Press Releases and Cuttings

Latest reports:-

"Last 304 Months above 20th Century Average. Greenland glacier retreats One Mile in Two days" Click here to read the Guardian report by John Vidal

"Sustainable Transport Vital as Oil Reserves Run Out" by Jo Simpson from New Civil Engineer Magazine 17.06.2010 Click here to read the short report quoting Sir David King, former government Chief Scientific Advisor

"Grow, grow, grow your own" by Anna Shepard from New Statesman12.07.2010, click here to read about the "One Pot Pledge" and other food issues.

"Six Degrees - Our Life on a Hotter Planet"
Mark Lynas' seminal book "Six Degrees - Our Life on a Hotter Planet" sets out, chapter by chapter, the consequences of one degree of global warming, then two degrees, then three and so on to the worst case scenario, six degrees. Sustainable Woodstock has summarised each chapter from the survivable "one degree" to the devastation that will occur with six degrees of warming. Click here to read the summary, but better still read the book.

Ever wanted to know what the main sources of emisssions are? Read on ... click here

To read a review of Lord Nicholas Stern's Oxford lecture click here

"Probably the Hottest Year on Record" and "Soil Loss Threatens a Hungry Earth"
Extract by John Vidal, Environment Correspondent of The Guardian, December 2010.

2010 was the year of the heatwave. Record temperatures were recorded in 17 countries. Globally it was the hottest since records began in 1850. The seventeen countries were not all grouped in one small quarter of the globe either. They included Russia, Ukraine, Finland, Chad, Kuwait, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as well as Greenland and much of Canada. Average temperatures throughout the last decade have been 0.5 degrees higher than previous averages and the trends are increasing. All the evidence is that the world will be hard pressed to keep global temperature rises below the 2 degrees thought necessary to prevent the tipping point where massive rises in sea levels and the release of permafrost methane will trigger even faster and more catastrophic climate chaos.

And just to make matters worse, within 40 years there will be around 2,000,000,000 more people on earth. Food production will have to increase by 40% and most of that will have to be grown on the fertile soils that cover just 11% of the global land surface.

Yet there is little new fertile land available and according to the UN’s food and agricultural organisation. 75 billion tonnes of soil, (the equivalent of nearly 10 billion hectares) of arable land has been lost to erosion, waterlogging and salination and another 20 million hectares has been abandoned because the soil quality has become degraded.

"The world is facing a serious threat of a major food shortage within the next 30 years," says Professor Keith Goulding, head of sustainable soils at the Rothampstead Institute and President of the British Society of Soil Sciences. "We are trying to grow more food on less land while facing increased costs for fertilisers, fuel and a shortage of water," he claims.

The problem is acute in China where desertification may be the worst in the world and 600 square miles of land turns to desert each year on average. The problem is also highly visible in the grasslands of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

The best hopes lie in the global climate change talks, which have recognised that nearly 30% of all carbon is released from deforestation and the conversion of peatlands and degradation of soils. If agreement can be reached to reward reforestation and conservation there is some hope that the next 2 billion people can be fed.

"Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People?" Click here to read this article by Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex. The author Jules Pretty is based on the Essex and Suffolk border and works at the University of Essex in Colchester. He writes on the importance and relevance of nature for people, and explores the relations between people and the land. His most recent book of essays is The Earth Only Endures: On Reconnecting with Nature and our Place in it (2007; paperback 2009). He has also written widely on the sustainability of agricultural and food systems in both developing and industrialised countries, and books on these topics include Agri-Culture (2002), The Pesticide Detox (2005), An Earthscan Reader on Sustainable Agriculture (2005), The Living Land (1998), and Regenerating Agriculture (1995). He received an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture in the UK and overseas.

"Western Lifestyles are Unsustainable" says world's top climate expert. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that western society must undergo a radical value shift - click here for the full article as it appeared in The Observer Sunday 29th November

Is there a cover up by the International Energy Authority in cahoots with western governments over the true state of the world's oil reserves. Many international experts believe so. Click here to read about "Peak oil; fields of plenty or are we scraping the barrel?" as it appeared in the Observer on Sunday 29th November

Do you support low carbon energy generation from nuclear? Some environmentalist do and other don't. But there is one aspect of nuclear that is often forgotten and that's the impact of Uranium mining in Africa. Click here to read an excellent report by John Vidal of The Guardian on how the UK's nuclear ambitions could ruin the Kalahari landscape

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Press Releases and Cuttings

Less than eight years of landfill space left, warn council leaders