Oil crises

One of my earliest posts was about the Transition Movement in the context of energy security. And now the government has shown some common sense at last and decided in the light of unrest in Middle East that it would be a good idea to wean the UK off oil. The Transition Movement has been talking for some years now about peak oil, which is not the point when we run out of oil, but the point of maximum output after which supply will fall. If demand continues to rise, then the laws of supply and demand will dictate further price rises, perhaps spikes. The Libyan situation could have the same effect, if supplies are cut off. As Chris Huhne has now said: "We cannot afford to go on relying on such a volatile source of energy when we can have clean, green and secure energy from low-carbon sources". So the Carbon Plan, to be launched this week, should if it is worth the bandwidth address both climate change and oil supply constraints.

Also of interest... the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), which has been axed by the government, is planning a people-power watchdog on green government: communities of experts who can analyse statistics and policy, rate government performance and lobby for improvement. The ideas were partly driven "by the effectiveness of the recent campaign against moving Forestry Commission lands out of state management - which, as they noted, was not co-ordinated by the traditional environment movement but by loose networks of concerned people." The SDC's final blast was to criticise the government's seven-page plan on Sustainable Development in Government. For my part, it seems ludicrous that Defra should be producing a sustainable development plan and DECC a carbon plan, not a good example of joined up government.