A Sensible Climate
The Combat Climate Change Newsletter
Vol 1/Issue 4

In this issue:

Neutral Miles

We're delighted to announce that the Citygate VW group -

http://www.citygatevolkswagen.co.uk/

has launched its new environmental policy. We have been working on this closely with Citygate over the past several months, with the aim of both making the Citygate business carbon neutral and offering their clients the ability to offset their mileage. The goal is to be both climate-friendly and realistic, so we've worked with Citygate to both reduce their energy consumption (and energy costs), and to offset the carbon emissions that can't be avoided.

To our way of thinking, this is a positive, practical way forward that doesn't shy away from the problems of climate change, but doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater either. Citygate can continue to thrive, Citygate's customers can continue to drive, but their environmental impact is minimised.

More Warmth!

The range of climate-friendly products in our online shop continues to grow and this month we've added the Radiator Booster:

»» Visit the shop.

This strikes us as a rather clever development. The idea of putting foil (or similar) down the back of radiators has been around for a long time - with the intention of making better use of the heat that's emitted from the back of radiator panels. The Radiator Booster goes one step further by using two miniature electric fans to actively suck the warm air out from behind radiators. You get far more heat in the room - and so can reduce your overall energy use - while the power requirement for the fans is tiny. Your carbon footprint is smaller and your fuel bills are smaller. It makes sense to us.

African Developments

We mentioned last month that we have various new developments in the pipeline for 2008. Well, we're now in a position to say that we've started the initial 'scoping' work on offsetting CO2 emissions through solar power schemes in Botswana and Tanzania.

Now, we're deeply, deeply sceptical people and we're fully aware of how problematic an overseas offsetting project can be. And we still do favour UK-based schemes where we can (though those, too, aren't without their problems).

Top

However, we're also very aware of the need for fairness in the world. Excess CO2 is a problem caused by industrialisation. Industrialisation has brought immense benefits which we in Britain and elsewhere now enjoy - not least, electricity. We cannot expect the rest of the world to forgo those same benefits - that is manifestly unfair and unrealistic. And so the way forward has to be to try and find ways of making those benefits happen without the same CO2 emissions. Hence solar power in Africa.

Since Last Time

Since the last issue of A Sensible Climate, our regular news updates have looked at -

~ Geo- or social-engineering. The issue of nuclear power is never going to be a clear-cut one, and ways of tackling future energy requirements have to be looked at for all their consequences.

~ Politicians getting it wrong (again). The London congestion charge changes deal another blow to fighting climate change. We can't trust our leaders.

~ Hating Americans. The quite grim predictability of the high profile American attacks on anything to do with tackling climate change makes it all too easy to hate Americans.

~ Fear - a man's best friend? Sometimes, for all that we're familiar with climate change issues, we get scared.

We firmly believe that getting to grips with climate change means being well informed about it, and we hope our news updates will help our readers be just that. Climate change will have consequences for us all - we all owe it to ourselves to understand the issues.

That's all for this edition. Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Stewart Grew
MD, Combat Climate Change Ltd.

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