10 African countries threatened by sea storm surges

On this, Dr Stephen Salter tells me in an email that there is evidence that wave power technology, by extracting energy from the sea, tend to resist coastal erosion and even cause beaches to build up. Although the wave power machines are designed to let storms pass over them, it is still the case that by building up beaches, wave power technology will reduce the damage caused by storm surges.

Restoration of the mangroves will also help to protect the seashore. In th eglobal greens' Conference lat year I met a Senegalese guy who had planted thousands of mangroves successfully, aided by his children aged 7 and 8.

!IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report that World Bank researchers have crunched population, economic, and elevation maps to analyse which countries are most at risk from storm surges, assuming a one metre rise in sea level (due to climate change).

"A Comparative Analysis of Impacts in Developing Countries, reveals "very heavy potential losses. [which] further strengthen the case for rapid action to protect endangered coastal populations".

The 10 countries with the largest increases in at-risk land area are:

Mozambique - http://www.irinnews.org/Africa-Country.aspx?Country=MZ

Madagascar - http://www.irinnews.org/Africa-Country.aspx?Country=MG

Nigeria - http://www.irinnews.org/Africa-Country.aspx?Country=NG

Mauritania - http://www.irinnews.org/Africa-Country.aspx?Country=MR

Senegal -

Guinea-Bissau -

Cote d'Ivoire -

Gabon -

South Africa -

Somalia -
"

Cameron's Conservative MEPs vote against European Green Change

The Green/EFA group in the European Parliament has provided a great site where we can find how our MEPs voted.

I checked out a few of the voting patterns of the Conservative group in the European Parliament. The results are below. The results should make David Cameron feel sick to his stomach, make him realise how completely he has failed to "green" his party.

It is another example of the way that politicians love to give out sound bites which are a green veneer to their party's stercoric voting record.

In this Euro-election campaign Dave "Spare Change" Cameron will be uttering his mellifluous assurances about the "green" credentials of his NuCon party, but we know better.

Here is the record:
Conservative MEPs:

• Wanted to exclude major polluting industries from pollution limits under EU legislation
• Insisted on exempting big, polluting cars from stricter pollution standards under EU legislation
• Wanted weaker car CO2 emissions limits and wants to delay these limits in line with the demands of the manufacturers
• Supported weaker rules to regulate hazardous chemicals
• Thought the EU should ignore the scientific advice it has already accepted and set lower, insufficient targets for CO2 emissions
  
• Thought EU climate policies should not reflect the reality necessary to prevent dangerous global warming
• Opposed closing tax havens and capping bankers' bonuses
• Believed human rights in Turkmenistan were less important than access to its gas
• Wanted weaker car CO2 emissions limits and wants to delay these limits in line with the demands of the manufacturers
• Did not believe new power plants should be built to the cleanest possible standards
• Did not believe the EU's energy efficiency target should be made binding
• Did not believe the EU should have a plan to phase out dangerous nuclear power

So there we go. Do not believe what the Tories say - look at what they do.

Just how corrupt are our MPs?

The following email is still doing the rounds:

  *Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than  600
> employees and has the following employee statistics .** **
>
> 29 have been accused of spouse abuse
>
> 7 have been arrested for fraud
>
> 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques
>
> 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
>
> 3 have done time for assault
>
> 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
>
> 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
>
> 8 have been arrested for shoplifting *
> *
> **21 are currently defendants in lawsuits** **
>
> 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year
>
> Which** **organisation is this ?** **
>
> It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks
> out
> hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline.
>
> What a bunch of bastards we have running our country - it says it all. And
> just to top all that they probably have the best 'corporate' pension scheme
> in the country!! **

It is a lie.  The Guardian in 2006 says:
It originated in 1999 in the US, on a libertarian website called Capitol Hill Blue
- the giveaway is the "little over 500", the size of the US House and
Senate combined - and similar variants have previously been found in
Canada and India. The claims weren't true in the US and they are certainly not true in the UK. 

The fact that it is still doing the rounds is a symptom of how low MPs and politicians have fallen in public opinion.

On the one hand Government does deserve to be viewed like this, because of their dissociation from reality (two examples spring to mind: GBs repeated assertions that we are leading the world in climate change, while he is doing the opposite; and Lord Malloch Brown's assertion that the UK's performance in Afghanistan is "successful".)

On the other hand, MPs embody the principle of democracy, and that is a principle which is beyond value.  Governments may reveal varying levels of crapness, but just look at Somalia if you want to do away with government, or Zimbabwe if you doubt the usefulness of fair(ish) elections.

The sad thing is that many of the people who take the email at face value will go ahead and read the schmedia, and will go ahead and vote for the grey parties, or worse still, abstain from voting or vote BNP.  The logical thing to do if you are critical of Government is to vote for the Green Party, whose ideology is firmly based on physical, biological and human reality.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai criticised for selecting former warlord as election running mate - Guardian

Afghan president Hamid Karzai criticised for selecting former warlord as election running mate : "Senior diplomats and human rights workers lashed out at Hamid Karzai's decision today to select a powerful warlord accused by western officials of involvement in criminal gangs and arms smuggling as a running mate in Afghanistan's presidential election.

Karzai's decision to defy international pressure and appoint Mohammad Qasim Fahim as one of his two vice-presidential candidates for the 20 August poll showed the world and the Afghan people that the president was 'moving the country backwards', said a western diplomat in Kabul, who is close to the UN chief in the country, Kai Eide."

Well at least he is not accused of involvement in the drugs trade. Unlike Karzai's brother.

The presidential elections will happen on August 20th 2009, four months later than constitutionally required. The delay is due to the security situation (for which read the ever-increasing pressure from the opium-funded Taleban).

There are only a couple of other presidential candidates, and a strong anti-Karzai coalition has not yet been formed.

What the world needs is an Afghan president who is prepared to buy the opium from the poppy farmers and enable the WHO to pass it to places where it is needed to relieve terminal pain.

The US has pledged $40million for the elections, so for that kind of money you'd think they could buy a president who can see the logic of legitimising 40% of the Afghan economy.

Still, let us look on the bright side. The Right Honorable Lord Malloch-Brown Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says in a personal communication that the UKs performance in Afghanistan "has been, and continues to be, impressive and successful".

That would be "success" as in "Gallipoli was a successful beach landing".

European Petition on the Green New Deal

The European Green Party has a petition for the Green New Deal:

There is a way to combat climate change, and there is an answer to the economic crisis. Introducing a Green New Deal we can fight both at the same time. We need policies which will:

* create green collar jobs for five million Europeans within 5 years
* mobilise a cohesive strategy for private and public investment in the green economy that amounts to 500 billion Euros over the next five years (0,75% of the GDP of the EU)
* keep energy affordable
* help to fight climate change and green the European economy

The Green New Deal will set the European economy on a sustainable path and place Europe at the forefront of the Green industrial revolution.
Petition

Sign-up on the link at the top to support the core of the European Green New Deal, investing 500 Bn € to employ five million Europeans in greening Europe by 2014.

The petition will be submitted to the new elected Presidents of the European Parliament and the Commission as well as to the Swedish EU Presidency before the Copenhagen Climate negotiations on the Post Kyoto Agreement.

Worth a minute of our time.

Vote BNP or Vote Green Party

The official Green Party position is that we will be boycotting any platform that includes the BNP. Although I can see the rationale, and feel the same repugnance as others at sitting alongside authoritarian candidates, we could find ourselves to be self - excluded from the political debate, and could play into their hands, by associating ourselves with the self-satisfied political elite of the Westminster parties if they also boycott, and on the other hand, if the ConLabLibdems do show up at hustings platforms, we would simply lose out.

Euro elections are regarded by the electorate as unimportant, and so present a chance for them to make a protest vote. We benefited from this in the 80s, UKIP had their boost last time, and now it looks as if the BNP is going to cash in this time. There is a phenomenal disaffection with conventional politics at present, with the credit crunch, bonuses, MP allowances, police brutality and surveillance, not to mention really big things like climate change. Greens should be positioning ourselves as the valid, constructive alternative to the mainstream parties, and to do this we have to challenge the BNP head on. We are diametrically opposed to their approach: we stand for wide democracy, they stand for authoritarianism. We stand for social inclusion and they stand for social exclusion.

In any debate, their strength is in the popular opposition to immigration (built up by the daily drip-drip of right wing press reportage), and they will make political capital by characterising our policy as "open door".

We should open any debate by regretting that we are having to reopen discussion on a matter that was settled in 1945, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of British lives, and expressing our regret that the sacrifices of patriotic British servicemen who were injured and died in WWII in the fight against fascism is being set aside. We should be ready as we do so to make a precise and detailed comparison between Nazi and BNP policies.

The sound psychological analysis of the BNP and Nazis is that they both use the psychological defence mechanism of projection to load all the negative things in their lives onto an identifiably separate group, in Hitler's case, the Jews, and in Griffin's case, the immigrants.

Greens make an uncompromising stand for the absolute rights of political asylum seekers to come here, and make no apology for our desire to speed up and simplify the acceptance process for asylum seekers.

We should emphasise that our global approach to politics means a preventive solution to immigration. Why do people leave Afghanistan to come here? War. (Our solution to Afghanistan - buy and use the opium) Why are Iraqis coming here? War. (We opposed the BushBlair invasion) Why Somalis? War (We seek a comprehensive UN/OAU solution in Somalia).

Repression, torture and political imprisonment drive people to leave their homes and families and come here. We propose a Global Human Rights Index.

Endemic poverty drives "economic migrants". We advocate global equity and non-violent resolution of conflict. Global warming will increase the wave of migration, as people flee flooded and arid lands. We should be calling for an amnesty for all illegal migrants (for their own sake, and to take them out of the hands of the criminal gang masters). We should be calling for a big drive against the criminal, exploitative people traffickers. We should set up refuges and channels for sexually exploited migrants to escape their captors.

Joblessness and housing shortage are the burners that lift the BNP hot air balloon.
GND+ and Right to Rent, with re-use of empty properties and new build of eco-homes is our answer.

In summary, the debate with the BNP offers us a chance to set out our relevant and radical policies clearly, a chance to give leadership to the grey parties on how to defeat the BNP arguments.

It is a difficult question, and I accept that the majority position of the GP is to boycott, but there is a strong case for us to go on the platform and challenge the BNP, setting out our claim to the vote of those who are angry and disaffected by the mess that grey politicians have made, and making clear that there is a humane, constructive and Green way of expressing that disaffection in the ballot box.

To avoid the debate is to deny ourselves the chance to put ourselves forward as the sensible way to make a protest vote, and may well be exploited by our opponents in all parties as political priggery, cowardice, and laziness (because those, sadly, are the kind of terms that are used in the electoral debate).

Government's mortgage rescue schme has only assisted one family

Government's mortgage rescue scheme has only assisted one family: "It was announced with much fanfare in September at the height of the banking crisis - the government's big idea to stop vulnerable people being thrown out of their homes. But yesterday it emerged that the mortgage protection scheme has so far helped just one family across the whole of the UK.
...

The shadow housing spokesman, Grant Schapps, seized on the figures, saying they revealed the rescue scheme, which was expected to cost £285m and help 6,000 families over the next two years, to be a sham. 'Thousands of families have looked to Gordon Brown for help to survive his recession and he's looked the other way. He got us into this mess and he needs to help ordinary families through it,' he said.

A government spokesman said local councils were now actively considering applications for the scheme from more than 450 other families, and insisted it had always expected it to take three months to get off the ground.

Under the scheme, homeowners struggling with their repayments should be able to sell a share of their property - or all of it - to a social landlord and rent it back, enabling them to stay in their home instead of facing repossession.

The basic idea is perfectly straightforward and simple, and is Green Party Policy, called the Right to Rent. You lose your job, you cannot afford the mortgage, the Government takes over the mortgage, you pay an affordable rent, and get to stay in your house. The mortgage still gets paid, so the mortgage lenders do not collapse under the weight of their derivative "guarantees". Everyone is happy.

Except it has not been rolled out. Why not? I do not know the answer, but the word "Incompetence" springs to mind. Government has shovelled billions into the banks, but cannot get it together to direct a few millions into the real economy.