Ed Dowding

£3m Community energy fund divesting funds

British Gas is committed to distributing £3m via the energyshare fund to community renewable projects over the next 3 years. energyshare really wants to hear from all types of communities across Britain. A registered community group can apply for up to £100,000, and all they ask is that projects:

• have the objective of  saving or generating energy locally

• are supported by their local community

• will benefit the local community and have a tangible and lasting impact.

• some aspect of the project is realistically achievable within one year

• will inspire even more community renewable projects

http://www.energyshare.com/fund/about-applying/

Solar powered transparent TV

http://inhabitat.com/samsung-unveils-solar-powered-zero-energy-transparent-tv/

Spanish town reintroduces peseta to boost economy

A small town in northern Spain has decided to reintroduce the old Spanish currency – the peseta – alongside the euro to give the local economy a lift. The hard times have seen thousands of businesses close and more than two million jobs go.

It is an attempt to get cash registers ringing – and help lift the town out of a long and painful economic slump. Shopkeepers were sceptical at first, but they now say the scheme is a great success. One man visited the local hardware store this week with a 10,000-peseta note he had found at home, and had no idea what to do with. He is now the happy owner of a sandwich toaster.

Can you design a better energy than the Government?

Probably. But you have to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 to comply with the international agreements. Give it a go on this beautiful site.

Open Gov. the movie

A short documentary made by Delib about the US government’s Open Government initiative, featuring interviews with a whole host of insiders and commentators.”Understand that mistakes will be made, and be flexible and understanding about that… real time government … government as platform…”

Larger households generate less per-capita waste

Yes it’s completely obvious, but it’s nice to have it in graph form, since it adds weight to my frequent imploring to friends that we go live in together in a resource, time, and cost efficient group.

The Cooperative Group seizes the moment

The Co-operative Group launched a radical plan to boost membership to 20 million in ten years, inject cash into community enterprise and build a more sustainable economy.

The ambitious strategy includes pledges to deploy £1bn green energy finance, invest £11m into community enterprise and £20m into an international loan development fund, create 200 co-op schools and launch a £30m apprenticeship academy. Additionally, the group will roll out a fair trade programme in the next three years.

 

 

I believe that this is an act of premeditated genetic pollution of the gene pool of alfalfa and related plants by Monsanto. They know exactly what they’re doing. What they understand is that if you pollute enough alfalfa across the country to where it becomes impossible to grow organic alfalfa that isn’t contaminated, perhaps then the organic community will weaken and allow genetically engineered animal feed under the rules of organic production.

Ronnie Cummins – Organic Consumer’s Association Director (US) – 11 February 2010

What’s your gut reaction to this? Typical underhand behaviour by Monsanto as they flex their unwelcome values to destroy the natural order of things in an underhand manner? Ronnie Cummins being paranoid and not being realistic?

Now.. I’m a bit tired so don’t expect too much from this argument. It’s also not very strong, really. But it’s of passing interest to think about.

[Update: yes, this is very messy thinking.. I'm just thinking too much about what follows a bit too much, perhaps, and suffering from apophania.]

Compare this to the recent events in Egypt. In both instances we have a well organised small group with significant political, domestic, and international support. They are on a mission to improve upon the world they find themselves in. In order to accomplish their large goal both sides find it necessary to go to some extreme lengths. And so on.

The crucial difference is that one is being done transparently, the other is less overt about it’s agenda. That’s quite an important and decisive difference, of course, but to me this highlights a fundamental issue mankind has not yet got to grips with: how can we ensure that positive outcomes are a necessary result of our global superstructure? (Or global architecture,  functional infrastructure, operating system, call it what you will).

Can the very essence of the way we think about things improve our condition? For example some calendars don’t quite take account of every day in the year. What if we literally has no names for, say, five days of the year? Would we think about them differently? If the government proposed changing the calendar thus, it would seem likely that we would claim them for our own as holidays, not to have them default to our employers to control. We wouldn’t anticipate a great fall in GDP, and if there were it seems unlikely that we’d be particularly worried about it; just as we didn’t worry much about the apparent £billions which were wiped off the UK economy by snow in 2010.

What if all work was paid by the hour? Would that change what we all do? Would things suffer much, or might they improve? Perhaps people might not work as hard, but is that a bad thing? More people would do what they love, perhaps, since money would be no incentive. Would enough people still be ingenious and creative? I’m optimistic enough to suspect they would. Would enough people be doctors or clean toilets? I’m much less confident about this one, but then perhaps if you did have this shift then there would probably also be a change in the way jobs are structured, too, with more people having a greater variety of tasks within their lives, and a more distributed responsibility. As I say, I’m much less confident about this, but that does not invalidate the questioning behind it.

But there’s nothing to say, for example, that we couldn’t have two or three currencies working together in different sectors of the economy: euros for internationally traded goods; sterling for domestic trade; local currencies for local trade; and ‘quarts’ (of an hour) paid out from time you invest in shared capital goods (such as improving the environment or helping make a playground for children.)

Worth a thought or two.

Today’s letter to my MP, George Freeman, PPS for Climate Science.

George

I know this lies slightly outside your realm, but the arguments in favour of the Kings Lynn incinerator seem to be quite simplistic.

I fully understand the need to handle out waste, but burning it seems only to remove useful and hard-won resources from the supply chain, as well as the recycling jobs and manufacturing jobs which could be based on the recovery of these resources.

The MBT centre at Cambridge suggests a far lower cost solution which keeps more future options open, and reassures the local population that we are taking the issue seriously in Norfolk.

Your constituents are moving towards zero waste lives for scientific, economic, or ethically consistent reasons. Not demonstrating responsibility at the highest levels makes a mockery of our hard work and action.

Please do what you can to prevent the building of any more incinerators in the UK, and champion the very real, very viable, and very sensible alternatives available to us.

Sincerely,

Ed

It’s all just a game, really, this whole life business. We’re in it for a good time, to be fulfilled, amused, creative, challenged, active, careful, and much more.

In games we often perform better if the pressure is off. So too in life. Relaxing into it and knowing that one way or another it’s pretty certain to all work out, so let’s have fun with it and play it really well trying to build the best worlds we can.

Slightly digressing, there’s some good advice to play life like an infinite game. The guidance for this is:

• The rules of the finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change.
• Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
• Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.
• A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.
• A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.
• The finite player aims for eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth.

That seems to be pretty good set. The last one’s a bit wafty, but it still carries meaning.

So could we use games as a way to develop better cultures?

Watch this great video below to see how games can help us.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Notes for me when I come back to read this blog post:

• Urgent optimism
• Trust and the social fabric
• Blissful productivity
• Epic meaning

Julian Assange Says He Has ‘Insurance Files’ on Rupert Murdoch. If he does, now seems like a good time to use them:

The BBC have just revealed that Ofcom thinks there are big problems with Murdoch’s BSkyB power grab. Their report says the Competition Commission needs to be involved.

But Jeremy Hunt is refusing to make the report public. Instead, he’s been locked in secret meetings with Murdoch’s people..

Things could move very quickly – Jeremy Hunt could give Rupert Murdoch the go-ahead in the next couple of days. We need to flood our MPs with messages telling them to speak out and tell Jeremy Hunt we won’t stand for another Murdoch stitch-up.

Write to your MP about this now. It’s kind of important.