20's Plenty for Birmingham - Help our Campaign

Birmingham FoE has been campaigning for a default speed limit of 20mph on all residential areas across Birmingham and recently I have been helping to organise the campaign locally.

The recent successes in other UK cities, such as Portsmouth and Oxford, have been very encouraging and research has showed that the public is definitely in favour of a lower speed limit.

The example of Birmingham as the second biggest city in the UK would send a positive message all over the country and really help in creating a greener and cleaner city. But more importantly it would help make Birmingham a safer city and encourage its inhabitants to walk or cycle more on roads where they do not feel secure at the moment. The change in attitude fostered by drivers associating residential areas with safer speeds would reduce road casualties and improve the quality of life.

To raise awareness in the heart of communities and get people involved to spread the word around where they live, we are looking for Community Champions following the successful example of Bristol's campaign.

If you are interested in becoming a community champion for your neighbourhood or knows somebody who might be, please contact us at campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk. There is a lot of work to do to persuade the people in charge of roads at Birmingham City Council that this is the way to go, but we really feel this is an important campaign and we need your help.

It's time to get together and make Birmingham a safer place to live!

Its a wrap: Birmingham Friends of the Earth get stitched up

Lets be honest, wrapping gifts in paper, it’s all about the eye candy and not much about the environment. In the UK, we waste stacks of trees and resources with glitzy paper for a 20 second fix. It is estimated by Waste online that over Christmas as much as 83 square km of wrapping paper will end up in UK rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey and the total waste wrapping paper the UK produces over Christmas could stretch to the moon if each sheet was laid end to end.

And part of the problem is the most popular wrapping paper cannot be recycled and ends up in landfill is often dyed, laminated and contains non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloured shapes or glitter which cannot be recycled. This means paper is either dumped in the bin or, worse, put in the recycling bin, which will mean the whole lot is contaminated and has to go to landfill.

So whats this got to do with Birmingham Friends of the Earth?
We want to promote the alternative wrapping that is available, and on the 9th of November will be having its first group of crafters coming together to make creative wrappings to get people to think differently about wrapping paper and also make items that will be showcased and available for sale at our Christmas fare on the 19th December and hopefully will raise some money to get allow great campaigning around the city. Contact Joe Peacock on 0121 632 6909 or email http://www.blogger.com/campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk.

So here are some of the things the crafters will be making for alternative wrapping paper, (if you have other ideas, please share them as comments):

Furoshiki, which is a Eastern tradition of wrapping using material, which I discovered after watching recycle now. See myfuroshiki for the real thing, photographed is one of her great prints and will have some of their great products available on the stall on the 19th December. Also I square scarves from charity shops can do the job as well.

Material gift bags that can be used and used again, which can be made over from left over material.


CD/DVD material present bags. This one is from Thailand and can be used again and again.

Use newspaper or magazines for wrapping. Recently I have had lots of success with using adverts in womens magazines, they spend so much on the creative, such as the perfume adverts, its always nice to show them off. Use string or ribbon to wrap them up and you can use them again.

If you cant make it on the 9th November, you can still help out by contributing:

• Any scrap, Christmassy, material we can use. Anything from old curtains, to off cuts, nice duvet covers or pillow cases picked up at a charity shop.
• Scarves that are square shape or can be altered to fit.
• Thread, ribbon and sew on decorations.

Please drop these off at the Warehouse and we will see what our creative people can do.

And start thinking about how you can reduce, reuse and recycle at Christmas!

Meat Free Mondays: Join the herd

Come along to the Warehouse Café in Digbeth and enjoy their Meat Free Monday, where on a Monday you can buy one meal and get one free throughout November, just ring the cafe 0121 633 0261 to reserve your table*, and mention the Birmingham Friends of the Earth blog (reservation essential).

Meat Free Mondays is not about going vegetarian, it's about revolutionising meat and dairy farming and reducing our consumption. It’s about fixing the food chain, as it’s a far from perfect world out there. However, we do not want to attack the farmers, but help them to move to planet friendly farming.

Friends of the Earth have found that the meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet. Rainforests play a vital role in reducing the impact of our CO2 emissions but they are currently being destroyed in order to grow soy to feed UK livestock. Plus increasing demand for meat and dairy has led to unsustainable farming practices that threaten our planet.

So how can we help? By getting the government to enable our farmers to grow their own feed for their animals. There is 700 million EU subsidies going into intensive farming and this could be invested with our farmers to help them grow and feed their own animals. This would be better for the farmers and better for our food security.

Plus eating more vegetables is not only great for your health but also good for the planet too! UN’s top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri states that “People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming. UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.” In the UK we eat 3 ½ times more meat the World Health Organisation recommends, putting us at risk of cancer, diabetes and obesity.

The point of having Meat Free Monday (or just a meat free day or meal) is it will take the pressure off the food chain and get people thinking about caring about what they eat and the impacts it has on the world around us. It is more realistic to get the whole world to alter their diet and reduce their consumption than get a few to convert to vegetarianism or veganism.

There is a lot more possibilities opened by having a meat free meal or day, for example a school changed to have one day a week meat free. Then for the other days of the weeks they were able to invest in organic meat or fish. Meat Free Monday is all about making smarter choices and it’s not about having a go at the UK farmers, which quite frankly have enough to worry about.

So by not eating meat for one day a week we are saving ourselves as well as the planet.

For November the Warehouse Café is offering the chance to ‘buy one get one free’ on all main meals bought on Mondays*.

* Offer equivalent to one free main meal to same or lower value of meal purchased. Maximum 4 vouchers used together. Limited spaces available, so booking essential and early booking recommended. Offer valid Monday until Monday 30 November.

CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW! SPEAKER TOUR

Here are the details of our speaker event at the University of Birmingham Avon Room, University Centre on 19th November at 7pm.


CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!- UK SPEAKER TOUR
The climate crisis has been caused by rich industrialised countries, but it is the world’s poorer majority who are paying the highest price, as extreme weather events become more common, freshwater glaciers melt, and droughts increase. We believe that this means rich countries owe a ‘climate debt’ to the global south.

The Climate Justice UK speaker tour this autumn will see public meetings held around the country. Join us to hear why we need a global climate agreement which is both effective and delivers justice for the global south, and how you can make this happen.
Speakers are:
* Mohammed Shamsuddoha (Equity Bangladesh)
* Asad Rehman (Friends of the Earth)
(plus more tba)

Spread the word: Invite your friends to this event!

Full details of the tour can be found at: http://www.climatejusticenow.org.uk

Organised by: World Development Movement, People & Planet, Jubilee Debt Campaign, and Friends of the Earth.

More information about the Shared Planet conference is at: http://peopleandplanet.org/shared-planet-09

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WHAT IS CLIMATE JUSTICE?
The climate crisis has been caused by the rich industrialised countries, but it is the world’s poorer majority who are paying the highest price, as extreme weather events become more common, freshwater glaciers melt, and droughts increase.

We believe that rich countries owe a ‘climate debt’ to the global south. Not only do we need to reduce our emissions drastically, but we also need to provide new money so that poor countries can develop in a sustainable way and cope with the climate crisis which is already putting millions of lives at risk. This should not be seen as overseas aid, given out of charity, but compensation for our overuse of the earth’s resources.

In the run up to the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December, rich countries are trying to bully developing countries into accept unreasonably large emissions cuts, whilst shirking making the necessary cuts themselves. At the same time, they are seeking to channel climate change funding for poor countries through the World Bank, the largest multilateral lender for fossil fuel projects in the world! What’s more, this will mostly be in the form of loans which will only add to the unjust debts which developing countries owe the rich world.

Come and hear our speakers explain why we need a global climate agreement which is both effective and delivers justice for the global south, and how you can make this happen.

SOB - Save Our Buses?

There are worrying signs that all is not well with bus provision in Birmingham. Instead of improving the services, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are becoming even more infrequent in places where people need them. Only today there was an article in the Birmingham Mail about prices being too high and we have been campaigning for months for better bus services to be driven by a Statuatory Partnership which would be responsible for driving improvements. There is an e-petition for this and we have been collecting signed letters from discontented bus users.

It seems that National Express, which runs TWM (the company responsible for buses such as the one in the picture) is in financial difficulty and may not be able to survive. This means that a new company could soon be running the buses here and we need to be ready to engage with them and explain what it is we expect from the bus service in this city.
At the transport action group meeting on Monday evening it was decided that we need to hold a special meeting to draw up our demands or "bus manifesto" to be prepared for such a situation and use in our campaigning. Next Monday we have a general campaigns meeting at 7.30, but we'll also be holding a special bus meeting before it at 6.30. So, if you feel strongly about this come along then, or email your comments to campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk and we'll use them to guide the discussion.

Our Food Chain Parade

Last Saturday, members of our campaigns group were out in Birmingham City Centre on a Food Chain Parade to end our Food Chain fortnight of action.

As you can see from the picture below we were drawing people's attention to the issues surrounding factoring farming in this country leading to deforestation of some of the world's most valuable pristine habitat in South America. Arrows go from the animals to the bags of soy feed which they eat to the man with the chainsaw who cuts down the trees to grow the crops.


The parade went from in front of Tesco on New Street, up to Victoria Square, along Colmore Row, down Church Street, across to Ludgate Hill, up to St Pauls Square, along Brook Street, along Graham Street up Frederick St and along Warstone Lane where we finished at the 24 carrot farmers market in the Jewellery quarter.

Shaking our maracas we made our way along the route giving out badges and stickers to people along the way and singing our own version of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm".

It was a really fun event. Thanks to everyone who helped make the props and who joined in on the day. Let's hope that all the MPs get behind this now and the bill goes through parliament to make our food planet-friendly.

Click here to see how you can help online.

Bees - the new canaries

Over the years a few different animals and plants have been termed the new canaries in the coal mine for climate change and the ecological problems facing the world. Amphibians are at terrible risk of being wiped out, which could lead to huge increases in the numbers of insects and other problems. Coral-bleaching shows how much the oceans are warming and there is also evidence of how acidic they are becoming, with the real possibility that they could lose their ability to store carbon. Now though, it is the turn of the bees to become the symbol of environmental problems with a new film vanishing bees looking at the reasons for colony collapse disorder and warning of the consequences if nothing is done to save them.

On Wednesday a few of us from Birmingham Friends of the Earth went along to see the film at The Electric cinema and all of us certainly did come out thinking we wanted to do something - maybe put a hive on the roof of the Warehouse? Well, no that's probably not feasible, but definitely plant some bee-friendly stuff in the garden and maybe chuck a few seed bombs into the disused bulldozed sites of Digbeth.

While not as bleak as the Age of Stupid, the picture given in this film in the no-action-being-taken scenario, is also pretty worrying. The arguments for the importance of bees for all of us are pretty stark and cannot be ignored. The trouble is that neither this film nor any scientific study has provided conclusive proof of what is causing the bees to disappear. If you go expecting to get that, you'll be disappointed.

As a film, the vanishing of the bees has been described as "earnest", so I wasn't expecting it to be much more than informative, but there certainly were some interesting characters in the film and a few shocking facts - for example, the USA is now flying in bees from Australia to pollinate certain crops!!! It was also nice that there was a woman called Bee and a man called Dr Pollan in there who obviously belonged in their field.

The culprits are gradually revealed in the course of the documentary through interviews with bee-keepers, scientists and farmers. As an environmentalist they are pretty much what you'd expect; the use of certain pesticides, the use of intensive farming methods that have created huge monocultures rather than the biodiversity of mixed organic farming systems, loss of habitat and probably some of it is due to the industrialisation of bee-keeping itself. Many of these are also drivers of climate change and other problems associated with the ecology of our planet, so although the fate of bees is not necessarily directly linked to climate change, if we deal with one we will be helping to deal with the other, too.


I hadn't realised quite how much The Vanishing of the Bees would be about the USA, but that was primarily the focus, with only a minor mention of the UK. The fact is that we are the two countries mentioned who have not banned a certain Bayer pesticide with nicotinoids, which has been banned all over Europe where bee-keepers showed conclusive proof of what it was doing to bees (even Germany has banned it and Bayer is a German company!). I very much liked the French bee-keepers who took on the industrial giant and won, describing themselves as hippies who had been underestimated.

The American bee-keepers were interesting characters, but most of them work on such a massive industrial scale, taking their bees back and forth across the USA on lorries, that I kind of want that way of working to fail. There were a few small-scale bee-keepers and the ones who work locally with crops that flower at different times of the year seem to be doing much better.

Overall, it was certainly worth going to see, but the film was a bit over-long and could have been a bit bolder. For someone who didn't know about the topic at all, it would be very revealing, but for those with a reasonable amount of knowledge already, it did sometimes come over as a little patronising.

What is clear after seeing The Vanishing of the Bees, is that we must do something to change the destructive farming practices and have a new green revolution. This will help with food security both in terms of contributing fewer of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change and in helping to protect bees who are vital for so much of the food we eat. This all ties in very well with our Fix the Food Chain campaign, so look here to see how you can help with that in Birmingham this weekend.

Joe Peacock