Insecticide in the first degree

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Another bad year for bees.
I'm sure that some rugged individualist bees with entrepreneurial flair will ride to their rescue at the last minute.

Let's hope our own hives can develop a little more resilience.

Salt and Vinegar

The seas continue to acidify apace.

Biofuel takes to the air
...and crashes to the ground
...without significant benefits along the way

Art's lost subject, anyone?

Once more unto the beach, dear friends.

As a recent poll shows that even those who profess concern about climate change have no intention of cutting down on the jet-fuelled beanos, and as Portugese Men-o-war swarm into the Med' in the latest incursion by the jellied masses, I am tempted to yet again repost this (slightly amended) old chestnut.

Meanwhile - US consumers seem a little more ready than we in the UK to foot the bill. Something to do with leadership, perhaps?

Efforts are made to streamline and revolutionise energy

Bear essentials

While humans concentrate on launching an "affordable" car for billions of bicyclers, and prepare to meltdown the amazon for palm-oil, the incredible shrinking polar bear seeks protection where it may

More on the Polar bear here.

Water and space are at a premium

Manchester Climate Fortnightly (McFly) Number 20 is now available, and , if you live in Greater Manchester, you are cordially invited to the launch of the "Call to real action" to make real progress in decarbonising the city.

Birds of Prey

Birds - forever the canaries in our coalmine -are first off the blocks in the race over the edge. Our own migratory upheavals will not be far behind.

Meanwhile - The EU bottles out of Climate Funding for poor nations whilst the media call for it all to be left to the philanthropic urges of uber-capitalists (who have been doing such a bang-up job lately)

Re-Wild at Heart

Whilst capitalism eats itself, radical re-imaginings are dared.

World Wide Webs

Exotic arachnids (the domestic ones being anoraknids) are surviving winters and establishing themselves in permenant new ranges throughout the UK. Nothing deadly, but a few shocks in store and some nasty bites.

Security issues make their way further and further into our every nook and cranny as Orwell's prescience gets clearer each day.



Pledges are made

Priorities are established

Babylon burns.....
.....in more ways than one

We're not in Kansas anymore, toto...

As if the life of a penguin wasn't shaky enough - climate change is interfering with their familiar ocean-currents and driving them thousands of miles off course, to cast them up starving and battered on the beaches of Brasil.

In a desperate bid to secure re-election our glorious leader has resurrected the prince of darkness to spin the world back into it's right mind, and created a department for energy and climate. This sounds useful and is just in time to address the godawful and unstable state of the nuclear energy industry, the impending nationwide water shortages caused by rainfall shortfalls and river depletion, and the heir to the throne's misquoted pokes at the oil-based food lobby.

Meanwhile our betters are planning wide scale snoops into our e-mail and text lives - presumably part of a wider plan to follow our imperial masters down the road to torture and dissappearances - and the genuinely moving cult of the ghost-bike continues to spread.

Big Brains

In the spirit of the times Throbgoblins International have withdrawn all our collective dosh out of the bank and given it to the richest person we could find. He'll know what to do. Everything'll be alright now.

On further consideration, however, we think that we would have been better advised to send it to the Kew seed bank - which is trying to safeguard plant biodiversity before it all goes bump, so we still have a genetic pot to piss in, as it were. It faces closure due to a lack of funds.

I marvel at our cleverness, don't you?

and I'd just to say.... Peter fucking Mandelson??????

An inalienable right to exist?

A clause in the proposed Ecuadorian constitution - which goes to referendum on Sunday - gives Nature the inalienable right to exist within it's own cycles, and obliges Government to protect it. Nation states being what they are, this could never be as pure as it sounds, but it's a marvellous thing to commit to legislation. Let's hope the rest of it isn't Bollocks, and that Zorro's pessimism is misplaced..

A similar guarantee seems desperately needed in Europe, particularly if one is of the amphibean persuasion ( or a bird, or a fish, or a mammal, or a ...)

Meanwhile- whilst the government that brought you economic meltdown brings you that bit closer to climate chaos with a grand fudge over coal fired power - the more sensible among us re-use what we can, in the hope of having a little something left for the grandkids.

Congratulations to Marc and Sarah on their wedding today. You both deserve many blessings and some time off1

A bird in the hand (is worth two of George Bush)

A report indicates that privately owned fisheries deplete slower and remain viable longer than the habitual free for all of the commons. It neglects to go into the tricky subject of policing or the morality of foreign owned stocks.

Common birds are in freefall (flap, my beauties, flap) all over the planet as climate change and environmental degradation take their toll. It occurs to me that once they (and the frogs) have gone, there's going to be an awful lot of extra insects around (but not bees).

I can't help but have one more slug at the financial f*ck-up. The New York staff of the bankrupt Lehman Bros are to be rewarded for their total incompetence with billions in collective bonuses whilst the likes of you and I are looking at increased taxes to pay for it. Marvellous. Surely there must be some actual moustache twirling going on somewhere, to the soundtrack of heavily echoed BWAHAHAAHAARs

At the Manchester "Labour" party conference - I saw John Prescott standing unguarded, chatting in the street yesterday, in marked contrast to the wailing multi-vehicled cavalcade taking Gordon to lunch. I'm not particularly getting at Brown there. The leadership nonsense is a sideshow. It just showed up how things have changed from old to new labour; from ordinary bloke to celebrity. The streets are blocked off with attractively made barriers that seem designed to distract you from the fact that you are no longer allowed to approach your elected representatives during the congress of the People's party.
I've never seen so many police in the city centre, drafted in from all over the show to rummage through the rucksacks of students and look sideways at foreigners. All very cosmopolitan.