Earth Hour
Earth Hour starts in Sydney, Australia, at 20.00 (0900GMT) today. Lights will be turned off for an hour to highlight the threat of climate change. Other participants around the world including London, Chicago, and Bangkok, will follow suit when their clocks reach 20.00 local time.
Despite being a keen news-hawk, I’ve only just found out about this, although apparently Google will be marking the day by putting a dark background on its home page. That’s nice.
tags: climate change, Earth Hour, electricity, fossil fuels, global warming, Google, lightsThe dirty lucre of British Gas
British Gas could only become more immoral if it started snatching babies or producing serial killers. Annual profits rocketed from £95m in 2006 to £571m in 2007. Centrica, British Gas’ parent company, announced group pre-tax profits for last year of £2.1bn. Last month, British Gas increased charges for gas and electricity by 15%. Every winter elderly people in their hundreds of thousands die in Britain because they can’t afford to put the heating on. Despicable. But it’s even more disgusting that our government doesn’t do something to end this obscene profiteering.
tags: British Gas, business, electricity, ethics, fuel, gas, profitsIt’s all about power
As has long been predicted to happen, Britain is likely to face a shortfall in electricity generation within five to seven years. Inenco, an energy and environment consultancy firm, says the number of nuclear and coal plants coming out of service in this time-frame will make shortages likely. But other analysts say new plants can be built quickly and shortages avoided. The government, of course, recently announced it intends to approve applications to build new nuclear reactors, but it will take around ten years for these to come online. Here’s an idea—why not commission Swedish design firm IKEA to build them? A few flat-pack bits and pieces, slot ‘em together in a day and wham—you’ve got a ready to use nuclear power station! After all, the government has put convenience and quick-fix solutions on top of its list of priorities, and has pushed aside safety and waste storage concerns expressed by major environmental groups. So IKEA is a perfect fit.
tags: electricity, environment, nuclear power, power, self-sufficiency, solar power, wind power
