A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

October 12th 2012

Don’t Worry, Content Is On Its Way!

Hello to anybody out there who actually still reads this little project of mine, or to those who stumbled across it as of this post, or to pretty much anyone who glimpses this page, I have an update on the massive lack of content there has been on the site for a good 2 weeks now!

Firstly, there is more on it’s way, don’t you worry (if you even did…), I don’t plan on dropping this blog for anything, but every now and then life gets just that bit too busy for any real quality posts to be published.

In this case, that busyness is due to me just having started a masters degree at Imperial College in good old London, studying the only thing I really care for, the environment! I’m 2 weeks into this mega course and haven’t had any spare time to just sit down, get angry about something in the news and write up a rant about it, but things are finally starting to settle down.

The house is still in dire need of furniture, heating and fixed doorknobs, and the process of making new friends and breaking multiple blocks of ice is consuming most of my free time, but amidst this madness sits one of the best courses on environmental topics the country can pretty much offer (I’m excited and privileged to say the least!) and I’m loving every single second of it.

For those of you who are still reading, and interested in the nitty gritty of what my course actually entails, here’s a brief but hopefully informative executive summary. Environmental Technology is its name, although ‘technology’ in the sense of the practical application of science and policy to solve some of the most pressing matters of our age (cliched eh). So we cover what seems to be everything on the broad topic, such as environmental economics, policy and law, pollution, ecology, the philosophy of it all, all the way down to good old statistics and development. It’s a big one to say the least.

Going further still, I chose my optional module to focus entirely on Energy Policy, with intricate studies of each and every form of energy generation available to us, the good and bad, how we use them, how we implement them and what policies drive them forwards. This is the subject I look forward to the most by a wind-farm filled country mile.

So effectively, this post is just to confirm that ‘A Green Degree’ isn’t dead, not yet anyway, and will, if anything, be rising from the posting drought a much more well-informed, well written and more confident medium, with this mammoth of a masters course injecting a little extra class and professionalism it was deeply lacking.

So for now, keep your eyes on this space, a new post will be with you in the next few days, and enjoy living the good green life!

James Beioley

Posted at 6:57pm and tagged with: blog, university, masters, Environment, imperial college, london, information, confident, posting, green, technology, lectures, energy, policy, law, pollution, economics, ecology,.

April 25th 2012

Should Climate Change Be Elevated To A Human Rights Issue?

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I read an article recently written by Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (via the Guardian) in which he outlined how the issue of climate change, and the myriad critical, human-related problems associated with it, should be brought up to the status of a human rights issue - by damaging our climate and endangering our societies, we are actively ignoring a basic human right. Well that’s the premise at least.

As we all know, climate change, whether it be natural or man-made, or more than likely a complex combination of both, is directly affecting every human on the globe and is a severe problem we are in desperate need of fixing.

The advent of multiple climate conventions and meetings of world powers began decades ago and still continues on today, but they’re becoming more and more like a session in the House of Commons or a high-school debate than a truly successful stage for solving the issues. Each nation leader has their own opinion and they’re not afraid to shout it loudly to the rest of the world, most of the time in contention with almost everyone else in the room.

We are quick to finger those developed and rapidly developing states which act almost to stagger climate decisions, such as Canada, the US or China to name a few, but in all reality, it’s the whole crowd. As De Schutter suggests in his article, “does this mean that democracy has failed, and must be sacrificed for authoritarian solutions?”. While it may seem that our democratic way of debating and considering things has done little to affect response to climate change, I feel it is still a premature idea to condemn the process altogether just yet.

The idea of branding the climate issue as a human rights issue thus stems from this, as these rights are global, powerful and upheld by almost every country on the planet, although there is plenty of scope for local tweaks and bending of the rules for evil. However, in a broad sense, De Schutter believes it will bring about a hyper-democratic approach, as climate change affects all those other human rights in which so many depend upon - water, food, electricity, sanitation and development.

A Canadian Budget With An Anti-Environment Twist

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Following on from my last blog regarding Canada’s leaving from the Kyoto Protocol, I wanted to repost an article I read today from Solarfeeds which seems to put the final nail in the coffin on the ever-decreasingly pristine beauty of the country.

It focuses on the newly released budget by the government, which effectively slashes the funding for various environmental sectors and institutions, directly threatening the welfare of both the state and its citizens. It also shortens the review time for fossil fuel related projects, a theme entirely common amongst the Canadian government.

However, read the rest of the article below and make your own decisions on the future of Canada, although no doubt they will fall roughly in line with mine and many others:

Prime Minister Steven Harper’s ruling Conservative government is using their majority to all but eliminate Canada’s environmental protections. On March 29, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released a federal budget which guts environmental legislation. It is tragically ironic that this anti-environment budget comes only one week after record-breaking temperatures in the National Capital Region.

Under the new budget Environment Canada will be cut by $88 million. Parks Canada will be cut by $6 million this year and rise to $29 million in 2014/15. Environmental reviews for major oil, gas and mining projects will be shortened and some of these reviews will be handed entirely to the provinces.

Activists are upset about pension reform, job losses, social spending cuts and of course the enviroment. Canadians have protested from the House of Commons gallery chanting, “This is not our budget! Where are we in your budget?” before being detained and later released by Hill Security.