Turning party political for a moment, news from my inbox has raised my blood pressure: The Liberal Democrat councillors in Lancaster have fully supported a new bypass (the Heysham M6 Link Road) – as did the Tories and Labour. The official word is that it will create an additional 24,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.

How the Libdems manage to claim to be “green” without the word sticking in their throat is often beyond me – this is entirely typical of the behaviour of their councillors up and down the country.

Pictures from a complete set to be found on Flickr. (Just click on one of these pics to find more.)

This protest was held on Saturday, with more than 100 people attending despite bitterly cold weather. The group is campaigning for the 3 acres of land behind the British Library to be kept by the government and used for council housing and community facilities, rather than be sold off. I’ve written before, and will again soon on another forum….

Media or any other use of these pictures is welcome with appropriate credit.

Candy Udwin, chair of the forum, addressing the protest as it takes its message into the British Library. (If you saw the London Tonight coverage, this got a little “interesting”.)

(A young participant showing what he’d like the land used for.)

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Somehow I’m not surprised that Australians have come out, on one measure, as the among the world’s worst polluters:

The survey of 50,000 power stations worldwide shows the two biggest producers of CO2 in Australia are in NSW – the Bayswater station at Muswellbrook and Eraring near Lake Macquarie, which each produce 18.325 million tonnes of CO2 a year.
Their level of CO2 to power output is comparable to many of the power stations in China often criticised for being dirty plants.
The survey shows Australians each produce more than 10 tonnes of CO2 emissions for every person just through generating power, compared to nine tonnes for each American and two tonnes for each Chinese.

I’m quite often asked, particularly by taxi drivers, in tones of astonishment, why I would move from Australia to Britain? They are reflecting in general terms the fact that Australia has, since I left a dozen or so years ago, had an almost uninterrupted period of economic growth and materialist expansion.
Well, with the drought stretching on and on, and signs that the El Nino effect is growing in severity with climate change, it is clear that there is at least some form of rough justice in the world – and no there’s no way I’d choose to live in the extremely materialistic culture that has developed, and is reflected in these figures.

In what you might call “late capitalism”, the natural trend towards rampant consumerism and environmental destruction is amply demonstrated by the not-so-humble tea-bag.

Once, there was a spoonful of tea leaves; you dropped it in the pot, poured the result through a strainer, and voila…

Next came a refinement – you had a metal strainer, either dangling in the pot or cup, or integral to it, and when the tea was brewed you pulled that out, washed it, and use it again and again and …

But you had to wash up the strainer, and some found that a pain, so along came the teabag – made of paper, but at least rotting down in the compost with its contents. Some waste, but …

Nothing like the latest development, the nylon teabag. This story doesn’t give its period of breakdown in landfill, or explore the chemicals that might be released when it is burnt, but I’m sure they are 1. “a very, very long time”, and 2. “nasty”.

But, heh, you can charge a premium…