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Get active with your local Greenpeace network
Posted by jamie on 11 August 2009.
If you've been visiting our website regularly, you may have spotted a small but significant change which occurred a couple of weeks ago, when a new 'Community' link appeared in the navigation box to your left. That weeny grey box leads to a whole new section of the website we've been developing over the past year, namely the new online home for our network of active supporter groups across the country.
The network is composed of dedicated volunteers who take Greenpeace campaigns to their local high streets, doing everything from running stalls at festivals to lobbying their MPs about climate change or supermarket managers about fish stocks. It's also the active supporters who help keep our field at Glastonbury running smoothly, and (for the more adventurous) get involved in direct actions.
If any of that appeals to you, or you'd just like to find out more, you can join your local network - just put your town or postcode into the map on the front page and find the nearest one.* Just click the big 'join' button - or if you'd like to get in touch directly, scroll down to find contact details.
You can also find out what events are happening near you; see how enthusiastic and devilishly attractive your fellow supporters are in the image galleries; and debate the ins and outs of environmental campaigning by posting comments on their blogs.
Big, big thanks go to everyone involved in getting this far, including the testers who pushed the site to breaking point and beyond; the trainees who gave up their Saturdays to learn how to use it; and of course the amazing people at Torchbox who built the whole thing.
This of course means we'll be saying a fond farewell to the old Greenpeace Active site which has put in many years of faithful service, but the times they keep a-changin' and it's time to move on to pastures new (or servers new would perhaps be more appropriate).
If you have any comments or queries about the new site, please just post them below.
* If there isn't a network near you, email getactive@uk.greenpeace.org to let us know you're really keen.
Street Teams work - and are worth the effort
Street team style marketing works very well - that's why so many companies do it, and all sorts of organizations do it. (Have you double checked to see if you're using recycled paper, hmmm? Earth friendly!)
I've noticed that lately a lot of people are working towards excising coal as the dominant form of energy production. It's a great thing - coal needs to go. Not only is the mining harmful, but in purely scientific terms coal plants are inefficient at best. The amount of energy that's extracted out of coal is pathetic compared to the amount of pollutants released, so if nothing else, there needs to be a better way to deliver the amount of energy that's demanded.
Unfortunately, my green energy friends, solar and wind power are not the answer. You can use them for a single home, but wind farms and solar farms are incredibly inefficient - for the following reasons:
Solar and wind both require large areas in order to large amounts of power. For instance, a wind farm in Florida produces about 750 MW of power, from a power reservation that totals 47,000 acres. That's pathetic. Both solar and wind require optimal conditions in order to function - wind turbines require a minimum and maximum speed, in the range of about 5 mph and a max of 25 mph, or thereabouts, in order to work, and solar - well, that speaks for itself. Countries in which solar is more widely distributed use it in an auxiliary form, such as a water heater. Hydroelectric is not a realistic solution either.
The best option, no matter what way you slice it, is the one power generation method that everyone loves to hate - and I hate to say it - but it's nuclear. A nuclear energy plant that will fit on a reservation that's 10% the size of the wind plant in Florida (a 750 MW station) can produce up to or over 1000 MW. (One day, perhaps 1.21 GW...Great Scot!)
Also, considering that a U235 pellet the size of a thimble contains the same amount of potential energy contained in a boxcar (a few tons) of coal or about 40,000 gallons of nat. gas...there is no competition. Safe storage can be figured out - it can't be THAT hard. (Human kind figured out how to put a man on the moon, created the internet, etc. Where to store a few drums and seal them effectively can't be THAT difficult.) A lot of people I know really hate to hear it, but there it is - the best option is nuclear. I know it's going to make a lot of people mad, but unfortunately, that's where the evidence lies.
nuclear power - no thanks
I couldn't read the previous comment without responding. Everything stated in the comment is wrong.
We don't need nuclear. The risks of leaks and other accidents from generating stations are very real and more frequent than people realise.
The cost of mining uranium is not cheap in terms of both the health of the miners or the carbon cost incurred by transporting the stuff (no handy uranium mines in the Uk). If dealing with the waste was really not that difficult I think a viable solution would have been found by now (apart from building bombs with the by products). It hasn't, and isn't likely to be.
Maybe the author of the previous comment should read a little more widely. Solar, wind and tidal power are effective, and as funding and technical advances increase, will become more so. Localized and microgeneratiion is likely to be the long term answer as a huge proportion of power is currently lost on the journey from power station to consumer. And yes, I would like windmill in my back garden. Better that than a nuclear power station.
Also - why the link to financial marketing - it seems just a little misplaced.