GreenerPolitics

Britain’s first Green MP?
02 May 2008
By: Lewis Hannam

www.channel4.com

A councillor has vowed to become Britain’s first Green MP after historic results in yesterday’s local elections.

Adrian Ramsay, leader of the Green Party in Norwich, helped his party become the opposition group on a council for the first time in its national history last night.

The 26-year-old has now set his sights on former Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s parliamentary seat, as he bids to take the Green Party into Westminster for the first time.

lthough such boasts are common in political circles, Ramsay’s now appear to be based on firm electoral support.

From the 13 wards up for election in Norwich City Council’s elections yesterday, the Green Party won 29 per cent of the vote - more than 10,000 votes - the highest share of the vote in the city.

Labour got 25 per cent of the vote, meaning it held control of the council, with 15 seats, as opposed to the Greens’ 13.

Ramsay said: “The results show that we are the main challenge to Charles Clarke in the Norwich South constituency.

“Residents in Norwich now know what to do if they want to see Green representation in Parliament - they can vote for it.”

Clarke’s fellow Labour MP David Lepper’s Brighton Pavilion seat is the other great Green hope for national success, with the Green Party picking up a big share of the votes there too.

Ramsay said it was the Green Party’s “positive” campaign which had helped it win a record number of seats.

He added: “With the extra seats we will be pushing for policies such as higher levels of affordable housing in new developments.

“Better and more recycling will also be a focus, as well as more support for green businesses and technology.

“We’ll also be fighting hard to stop plans for hundreds of new homes on greenfield sites around the city - something which the other parties just seem to be going along with.”

from Time.com

On Monday, the clamorous animal rights group PETA announced it would award $1 million to the first person to come up with a way to make commercially viable in vitro meat by 2012. The fake meat would have to be indistinguishable from the real deal, according to competition rules, and it would have to be cheap enough to succeed in the marketplace.

In theory, this seems like an excellent idea, with the potential to ease the burden on the environment from meat production, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve human health. In practice, however, the chances of anyone actually winning the prize seem slim. “No one has yet produced [in vitro meat]. No one has succeeded in coming close,” says Dr. Stig Omholt, director of Norway’s Centre for Integrative Genetics and chair of the In Vitro Meat Consortium, which held its first symposium this month. Still, Omholt says, “it seems possible to develop this technology.

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By Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:

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from badvista.fsf.org

When you turn on your computer, you’re making a political statement. If, like most people, your computer boots Microsoft Windows, the statement you’re making is that transnational corporations should control access to the most powerful public media that ever existed.

–New Internationalist Magazine Nov. 2006

In January and February of this year, the Green Party and Greenpeace issued warnings about the tremendous threat posed to the environment by the disposable computer mentality promoted in Microsoft’s $500-million Windows Vista marketing campaign. Vista’s steep hardware requirements mean that to use it, most people will have to throw their current computer into a landfill and buy a new one.

While these environmental consequences alone are sufficient reason for many to reject Vista, the disposable computer mentality is a symptom of a larger problem—one that should concern all social activists. That problem is the dependency of activists on software owned and exclusively controlled by entities that design their software in ways directly opposed to grassroots social change. No matter what kind of specific change they are working for in society, activists need the freedom to organize and communicate. Yet each time an activist turns on a Vista computer, she is nominating Microsoft and Big Media as exclusive gatekeepers to this freedom.

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by Clayton B. Cornell, Gas 2.0

This could be it: the Th!nk City electric car, a four-seater with 110 mile range and top speed of 65 mph, priced under $25,000, made from 95% recyclable materials, and available in the U.S. in 2009.

The Th!nk City electric car is the product of Norwegian firm Th!nk Global, an auto manufacturer backed by Silicon Valley funding who has plans to assemble the cars in Southern California. In contrast to Tesla’s limited release of 300 cars per year, the Th!nk City is designed for mass production to the tune of 30-50,000 units within a few years. Th!nk already produces about 10,000 of these cars in Europe annually.

As an interesting aside, Ford Motor Company originally developed the vehicle, but (in a move they may soon regret), sold it to Norwegian investors in 2003. Why is it so cool? Because most of us don’t drive more than 40 miles in a day, and small electric cars are optimally suited for congested city driving. The benefits are pretty obvious, but if you’re worried about getting out for the weekend with the Th!nk City, don’t. Use it for city driving and keep that gas-guzzling SUV for forays into the mountains. You’ll still come out ahead.

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