The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. With a President even more visionary than Roosevelt now through his first 100 days in the White House, a new optimism seems to be glimmering through the gloom of failed foreign policy and the credit crunch, reaching even that most pessimistic of fields: climate change. Talk from both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown of "greening the economy" has been primarily a rhetorical flourish intended to give bankers, politicians and economists a way of clawing back some new credibility in the public's eye.

Nevertheless, these green shoots point to a more deeply rooted belief that science and technology now at least offer the feasible tools which, if wielded by a coalition of the Western willing, can stem or even reverse the looming climate crisis. Arguably now, our greatest threat is not ignorance, but the belief that it is too late or not possible to do anything to halt climate change, whether as individuals or internationally. With that in mind, here are several good news stories that I have picked up on over the last week:

• New molten salt technology offers a way to store the sun's heat for use at night or during poor weather, overcoming the key obstacle with solar power.


• Household appliances that listen out for troughs in national energy use will mean fewer power stations need to be left on tickover just in case millions of kettles are turned on at once.


• Investors in the Thames London Array, which will be the world's largest offshore wind farm, have agreed £2 billion of funding. When complete, the project could power a quarter of the homes in Greater London.


• The cost of solar energy is expected to match that of conventional fuels within the next five years, a decade earlier than previously expected.


• In the last three years, the number of plastic bags used annually in Britain fell from 13.4bn in 2006 to 9.9bn. If the trend continues through the actions of the big retailers, a further 5 billion bags could be saved, equivalent to taking 41 000 cars off the road each year.


• Barack Obama's key climate change bill will not quite meet the European target for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, but is at least a positive move to some sort of global consensus at Copenhagen, and reverses Bush's policy of ignorance.

Labels: climate change, Environment, green economy, renewables

By any standard, Shell's recent decision to sell their 33% stake in the London Array offshore windfarm is a disastrous turn of policy, which has rightly been lambasted. Shell this week announced profits of £4 billion, and it is hard to see how they can justify withdrawing their investment of £0.6 billion from the £2 billion renewables project, in which they were the major partner along with Eon. Their press release explained that their decision was taken on the basis that "We constantly review our projects and investment choices in all of our businesses, focusing on capital discipline and efficiency." So not much need to read between the lines there: with oil currently running at $120 a barrel, there is more money to be made elsewhere, possibly lurking beneath melting icecaps.

But whilst Shell's retreat exposes their much-trumpeted environmental policies as a superficial marketing gimmick hiding a hard core of greed, it also indicates something inherently flawed in the government's environmental claims. At a time of credit crunch and inflationary belt-tightening, the government justifies maintaining fuel taxes at their present level on the assumption that lowering them would have a detrimental effect on the environment. In reality, the only groups that win from high fuel prices are the major companies, whose ability to affect the environment for good or ill far outweighs that of the individual consumer, who needs to get to work and the out-of-town supermarket and will almost certainly do so by car, at any cost.

Rather than falsely sustaining the high price of oil, the route to encourage individuals to choose environmentally friendly transportation methods, and to reduce the effect independent oil companies have to undermine any national commitment to renewables, is through radical change in infrastructure at the national level. Increase subsidies for public transport, provide incentives and tax breaks for people to throw out their oil burners in favour of sustainable heating, and suddenly Shell might realise that there is more to be made in serving renewables, than digging for the black gold.

Labels: Environment, renewables, Shell