Just been watching the BBC TV news about the current climate change meeting taking place in the States. George Bush says he won’t do anything about emissions unless China does it too. Average CO2 emissions per person in the USA? 20 tonnes. And China? Just 3.5 tonnes.

Stop pointing to China as the world’s biggest polluter George. Of course it’s big - it’s an enormous country. America is nearly six times as bad when you discount the size difference.

We ALL need to make changes.  Squabbling over who does what first is just a childish waste of time.

That’s how an excellent article in this week’s Spectator describes the way Western countries are attempting to limit the growth of developing nations such as China and India, on the pretext of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

On 27 September, George Bush - a man who has consistently opposed all attempts to get US emissions reduced - will host a conference in Washington at which he is widely expected to call for the imposition of cuts in emissions in developing nations. 

His call will ignore three key facts:

* Emissions per head of population in developing nations are way below those of developed countries.

* Large chunks of their emissions are due to the fact that they are now producing goods for the West. We’ve effectively shifted our own manufacturing abroad, because it saves us money.

* We have no right to demand that foreigners continue to live in poverty. We had our industrial revolution; now they are having theirs.  

The original Kyoto treaty - from which Bush withdrew - exempted developing nations for these very reasons.

As the Spectator article points out, since 1997, Western efforts to cut carbon emissions have come to almost naught. US carbon emissions are now 15% higher than they were in 1990 - the baseline used for all Kyoto targets. Japan’s emissions have risen by 11%. While EU carbon emissions have fallen by 2.9%, overall greenhouse gas emissions have risen.

In spite of this record of non-achievement, the West is increasingly hectoring the developing world on its carbon emissions.

But look at the facts:

Per head of population, in 2003 the Chinese emitted 3.2 tonnes of carbon and India 1.9 tonnes. The US, on the other hand, emitted 19.8 tonnes of carbon per capita. The UK emitted 9.4 tonnes, Germany 9.8 tonnes and France 6.4 tonnes. And, of course, these figures would have been even higher, had we not outsourced much of our manufacturing to countries such as China. 

I’d encorage you to read the Spectator article. It’s an illuminating and somewhat depressing piece of journalism that points out the utter hypocrisy of Western governments.

Claims that increased solar activity is the cause of global warming – rather than man-made greenhouse gases – have now been comprehensively disproved by a scientific study.

The study was undertaken by Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, UK, and Claus Frolich of the World Radiation Centre in Davos, Switzerland.

It shows that, since the mid-80s, solar activity has been moving in the opposite direction to that which would be required to explain global warming. This means that the world should have been cooling over the past 20 years, if the sun were the cause. It hasn’t, of course - in fact the six hottest years ever recorded have all been within the last 10 years. 

Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, described the paper as: “The final nail in the coffin for people who would like to make the Sun responsible for present global warming.”

The Study was reported in Nature on 5 July and made it to mainstream media on 11 July with this report in one of UK’s national newspapers, The Independent.

Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued a stark warning that the threat of global warming is much greater - and nearer - than the UN’s recent IPCC report has estimated (as if the IPCC report wasn’t bad enough).

In the UK, attention was drawn to the story by Tuesday’s front page lead article in the Independent newspaper. The scientists’ paper, “Climate Change and Trace Gases” was originally published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Some of the more important points raised by the report are that:

* Sea levels rises may be as high as several metres by the end of this century.

* We have only around 10 years in which to implement draconian measures to curb CO2 emissions before we reach the dreaded “tipping point”, beyond which events will be beyond our control.

 * The additional heat from global warming may trigger an “albedo flip” - when the sunlight which is normally reflected by white ice is subsequently absorbed by the dark surface of the open ocean, once the ice has melted.

The researchers, from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of California, Santa Barbera, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, were led by James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute, who was the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming.

This isn’t some trumped up media story, written by a bunch of loony environmentalists with their own agenda. It’s a densely referenced paper from a group of respected scientists who have a real understanding of how we are ruining this planet. And it’s bloody scary.

Today was World Environment Day…apparently. Is it just me or was this somewhat of an underwhelming day? Perhaps my expectations were misaligned, there i was thinking there would be huge fanfare from governments and businesses all jumping on, lots of events, lots of media coverage. Perhaps there was in places, and in certain countries, but not that i saw in the UK. Not even those trusted bastions of environmentalism, the Independent and the Guardian had much to say on it. If i am missing the point , someone let me know…..or perhaps everyone is just too focused on the upcoming G8, which will have far greater reaching consequences in the battle to curb carbon emissions, hopefully postive ones. There’s clearly been a lot of posturing by countries in the lead up to the G8, the US asking for a completely separate negotiating framework outside of the UN (surprise) to be started next year, Germany and the UK insisting a deal be done at the G8. Let’s hope this is just postering and that a deal of substance will be done….the world expects in hope.

Some findings from a poll being conducted by the UK Environment Agency in the run up to World Environment day (which is tomorrow!!):

41% of people surveyed in the UK say they are doing something to tackle climate change.

The remaining 59% of people not taking any action against climate change consists of:

- 37% who say they are not doing anything, and

- 21% who say they don’t know what to do…

Even in a country where global warming is so prevalent in the national press there is clearly still a long way to go to really unleash the power of individuals to make a difference. Again we say get on the EarthFireIce Map and pledge to make a difference. Its free. Its easy and it counts…

I came across the Innocent Drinks website today - for those of us in the UK and other western european countries, you’ll be familiar with those very tasty fruit smoothies. The website is very cool, but what really stuck in my mind was the whole discussion they’ve encouraged on their site and on their blog around reducing the carbon footprint for one of their drinks. They openly admit they dont have all the answers, they’re open about what they are currently not doing or doing poorly. Plus they give practical suggestions, just like our very own pledges, for what individuals can do in their daily lives to start to make a difference. Awesome. It’s so refreshing to see companies start to approach it in this way and educate their users about individual action. Let’s hope more companies start to do this, it’s a complex area and companies have an enormous role to play in educating people everywhere.

Came across this very cool looking new tool, defintely one worth using if you live in North America, and hopefully it should soon work for European airlines - Real Costs
By using this plug in when on major airline and e-commerce travel sites, you get to see the carbon emissions of the travel you are buying and can compare across different modes of transport such as plane, train and car. To me this is key, individual action is not so much about any particular single pledge you may make. Rather the pledge is just a means to a state of mind whereby you are more conscious of the impact of all our decisions and consumer choices and purchases, where the carbon impact has a higher share of mind. Real costs is a very useful tool to help consumers get to that mindset.

Onwards and upwards, EarthFireIce have passed their first milestone, 1,000 pledges of individual action against climate change. A very long way to go still in our quest to get a million pledges, the hard work is just starting, but pleasing nonetheless. So thank you all those who have pledged so far! Please help spread the word, tell your friends and family and neighbour’s dog, and so forth. We signed all our charity papers this evening, which if we hadnt all been on the point of passing out with exhaustion would have been quite exciting - i think. Lots and lots of great ideas and plans for what we will do next, and some big things in the pipeline in terms of marketig activities, which is very exciting. As for now though…well sleep beckons. Good night, and sweet dreams.

WOuldnt it be nice if actually we didnt even need to make any effort for the effects of pledges like the ones we have here on earthfireice.com to be fulfilled. Well, maybe, just maybe, we are beginning to see this, and some long over due common sense prevail. Australia have just announced they are phasing out all old style lightbulbs over the next 3 years - huzzah! Now, why cant every government just do that? And make us have to worry about one thing less. That would be a good start!

Welcome. And thanks for stopping by. What, you may ask yourself, is all this EarthFireIce (EFI) stuff about? Good question, let me try and explain. EFI at its core is about climate change and it’s about individuals. It’s about why we as individuals care about the planet we live on. Everyone (we hope!) is aware of climate change. Much is made in the media about what governments should and should not be doing, which companies are polluting and which are making themselves carbon neutral. All very valid, but ultimately carbon offsetting and carbon neutrality will only get you so far. We as individuals need to take some responsibility. We need to reduce the amount of carbon we emit through our daily lives. Oh gosh, i hear you groan. here’s another one rabbitting on about how i need to radically alter my life, never travel again, and generally stop doing all the fun things. Not at all. All it requires is each and every individual to start doing simple things, such as turning out the lights in rooms they are not in, or avoiding products in supermarkets which have excessive packaging when you are presented with a choice, perhaps walking a little more often instead of always driving and so forth. And then we have a significant impact on climate change. So EarthFireice…basically, we’re using two of the most extreme marathons on the planet, in the Sahara and at the North Pole, to kick start our campaign to drive awareness around climate change and individual action using a funky (we hope!) Google Maps integration to encourage people to pledge to make small little changes in their every day life which will help our lovely planet. In addition, you can upload photos and text to show up on your marker on the map with your pledges, an encouragement to express to all why you care about this planet so much (cos we know you do!). So go on people, make a pledge, and take action - now!

Nervous - excited - apprenhensive - optimistic - stressed - energetic - exhausted. Emotions everywhere after the last few days. Trying to keep the day job going while doing this campaign has been manic but we’re on the final stretch now…

More and more I am beginning to feel a persistent sense of excitement… I’m looking forward to the next two weeks. To everything. Late nights working on the campaign, progressing our application as a UK charity, thinking about public relations schemes / activities and most importantly working to make sure that a gazillion individual supporters visit this website and support this campaign. Really, the more I think about this, the more I know the Earthfireice campaign can make a big difference. If each supporter contributed a 1 tonne pledge to decrease their carbon then a million supporters would bring us a million tons of CO2. It feels like an ambitious goal, but perhaps we should be even more ambitious. After all a 1 tonne saving is entirely achievable…. to save 500kg of CO2 in a year a recent local newspaper suggested that each person could recyle a quarter of their household waste or walk (instead of drive) for every journey less than 3 miles. And those are just two small measures. There are others.

Happy and tired. Been multi-tasking again - working, earthfireice-ing and wedding-planning. Today the challenge was to select wedding invitations. Thinking again of global warming (which seems to be a full time thought stream now) I suggested recycled wedding invitations… apparently a tough choice amongst the million options. As if there wasn’t already enough to keep me busy a friend twisted my arm into entering a competition with him… it requires us to write a business plan. So far I’ve been a silent partner on that campaign. On the education front I finally managed to get hold of a copy of “An Inconvenient Truth”. A fantastic film. Clear, concise and a great motivator to take action. I think its a must see for all EarthFireIce supporters.
And finally on the training front, life is good for me and I’m good as new again since my weekend 28km. Sadly not so for Sean, but I think we both know that walking or running… this is going to happen now either way…

Yes, today was the day. The day the masses were engaged, the day the scientists officially and finally realised they needed to talk the language of the masses and not the language of research reports, the day the individual was called to take action on an…INDIVIDUAL level. Yes, today saw the official launch of Global Cool - and their 10 year journey to get 1 BILLION PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION AND SAVE A TONNE EACH / YEAR. Read more about it on their site and a full story here.

We love these guys, their message and what they are doing. And we want to help them as much as we can - which is why we’ve partnered with them and will be working closely - we’re looking at ways to promote them as much as we can through our events, and ultimately we’d like everyone who pledges on our map to be part of the bigger Global Cool community, be part of their BILLION.

my mission today: fit out the flat with energy saving light bulbs. the first of what I hope will be many mini-missions to make a difference and save a planet. a small move yes, an easy one yes… but by the estimates of stop global warming my 4 new light bulbs will save approximately 200kg of CO2 per year. On my rough estimates if every household in the UK did this we would save a mere 5 million tons of CO2 this year. Get moving support this site and save a planet! There’s a lot more that can be done…

Talking of CO2… some interesting talk from the UK government today: (1) a carbon credit card and (2) developments on carbon offsetting.