On 17th December, the European Parliament is due to vote on two pieces of legislation, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive, each of which will lead to large-scale agrofuel expansion through long-term (2020) targets. Those laws are likely to trigger more land conversion, particularly in the global South, to grow fuel for Europe’s cars, at the expense of forests and people, climate, food and biodiversity. Rettet den Regenwald (Rainforest Rescue) is coordinating a campaign to persuade MEPs to vote...

I was asked recently by a friend of a friend to comment on the practicality of building a carbon neutral office tower. Without knowing any better, I bravely suggested that a carbon neutral office tower was not yet possible. The root problem I surmised is that we can’t control the source of energy delivered by the grid. Thus any would-be carbon neutral building needs to generate all of its power on site using renewables to be certain that its energy use is not causing carbon emissions. Assuming that power generation of any kind...

As a sometime environmentalist I often find myself joining email campaigns of the ‘save the whales’ variety, targeting careless corporations and evil industrialists. The Ecological Internet 'Forest Liars' campaign that I signed this morning was different though. It included in its many targets; household eco-warrior names such as WWF, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth. Although I moderated the tone of the pre-composed text, I still felt slightly uncomfortable hitting the ‘send’ button. This...

Despite evidence of the harmful effects of biofuel expansion, the British and European Governments are pushing ahead with legislation to increase biofuel use particularly in transport. I was sufficiently agitated by this development to instigate discussion with my MP and MEP.The correspondence began with a standard letter produced by the biofuelwatch 'take action' page. I was impressed that my MEP wrote back and so took the opportunity to engage in more personal dialogs in the form of the following text: * * * * * Dear Richard...

I was stripped down to my boxer shorts and with my bare hands was clawing great clods of mud out from under the wheel arch. Occasionally I would take a rest from cleaning and lie down in the shallow water to cool myself off. Even with the help of a second tow truck it had taken us nearly an hour to free an old Landcruiser that had got stuck on the way into Imbak Canyon. All three vehicles were now parked in the middle of the Imbak River to receive a much needed wash. By way of taking a holiday from Maliau Basin I had decided...