree with Nick McIver (letters Sept 1st)that scientists can 'do' plain speaking rather well.  Is the problem with our listening ? 

It was in January 2004 the UK Government's chief scientific adviser Sir David King told us that "Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism" and "the most severe problem we are facing today"  Plain enough surely. 

Two years on, Gore, Schwarzenegger and Cameron 'get it'.   Terrorist threats dominate world news, while the real villain - climate catastrophe - slips through the terror net unhindered.

Seeing invisible 'smoke'  - August 12th 2006

Imagine a giant purple balloon, a full 1 metre in diameter.  Hold that balloon, please.  It helps envisage the scale of the personal contribution - the invisible 'smoke' (CO2) that we humans dump into our common atmosphere by burning fossil fuel. On average each one of us* emits one such balloon - every hour - yes every hour.  (*In Europe. In USA it's nearer 3 every hour.)  Globally it's 50 million balloons every minute.  Quite a bonfire.  Quite a sky-ful.

Mother Nature miraculously absorbs and deals with half this 'smoke'.  The rest accumulates.  While so much media energy is being devoted to terror and threats, it is worth remembering that by far the biggest WMD remains climate chaos.  Many more tragic climate related casualties will occur - somewhere - in coming months.   We are all looking down the barrel of a gun.  And each one of us (at least those living carbon-dependent lives in 'civilised democracies') are pulling the trigger. 

If CO2 were purple we would have witnessed the sky change colour during our lifetime.  If we can look past the thick commercial and political smokescreen, we see that it is our own fossil fuel addiction that is quietly killing our children.  That's the terror within.  Invisible smoke is the problem.  Making carbon visible is the solution.  Each air ticket, petrol receipt, and energy bill can make the carbon clear.  Facing the Truth may be Inconvenient, as Al Gore brilliantly reminds us, but it will also set us and our children free.

When our Leaders return from their holidays, you might imagine you are seeing a trail of purple balloons in their wake.

Drowning is more than a 'water issue' 7th August 2006

Recent letters (thank you) on the wit and wisdom of Bertrand Russell bade me search on the internet for ‘Climate Change’ alongside his name.  The result?  Not the pithy Russell sound-byte I sought to make me look smart!  But instead, sifted before me, a treasure trove of beautiful and reasoned pieces, not least by Elisabeth May, to the Sierra Club.  Try it!

May observed “Increasingly.. the issue of climate change is hobbled by its categorization as an environmental issue.  It is an environmental issue, in the same way that drowning is a ‘water issue’.  It surely is that, but it is much more.”   She is so right.

So, whilst drowning, will Times letter writers come up with new wit and wisdom on this issue, the only issue of our times.

Sir, Weather Less Lovely  - May 2006

Thank you for your front page story (May 4th) "3degC hotter. Earth's danger point. Now scientists say it is going to happen"   The reality is that there has been scientific consensus for decades that we are in serious trouble.  Al Gore's new movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' shines light on how and why humankind is sleepwalking to climate crisis, despite scientists cry of alarm.  Doubt creeps in at several stages.  It can be, and is, deftly planted by 'denialist' lobby groups.  Then the media struggle to interpret the language of science.  Certainty, for a scientist, means just that.  Politicians use the word differently.  They are mostly 'certain' we won't vote for policies that lead us from the abyss, but they are wrong!

The report mentions that Sir David King, Britain’s chief scientific adviser, recently said that a 3C rise will put 400 million people at risk of starvation because of lost arable land and water shortages. 400 million people.  In our lifetimes.  Is that not a bigger headline?

The Times they are a changing.  Thank you for the coverage you give this, the biggest story of all time.  Now we are getting to hear what is really going on, we will all care to make a difference.

Prudent Growth - in CO2 emission reductions - 7th May 2006

While our leaders play musical deckchairs, do a quick internet search for ‘speeches on Climate Change by Gordon Brown' and be very alarmed to find an empty tank. We are in a phase in human history when a totally new type of prudent growth is pivotal to our national health and survival - growth of CO2 emissions reduction.  How ironic that the UK is about to be led by someone uninspired by the carbon story?

He appears oblivious to the opportunities for a thriving low carbon UK economy?  Smart economists know that "carbon is the currency of C21st."  Chancellor, please swot up on this. Then speak out. 

Cameron has shown there are votes in facing up to the biggest issue of our time.  Lead or be led.

Inconvenient 'Home' truths - May 3rd 2006 

Sir, With Minsiters under heavy fire it seems cruel to expose yet another cover up.  But our failure to meet carbon dioxide reduction targets will prove more deadly than any number of unleashed criminals.  Our children will think so, as our 'Home' planet tangibly revolts.

Some 600 million tonnes (the UK ‘GDP’ of CO2) is set free annually.  The collosal gas cloud slips past us all - escaping arrest!  Blind eyes are turned by each government department.  Who should resign over this? 

Much more could have been done over the last decade.  The opportunity for UK to lead remains. The question for May 4^th is who cares.  And who cares wins!

Flying Blind Through Heavy CO2 clouds - 19 January 2006

On balance, I agree (Letters 18th January) that ‘Palin is good for the Globe’.  But so too is getting 'heavy' on air travel.  The jet engine is unsurpassed for the sheer speed it can transform precious oil solution into carbon dioxide problem.  Tonnes of what we desperately need, into tonnes of what we definitely don’t;  in a few blazing seconds.  To those twin dark spectres, Peak Oil, and Climate Change, we say "Bring it on!"

One return seat on a flight to Australia is all it takes to create the carbon footprint of the average UK citizen.  But words are cheap.  In order to make positive and informed lifestyle choices we need some basic maths.

For the same money (CO2 units) as that return flight, we could drive a 4WD 10,000 miles, we could burn £1000 worth of electricity, £500 worth of gas, or we could consume £2500 worth of air flown food.  With each of these luxuries comes the non-negotiable free gift of a  5 tonne cloud of invisible CO2.   

When we see these numbers, we can really start to make our lifestyles count.  Until then we are flying blind.

Elected Captains not drunk but Frozen at the Wheel - January 6th 2006

Sir,  Whatever new resolve was made or broken by Letters page correspondents and Editors on New Years Day, topics this year seem more top-deck champagne chit-chat than wheel-house captain’s conference.

The most uninspiring cliché of 2005 was “If humankind is on board the Titanic, let's travel 1^st class.”  But the phrase serves to remind us of the iceberg we drift towards, with elected captain/s frozen at the wheel.

We have had clear warning that our fossil fuel bonfire is unleashing climate catastrophe, akin to the holing of the Titanic.  We are on collision course.  Horrendous consequence is now imminent.  Yet we fiddle away, drowning the crows-nest noise.  The U-turn to be made early in 2006 will need to call upon every man, woman and child: to leave the deckchairs alone, and to pull hard and steady on the tiller, until, at last, the supertanker responds.   Will The Times help lead this?

Is Brown Marching Away from teh sound of Hurricanes - 27th September 2005

I enjoyed David Aaronovitch’s 'Opinion' (Times 27 Sept) “Brown marching
towards the sound of guns.”  The Chancellor's eyes may well be "fixed on the
big picture”.  But can we trust that this big picture includes flooding, and
the soundtrack of Mother Earth's guns: extreme weather events.  The climate
chaos we currently stare in the face will not go away because Bush and Blair
ignore it.  Will Brown step up?

The future of our species may depend on whether his 'prize' embraces the
opportunity that is 'The UK Low Carbon Economy', right here, right now.  The
UK can lead the cultural revolution that is starting, (low carbon
lifestyles), lead the world from the abyss, and prosper from so doing.
Significantly David A caricatures a Brown led UK future as “ a progressive,
successful country, full of plumbers”.  Ironically, the world does badly
need 're-plumbing', and 're-wiring'.  Re-generation even, for an energy
secure, energy independent and energy sustainable, low carbon future.  Maybe
Brown’s vision is more 2020 than we dared hope?