Philobiblon

I spoke today at the session on “Women and Climate Change”, which I think went  well. I’ll be writing elsewhere about what I said, but among the things I learnt from the session were about:

• *Bridge and  their very interesting-looking “gender and climate change pack”, which has gone to the top of my to-read pile. The related Institute of Development Studies also produced an interesting leaflet on food sovereignty.
• About a government consultation on biofuels, with particular reference to the issue of palm oil
• About the biological vulnerability of girls to radiation (with particular reference to Fukushima)
• About the Greenheart project;
• And while I’m posting links, I was promoting the useful GenderCC website.

Although I kept getting caught in conversation, I did manage to catch parts of two other sessions.

I was taken by comments from Dan Plesch of SOAS about the damage that has been done by the provision of limited liability for companies, which has led to the externalisation of risk while profits remain privatised. He was scathing about “corporate social responsibility”, noting that it was legally subject to the obligation to maximise shareholder value.  He noted that the Victorians were extremely suspicious of limited liability – referencing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Utopia Ltd, and up until the 1920s The Economist was opposed to it.

Rupert Read made a nice summary of Keynesianism as offering the tradeoff of continual growth in return for accepting continuing inequality  – “growthism is an endless excuse not to face up to inequality”. He said that the end of growth would mean a need to share out the pie more equally.

Green MEP Keith Taylor spoke on fracking (at what from the bit I heard was a very strong session – also very impressed with Frack Off). He said that for Europe the problem was that it was a fast-moving technology that was hard to keep up with, France and Bulgaria had banned it while Poland was rushing ahead.

Sian Berry from the Campaign for Better Transport spoke about “peak car“, the idea that young people in particular (in cities and large towns at least) are becoming less interested in driving – hey, you can’t use Facebook! And how the Department for Transport has over the past three decades consistently significantly over-estimated traffic growth, by assuming that it would simply grow in line with population. And given the fact that the government has been planning for that growth, providing the roads etc, the question arises about how much traffic might have gone done had that been what the government was planning for…

Coming up from the Campaign Against Climate Change: Zero Carbon Britain Day, July 21, and December 1, Global Day of Action on Climate Change.

… well this is based on a very small sample of the meeting I went to this evening in St Leger sous Beuvray (population 500 or so). This is in the 3rd circonscription of Saone et Loire and the speaker was the candidate for the legislative elections starting on June 10, Francois Lotteau, who is also the mayoral candidate for Chalon sur Saone, the regional capital. (And it is also based on my limited French…thanks very much to the people I was talking to for their patience! )

The candidate’s literature begins “after decades of liberalisation, the state is powerless to resolve the global crisis. There are interdependent economic, social, ecological and financial crises. austerity is not the solution. Green politics is the highest response (response a hauteur) to the issue of the day.”

It talks about the development of “peasant” (paysan – I think perhaps “non-industrial” might be a better translation) agriculture, guaranteeing good food to consumers and decent income to farmers, the decline in numbers of which must be stopped.

That was one of the chief topics of discussion tonight – the problems of young farmers and access to land and capital, the complications and cost of getting organic certification, the fact that so much food in the shops is industrial and not tied to place or producer.

The leaflet also talks about the need to invest in the green energy sector, including insulation, to reduce unemployment and “the (financial) precariousness of life”. Most discussion this evening was despair at the French acceptance and promotion of nuclear power – I sympathised and explained about our rightwing government.
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