Environment

Last November, SH&S group members watched a film called The Age of Stupid, which included footage of the environmental damage caused by oil companies in Nigeria.

You may not be aware that similar damage has been caused to the environment in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador by Chevron, formerly Texaco, poisoning the indiginous people who live there. Please click here to view a video about the damage and sign an online petition telling Chevron to clean up its mess, which they've so far denied.

By the end of today, the world's population is expected to reach 7 billion. It has almost doubled since the late '60s and is expected to reach 10 billion within the century. This is potentially catastrophic for several reasons; the effect on the environment of human activity; the demand for dwindling resources, including food and water, and the impossibility of ensuring a decent quality of life for everyone.

How can we prevent the population from continuing to increase, and reverse the trend? There are already more people than the Earth can support sustainably. What can we do?

The organisation Population Matters has four campaigns, on family planning, gender and social justice, UK reproductive health, and educating people to have smaller families. Their patron Sir David Attenborough's view is that there is no major problem facing our planet that would not be easier to solve if there were fewer people and no problem that does not become harder — and ultimately impossible to solve — with ever more. Click here to see or hear his speech to the Royal Society of Arts last year.

Franny Armstrong’s film about climate change, starring Pete Postlewaite, will be shown at the Hollywood Cinema, Ipswich, on Sunday 26^th April at 4pm, 6pm and 8pm.

Go the Age of Stupid website to see a trailer, and more.

Dr Tim Jones has blogged about the annual Secularist of the Year Award, which has been jointly awarded to Dr Evan Harris MP and Lord Avebury for their success in getting the blasphemy laws abolished. The fact that Tim’s used my Darwin images for his site banner is rather pleasing.

SH&S webmaster Nathan Nelson has begun a new blog, designed to be run in conjunction with his Open University course. It’s called Big Wide World, and is “trying to make sense of big words like sustainability, technology, environment and development.”

We’ve been invited to an event in Ipswich this weekend. Various local groups with an interest in the environment, including Suffolk Wildlife Trust and the Ipswich Society, will be there. No idea why religious faith matters even if you’re an atheist. If you want to find out, let us know how it goes.

We are having an Energy Day this coming Saturday at St Margaret’s Church Hall in Bolton Lane Ipswich and I have attached a poster about the event. Please will you display it in some appropriate place.

File Attachment: Energy Day poster.pdf (673 KB)

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) today published its interim advice to Government on what the long-term target should be to tackle climate change. The CCC recommended that emissions from harmful Greenhouse Gases be reduced by at least 80% by 2050. In a letter to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, the CCC said that the 80% target should apply on average across all sectors of the UK economy and is achievable at affordable cost of between 1-2% of GDP in 2050

Biofuels are a false solution to climate change and are doing much more harm than good. The EU is proposing a binding target to increase biofuels use to 10% of road fuels by 2020. This massive increase in Europe's demand for biofuels will have a devastating impact on the world’s poorest countries by:

* Destroying communities.
* Damaging wildlife.
* Pushing up food prices.