How cheerful

I've been taking the environmental issues very seriously for a long time - and I've had the mickey taken out of me for it too

I'm in Greenpeace, and I've voted for the Green Party whenever they have a candidate in the area I'm in.

We've been given this beautiful planet to take care of - and to let it give us everything we need, and we are doing a VERY BAD JOB. Then the earth won't be able to do it's job either.
It is a serious subject - one that not enough people take seriously - especially the one's with the power to be able to do something about it.

Well apparently isnt the world going to end up desert due to global warming?

I take care to be environmetaly friendly too

I think they should put more into renewable energy in the west. For example end stamp duty on houses with solar pannels, a house in Richmond area owned by a Liberal Democrat councillor has solar panels and is connected to the national grid, the energy generated goes to the grid and he recieves a cheque for the electricity. He makes more electricity than he uses. His electric bill makes money for him.
If all new houses had this, and if house holders were given incentives to install them the country could be powered by solar pannels on house roofs.

(Edited by Gopher 13/08/2002 21:30)

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by coolkat
Well apparently isnt the world going to end up desert due to global warming?

I take care to be environmetaly friendly too

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I thought the earth was gonna end up being lots of seas?

I'm pretty scared about the recent issues

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by lizzieslayer
I thought the earth was gonna end up being lots of seas?

I'm pretty scared about the recent issues

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Well there will be desertification due to heat and soil erosion, but the ice caps will melt eventually and cause flooding.

Take your pick hon

I like Gopher's idea, and even looked into how viable this is. Unfortunately, its very expensive right now, but I would say that is simply because solar panel's aren't commodity items right now. If the government were to subsidise this on a big scale, with many tens of thousands of installations, then the price of the solar panels would surely drop.

Currently you're talking around 300 quid for a solar panel which can produce, at its peak 100W of power. If you had full sunlight on this panel for 6 hours, you'd have generated 600Watts power for one hour. You probably get through tens of kilowatt hours per day, so you can see how expensive it would be to do this. That's not to say im pessimistic, I think the key thing is to reduce the cost of solar panels through mass-manufacturing and this can only happen if governments are willing to initially subsidise the cost.

(Edited by misskittyfantastic 13/08/2002 22:46)

I really need to keep an eye on who is logged in - that last one was me posting!

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by Green_Amber
I've been taking the environmental issues very seriously for a long time - and I've had the mickey taken out of me for it too

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I wish I could say I was as dedicated to the cause. Myself, I just believe people should take it more seriously than they do now, but then i'm a hypocrite, because i'm not actively trying to help.

Of late, i'm becoming more troubled with the negative effects of capitalism, globalism, and consumerism.

It's not an easy stance to take, so far no one seems to have come up with a way of living which works the way capitalism does - the problem as I see it is that capitalism has for decades provided for the basic needs of people, while helping technology develop to make people's lives better. I think we're now entering the stage where our living needs (in the western world) are now well overprovided for, and therefore the driving force for capitalism is consumerism - telling people they need to buy, buy, buy the latest thing they dont really need.

At the risk of ranting, consumerism has now become a superset of capitalism. Many of us work in jobs we don't enjoy so that we can buy more stuff to try and make us feel allright about ourselves. Worst of all we can kid ourselves that the whole scheme works, but it seems to be at the expense of other people. Poorer nations suffer so that Westerners can continue the trend - it strikes me that colonianism isnt dead.

(Woah way to many ism's in this post!!!!)

Have a look at this website for more info on how trade rules need to change.

i agree people should take this stuff more seriously and kae more of an effort, recycling and not poluting and stuff. you have to think, ok it may not affect our lkifetime but what aboiut our children and their children? we are making the world a worse lace jsut from being lazy.

We really need to start thinking. In France I noticed that recyling happened a lot more. Plastic bottles are recylcled too. I've never seen that happening here! We were not allowed to but things like newspapers and bottles out for the refuge collectors. It seems to be enforced more.

The USA emits 25% of the world pollutution and yet refuse to sign that policy for the reduction of greenhouse gasses.

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by Barbara
We really need to start thinking. In France I noticed that recyling happened a lot more. Plastic bottles are recylcled too. I've never seen that happening here!

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I recycle plastic bottles, and glass bottles and cardboard and paper and we have a compost bin for vegetable waste

Aren't i good

When we were in France it was so much easier to 'go green' because there were recycling points everywhere and all the houses had a refuse bin and a recycling bin.

The difficulty in England is that recycling points are few and far between and usually only have facilities for bottles and paper. We can only recycle so much in our house because we have a car. How ironic is that?

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by Gopher
a house in Richmond area owned by a Liberal Democrat councillor has solar panels and is connected to the national grid, the energy generated goes to the grid and he recieves a cheque for the electricity. He makes more electricity than he uses. His electric bill makes money for him.

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Is that Geoff Pope? I know he has solar panels, but he lost his council seat in 1998. He's likely to be the Greater London Authority candidate for London South West in a couple of years though. I don't remember him ever saying he makes money out of it, but I know our candidate in Camberwell and Peckham at the general election, Donnachadh McCarthy, has the same set-up and does. www.cix.co.uk/~dmccarthy/env.html

Myself, I used to be in the Green Party and fought two council elections for them in Norfolk, but left and joined the Lib Dems because, much as I believed in the Greens' environmental policies, I disagreed with a lot of their wider platform.

But it's still something I care about a lot. I recycle obsessively, I tried to raise issues like the environment and global trade when I stood in the general election last year, and I'm the local papers this week opposing the proposed third runway at Heathrow... it depresses me the lack of attention green issues get.

Is the world ending? Probably not. Will what's happening at the moment change people's attitudes? Possibly. Will it change their actions? Not a chance

Oh - and Green Amber? If you want to vote Green and there's no candidate locally, why not join them and stand yourself? I may have long since left the party but I remember them as a good bunch of people. And you really don't need special qualifications to stand for election. You just have to care.

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by Random
(quotes)
Oh - and Green Amber? If you want to vote Green and there's no candidate locally, why not join them and stand yourself? I may have long since left the party but I remember them as a good bunch of people. And you really don't need special qualifications to stand for election. You just have to care.

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Or if you can't dedicate the time for that - try looking closely at your candidates green policys. Party politics at a local level can be so different from the national one. You might find that voting for a Conservative candidate with a very strong Green agenda might be more benefical for your area than having a Green candidate at all