United Kingdom

We Always Knew They’d Turn to Communism

U.K. green-computing task force recommends centralizing data A newly formed United Kingdom task force will work to reduce the energy-sucking impacts of computing equipment, which some say pumps as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there as the airline industry. The public-private partnership, called “Green Shift,” will study how to make PCs and their related […]

And spy planes

Identifying energy-saving opportunities is one thing -- and a good thing -- but just think of the potential for evaluating politicians ...

A conference for green money types

Right now there’s a big conference going on in London: "Corporate Climate Response." All sorts of international corporate bigwigs (and some smallerwigs) are in attendance, discussing businessy green stuff. A crew of folks is live-blogging the event here, replete with audio, video, and good old fashioned text. If you want a glimpse into the concerns […]

Imagine: charging polluters to encourage the others!

Sam Smith, publisher of the estimable e-letter The Progressive Review, is perhaps the ultimate pragmatic environmentalist, with a sharp eye for what works and a sharper ability to deflate the pompous and overly-self-loving.

He is often the sole commenter picking up on policy proposals and practices that a less parochial media less obsessed with infotainment would be interested in -- such as the success of congestion charges in London's central district, implemented by Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone (elected by IRV):

Happy birthday!

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

"Sustainable development" is 20 years old this week.

On April 27, 1987, after four years of deliberation, the World Commission on Environment and Development released its report. The inquiry -- also known as the Brundtland Commission -- was led by the prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland.

I was at university then, and devoured the contents of the report, which was later published as the book Our Common Future. Here, at last, was someone tying together the environment and development agendas. The report had much to say, too, about the relationship between poverty and environmental degradation. And as a female leader, Brundtland was such an antidote to our own prime minister; she was pretty much everything Margaret Thatcher was not.

The report gave us an enduring definition of sustainable development: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need."

So 20 years on, what is the legacy of sustainable development as a concept?

Conservation plan nixed

Though eel populations have declined 99 percent since the 1970s, according to a spokesman for the European Union, an EU eel conservation plan three years in the making was nixed by the French, according to a story by Charles Clover.

Mr. Clover is the environmental editor of the United Kingdom's Telegraph newspaper, and author of one of Oceana's favorite books The End of the Line.

Tracey Smith, advocate for simple living, answers questions

Tracy Smith. What work do you do? I’m a writer and broadcaster on downshifting and sustainable living, and I also put together an awareness campaign called National Downshifting Week, which is this week. NDW is a grassroots awareness campaign, designed to encourage participants to “Slow Down and Green Up”! There’s a great quote I often […]

Gee whiz

The London Times covers a carbon trading scandal in in India. Like our own New York Times, they bury the lede:

BRITISH companies are handing over millions of pounds to an Indian chemical plant so that western firms can continue to pump out thousands of tons of greenhouse gases.

Helping homeowners monitor electricity use

One piece of the smart-grid puzzle is home electricity monitoring — allowing homeowners (and eventually business and factory owners) to track their electricity use in real time. As the old saw goes, what gets measured gets done. Simply making people aware of energy flows is the first step to helping them modulate those flows efficiently. […]