Tony Whitehead, RSPB South West Regional Office

With the DECC Minister Greg Barker saying yesterday that it’s not at all realistic that a Severn Barrage Bill will come before parliament this term we think now is the ideal time for everyone to take stock and look anew at generating power from the Severn. We look here at the issues in advance of a major sustainable Severn Conference in April at UWE Bristol, organised by…

Researchers have found a common physical cause behind recent severe weather extremes, such as the heat waves in the United States in 2011 and Russia 2010, and the 2010 Pakistan flood. They say that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow around the world’s northern hemisphere, through a subtle resonance mechanism.

Atmospheric ‘waves’ between tropical and Arctic regions are an…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Helen Leach closes Go Green Week with a final post on  how to strive for a paperless office...

The concept of the paperless office has been around for decades. All around us our day to day activities are becoming electronic, such as having an Oyster Card to travel round…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Helen Leach from our Norwich office discusses the merits of ridding her world of food packaging.

More and more of our food is purchased surrounded by plastic packaging – four apples can be nestled in three different types of plastic just to get them from the supermarket…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Olivia Betts, in our PR team here at The Lodge  shares the tips she's picked up to make her bathroom greener.

A slightly unpleasant note for Go Green Week, but I like a challenge – how to make bathroom time greener!

35% of our domestic water goes down the loo…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Here's Wendy Johnson, a media officer based at The Lodge, talking about her love of swapping the car for a stroll.

About a month ago we had a friend to stay for the weekend and on Saturday morning we all took a stroll to the shops on the end of the road to get breakfast…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Today Andy Waters from our Midlands office shares what he loves about growing his own veg...

In silence a small brown bag is exchanged for a white tin. The illicit deal is done: a sponge cake for a handful of runner beans and two beetroot.

Alright, I confess. I’ve been…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Our second blogger is Kim Matthews. Kim is Campaigns Officer and works in our Norwich office.

“We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow worm!” said Winston Churchill.

Worms are a bit like marmite; you either love them or hate them. I didn’t like to touch…

In honour of Go Green Week, we've handed the climate blog over to colleagues to share what they are doing in their own lives to make a difference.

Laura Stevens from our PR team is our first guest blogger...

I like the idea of being a vegetarian, but the fact that all you have to do is say “bacon sandwich” and I’m salivating means that it’s just not going to work. But in honour of Go Green Week, I’ve decided to…

(Blog by Climate Change Policy Officer, Helen Blenkharn)

Not enough is the short answer! The UK needs a serious push to get us on the path to a low carbon future and make the green economy the only economy we know.

The Good

In May 2010 David Cameron told civil servants that he wanted to lead “the greenest Government ever”. The signs were promising in Scotland too - Alex Salmond boldly pledged that Scotland would go…

To me it feels like the issue of aviation and the UK’s airports is slowly emerging from hibernation. This cauldron of debate, misinformation and lobbying is beginning to feel hot to the touch again.

However, perhaps that’s just because I was personally thrown right into the thick of this debate at the start of the week. I endured and enjoyed what was  one of my toughest experiences on behalf of the RSPB to…

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer

'Carbon Bomb' projects threaten explosion in global emissions

Yesterday, this was a headline in BusinessGreen. The article was about a new Greenpeace report called ‘Point of No Return’ which suggests that the world’s 14 largest planned fossil fuel projects will increase emissions by 20 per cent. It seems absolutely crazy to me that despite all the warnings…

Much of the UK is hunkering down for a weekend of expected snow.  My friend Andrew, along with farmers across the land, will be bracing himself for a hard slog of feeding animals – he sent me this today from Wiltshire:

It is January, when snow probably should be expected here, and it’s not too hard to forget about global warming, and perhaps even accord a little credence to the deniers.

Yet beyond our…

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer

Last year Rolling Stone magazine published an eye-opening article called ‘Global warming’s terrifying new math’ which said three numbers should be enough to convince you that we’re in serious trouble:

                           Scientists agree that average global temperatures must be stabilised at less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the most dangerous effects…

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer 

I hear so much about onshore wind these days, are fossil fuels even a big deal in the UK any more? 

Yes, they are! In fact, demand for fossil fuels in the UK could be on the verge of a resurgence!

For example:

Fuel Type

Extracted

Used

Proven Reserves[1…

Helen Blenkharn  Climate Change Policy Officer

It’s that time of year again when our energy use soars through the roof as we warm our homes from the January weather - the extra couple of degrees on the central heating, the extra hour with the gas fire on in the evening, the higher setting on the electric blanket.... In the winter period it’s more important than ever that energy is available on demand and that we…

If you've been following this blog you'll know that we are very concerned about what a switch to wood-fired power stations would mean for the world's forests and for our climate

In fact, we were one of the first organisations in the UK to ring the alarm bell on this issue. In autumn 2011 we published a review of industry plans and worked out that 39 new 'biomass' power stations, which would mostly be fuelled…

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer

It’s back again!

The Severn Barrage, which has been proposed by countless developers since the end of the 10^th century, is back on the cards, with a new proposal for a £25bn scheme from Hafren Power. The proposal is on the front page of today’s FT and the Energy and Climate Change Committee is holding an inquiry into the scheme.

  There's been a long line…

John Lanchbery, at the UNFCCC conference

Two days to go at the global climate negotiations in Doha and the sun continues to shine outside, although not much light percolates through to the negotiations.  Ministers have arrived now and with them have come the journalists; I am sitting next to John Vidal from the Guardian and may ask him to proof read this blog.  Roger Harabin from the BBC has just arrived next to John,…

John Lanchbery, at the Doha UNFCCC conference

Sunday, and I am just back from an early morning walk around the dhow wharf, one of last remnants of the old pearl fishing village of Doha.  The rest of the city is brand, spanking new  and stretches far out into the deserts of Qatar.

Thanks to its huge reservoirs of natural gas, the Gulf state of Qatar is the richest country in the world in terms of income per person.  It…

Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, today published the Energy Bill, touted as a once-in-a-generation transformation of our energy infrastructure, promising that it will be ‘good for the planet’.

This is an important reminder that even in these tough times, we still need to invest in new green energy infrastructure for the benefit of the planet as well as our economy. The stakes couldn…

O Canada! My home and native land! True patriot love, in all thy son’s command!

Heather Ducharme

That’s the first line the national anthem of my mother country. However, sitting in the RSPB climate change policy team two desks over from the guy who goes to the UNFCC meetings, I’m sometimes inclined to dissociate from my home and native land, despite the patriot love. Indeed, depending on the extent to which we…

Jim Densham – Senior Land Use Policy Officer (Climate), Scotland.

Way back in July, when the days were long and there were leaves on the trees, I wrote in this blog about Green Travel to Green Places, my RSPB sabbatical. My plan was to travel to RSPB reserves in Scotland to collect stories of climate impacts and only travel by low-carbon transport. I wanted to 1) bust the myth that you can only get to RSPB reserves…

Last week we launched a report that put forward the evidence as to why burning whole trees to generate electricity is a bad thing for the climate. Our report, Dirtier than coal,  put forward two key facts: firstly, that emissions from burning whole conifer trees are 49% higher than coal, and secondly that based on current Government plans the UK will burn the equivalent of six times the total national wood harvest by 2017…

Chris Heaton-Harris MP is ‘clearly in a spin’ over windfarms after he was filmed covertly by Greenpeace.

In his latest anti-environment faux pas, he claims to have been hassling the RSPB ‘because they’ve been crap’ [on wind farm policy].

Commenting on the MP’s outburst, Martin Harper, the RSPB Conservation Director, said: “Chris Heaton-Harris is clearly in a spin over windfarms. If only…