January 2010

Sometime Greenpeace tar sands expert Lorne writes on priceofoil.org in reaction the announcement that Shell are scaling down their tar sands plans...

Remarks made by Shell CEO,Peter Voser to the Financial Times energy editor that his company has "clearly scaled down" its plans for a massive expansion of tar sands production should send waves of anxiety through the Canadian oil industry and a serious rethink among energy security hawks in Washington.

Since the middle of last year I have been writing about the vulnerability of the tar sands industry to a slow down in the growth rate of oil demand. With some of the most expensive cost structures in the oil industry, the future growth of tar sands production requires oil prices to stay high over the long term.

But high oil prices exert a deflating effect on the economy and in turn reduce demand and prices. Compounding this effect is the fact that high oil prices have made large economies that are increasingly dependent on oil imports, such as the USA and China, painfully aware of their economies' vulnerability to the rising cost of oil.

>> Read the rest of the article on priceofoil.org

Food, Inc. opens on 12th February and features factory farming, making it the ideal Valentine's day date film.

25% of us are obese. GM crops have slipped into our grocery stores and kitchen pantries without us knowing. Our food production systems stress animals, rely on ever-increasing quantities of pesticides, and leave one sixth of the world population without secure access to food. That's the contention of Food Inc, a forthcoming film from the same distributors that brought us ‘End of the Line'. It takes a look under the surface of the US food production industry to examine how we get our food in a modern, mechanized society.

While we don't campaign on food issues, it looks like it'll be pretty interesting - check out more details here: www.foodincmovie.co.uk The film opens on the 12th February, and as with other small but worthy films, (like Age of Stupid, for example) it's the first week that makes the difference in terms of getting rebooked - so maybe go along and check it out.

There's a really interesting interview with the new CEO of Shell Peter Voser in the FT today, with an important development for tar-sands watchers. Shell, who are heavily involved in extracting oil from Canadian tar sands, are scaling back a planned expansion of their operations.

Is economic growth at the root of the environmental challenges we're struggling to get to grips with? That's a central tenet of the diagnosis for the 100 Months campaign from our hipster friends at the New Economics Foundation.

But how to illustrate this argument? Enter: The Impossible Hamster, twitchy growth-based anti-hero. nef have also produced a report, Growth Isn't Possible, and so both boxes of the modern campaigning strategy are very much ticked: solid research backed up by meme-hugging hamster video.

So, what do you reckon? Is growth the key problem? And does the hamster take your fancy as the unlikely hero of the fightback?

Charismatic megafauna at play. Did we get your attention?

The word 'biodiversity' is often bandied about as shorthand for 'lots of lovely animals and plants'. We probably think of African plains teeming with herds of antelopes, zebra and wildebeest, a jungle cacophonous with crickets, monkeys and birds, or perhaps a coral reef that looks like a still from Finding Nemo.

But that's because most of us are a little shallow when it comes to the species we co-inhabit this planet with. We get overexcited by the big things, the cuddly things, and the wow! things.

Small islands bereft of mountains are going to sink beneath the waves as sea levels rise and for the millions of people living on them, climate change is not some distant, abstract concept but a concrete reality. As noted last week, the Sundarbans islands of India and Bangladesh have lost four islands completely. Sorry, 'lost' implies that they were carelessly misplaced behind a cupboard. 'Forcibly taken' would perhaps be more apt.

Recovering from the post-copenhagen blues? Want to tell world leaders you expect better? Want to show your support for the activists who spent 20 days in prison over Christmas and New Year for interrupting the heads of state dinner with some simple truths about the scale of failure?

Then take action here.