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Next 20 years will see rapid changes - Ireland's Sargent
Mark Hennessy, Irish Times
FORMER GREEN Party leader and Minister of State for Food Trevor Sargent has said people will face more change over the next two decades than has occurred in the last century.

Mr Sargent was speaking on the theme of Ireland in 2020, at an event organised by the University of Limerick branch of the Green Party earlier this week. His speech was reported on yesterday in the Limerick Leader.

Mr Sargent said in an aside: “We probably are the most useless generation ever to have strode the face of the earth” because of many people’s inability to do practical tasks such as mending a broken tyre.

Mr Sargent said the world would have to rely less on oil as an energy source, and he urged people “to adopt a World War two-lifestyle and approach to consumption in the current climate”.

Regarding the approach of peak oil production, he said: “Remember what we were told about the economy and how we were going to have a soft landing? All promises of a soft landing are not to be taken seriously.
(9 October 2008)

Scottish councils urged to get into peak oil practice
The Scotsman
AS THEY grapple with the implications of climate change and the imperatives of "going green", Scotland's local councils, as an integral part of their responses to these twin "missions", also need to come up with sustainable transport and energy solutions.

To help councils formulate their thinking, two organisations, the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) and the Post Carbon Institute, have got together to produce a guide aimed at local councils, outlining the implications of "peak oil" and the kinds of responsible options that are available to councils.

... The starting premise of the report, entitled Preparing for Peak Oil, is that oil production will peak and go into sustained decline in the next few years (just as it has already done in the UK North Sea). This in turn will create a deficit in fuels for transport and will result in large spikes and turbulence in energy prices, and hence in the price of gas and electricity.

The purpose of the report "is to summarise which local authorities are doing what, and to draw together the most promising policies for tackling peak oil, so that all British local authorities can benefit from best practices being developed both at home and abroad".
(9 October 2008)

New deal offers an alternative to global fatalism
Caroline Lucas, The Guardian
There's a received wisdom that Greens don't do well in a recession. As the threat of unemployment pushes the environment out of voters' minds, green issues take a back seat. So it has proved in every recession. Except this one.

I became leader of the Green party just two days after one of the most far-right administrations in US history was forced to nationalise nearly half of the country's mortgage market. The financial crisis we are entering has variously been described as the worst since 1978, '47, '33 and '29. And yet the Greens are continuing to climb in the opinion polls.

People are coming to the realisation that the system of globalised markets - unregulated, unpoliced and unguided - is fatally flawed. Everyone agrees that we need to confront the failed corporate control of our economy, and restore it to democratic control. Everyone, that is, except the establishment parties in Westminster.

Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have, bizarrely, chosen this moment to converge in support of the kind of neoliberalism that has caused this crisis in the first place. In doing so, they have abandoned not only common sense but also the majority of voters.

Conversely, the Green party has seriously got to grips with the economic situation and is delivering practical solutions.

Caroline Lucas is leader of the Green party and a Green MEP.
(8 October 2008)