environmental ponderings......

yo, so, here goes - first time

Got the following on a mailing list, do you think we should go????

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CLIMATE
EMERGENCY!

Is nuclear power the solution?
Find out at a public meeting to be addressed by:

Michael Meacher
writer, MP and former Minister for the Environment.

Peter Bunyard
One of the founders of “The Ecologist” magazine, writer and campaigner on environmental issues.

THURSDAY. MARCH 16th
7 pm, at Chaucer Building Lecture Theatre 1, Nottingham Trent University, Goldsmith Street, Nottingham.

There is now no doubt among scientists that global warming is happening, that it’s caused by human activities like burning fossil fuel and that its consequences could be catastrophic. The evidence is everywhere:

Sea levels are rising, flooding coastal areas.
Climate extremes like drought and flood are more common.
Hurricanes and severe storms are more frequent.
The ice in the Antarctic, Arctic and Greenland is disappearing.
Delicate ecological networks on which all life depends are being disrupted- irreversibly.

As we struggle to slow down global warming by reducing carbon emissions, we also face an energy crisis:

Using coal emits too much CO2 which causes global warming.
Oil consumption increases, but new reserves are becoming difficult to find.
Nearly at the end of European natural gas pipeline, UK access to dwindling natural gas supplies will become very insecure.
Renewable energy is not being deployed quickly enough.
Bio fuels mostly use too much energy for the energy obtained and compete with food crops for land.

Many environmentalists are now reluctantly turning to nuclear power for the answer, but is it? Will our children’s energy future be a choice between the consequences of a nuclear reactor accident in which tens of thousands might die, or an environmental disaster in which millions might?

Meeting organized by Nottingham Climate Change Coalition, incorporating
Nottingham Friends of the Earth, Nottingham CND, NTU People and Planet.
Telephone: 0115 9788059, e-m: Brian.davey@cooptel.net.

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(haven't worked out how to insert a flyer hence the slighty sketchy nature of above)


Would be good to get talking environment/climate wise, is it the biggest issue we, as people face?

For example, development seeks to improve lives, and one of the way is by raising income, and therefore purchasing power, but, as recently documented, if people can and do buy more, especially luxury comfort lifestyle stuff that we do, then the earth can't sustain that....

Orion on his blog namechecks a book - Capitalism and religion (by Dr Goodchild), and he talks about this in that.

What do people think??? How does it fit in with justice? Is the issue of consumerism a bigger deal than maybe we think? Are questions around the environment that focus on alternative sources of power missing the point, and that the focus needs to be just as much on actually using less?