Why incinerators are green red herrings

I posted the following on an article about the waste handling policy of Amsterdam - which looks pretty short term - on the triplepundit.com (people planet profit) website

 

Hi Leon,
Perhaps you believe that if each area such as Amsterdam works out what they think is the most immediately green(ish) answer for them that somehow the sum total of all the millions of areas in the world doing this will add up to an adequately globally sustainable solution. I don't think minimising or ignoring the international dynamics will bring home the bacon environmentally speaking.

Here's a post I made to another site that partially explains why incineration is a dead-end/red herring.
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Hi XXXXX,

The whole point about why we talk about composting, waste/energy/greenhouse gas reductions etc. is because we are not living in a sustainable way. The United Nations Environment Program identified a couple of years that we are living at least 20% beyond what the planet can sustainably supply and so clearly we need to make big moves to address this, or we are in for some grief.

As an analogy, it's no good jumping, say, 6 feet to cross the ten foot crevasse that yawns between our current society and sustainability. Similarly, such things as incinerators, compost-able plastics etc are diversions that have green "feel-good" aspects to them but only 6 feet worth, not the whole enchilada. These apparent benefits are largely greenwash in the marketing of products to a naive public - the marketing industry shares a lot of the responsibility for the mess we are now in because they seem to work on the principle that if people think they are getting something, then that is just about as good as if they actually are getting it. In short, their business is identifying "needs", amplifying them into greeds then, with their evil twin the advertising industry, to set about marketing the various wares to satisfy these created needs/greeds. The incinerator industry has tidal waves of greenwash flooding around which sound sensible to short term analyses which do not sufficiently consider the long term goals.

Incineration with energy recovery, particularly if that includes district heating, is viewed as better than landfill and, from the greenhouse emissions perspective (particularly methane) that is probably right - but it's not good enough. We can’t cross the gap like that. Incinerators need a supply of burnable rubbish for their 25-30 year design life and so are directly antagonistic towards waste reduction measures. Anyway, the amount of energy they actually recover is a fraction of the embodied manufacturing energy of most waste. "Recovering" that fraction of the energy out of burning waste only appears, at a casual glance, to be a plus because most never think of the much larger amount of energy (not to mention the generated pollution, resource depletion, habitat change etc.) that was originally used to extract or mine, transport, process and manufacture the goods that became "waste" in the first place.

It's no good promoting incinerators by only looking at (what appear to be green) marketing points. Ultimately, any system which demands a steady supply of combustible waste will ensure that we will fail to make the other side of the crevasse. Proponents of the idea that they will provide a stopgap, while we are waiting for recycling/re-use systems to arrive, miss the point of how the presence of a convenient disposal system mitigates against the arrival of those systems.

It's also no good using shallow LCAs (Life Cycle Analyses) to point out the current shortcomings with plastic recycling and returnable schemes - these will take a long time to sort out sufficiently. Pressure and economic incentives will need to be applied to "encourage" manufacturers to change their materials, transport and packaging systems; ultimately their factory locations, product design and manufacturing methods too.

It took almost 100 years for the consumer society to get where we are now - we can spare 20 years to put right what once went wrong by re-imagining things sustainably, but we will have to ignore the siren corporate calls for easy disposal technology.

One of the chess moves that will lead to a sustainable society being created is the instituting of reliable collection of recyclable material ahead of the moment when there will be enough of a supply for most manufacturers to commit to greatly reducing, or eliminating, the use of "virgin" material. Thus we need a "build it and they will come" period for recyclable/returnables combined with economic carrots and sticks applied to discriminate against the use of virgin material and one-trip systems, so that the loop gets closed.

To cross the metaphorical crevasse successfully might need a hard ten mile frustrating sideways detour which, for a time might not appear to be getting closer to (or may initially even draw further away from) our destination, whereas moves like the big "incinerator jump" across might appear, with a shallow LCA analysis, to be rapidly crossing the ten foot gap to sustainability, only will prove to fail disastrously later on, having wasted lots of time.

There is currently an awful lot of faux-sustainability thinking in the corporate planning arena and this is largely due to a failure to realise that business-almost-as-usual, but with a few bright green knobs stuck on, will simply not cut the sustainability mustard. Simultaneously, it muddies the waters with promises of apparently clean, useful solutions and relatively painless “keep right on consuming” subliminal messages which unfortunately will prove to be red herrings and a tragic waste of time and effort and will, in due course, end up with the planet and us broken at the bottom of the crevasse.

JCAN on Grand Designs Live

The 6th annual Grand Designs Live event (click for website) took place in London recently at ExCeL near Canary Wharf from 1-9 May.
I was approached to submit a question to the Grand Designs Live panel (which included Kevin McCloud). I submitted it in my capacity as one of the media spokesmen for Jersey Climate Action Network and also as a sustainability blogger.

My question was:

To make a meaningful, timely, impact on greenhouse gas emissions requires acting now. Does the panel feel that all new buildings, starting tomorrow, should be designed to the highest BREEAM standards, particularly those relating to energy conservation (or, at least, to be easily retrofittable later) with a significant emphasis on a very long design life? Super-insulated buildings, which will last for generations, must surely be the way forward to a sustainable civilisation?"

As you can hear, they changed it somewhat but the essence came through.

Why better food is more expensive than junk…

This image is taken from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine  website via Michael Tobis' climate science blog Only in it for the Gold . It shows how meat and diary production are massively subsidised whereas vegetables and fruit are more or less ignored.
A picture paints a thousand words, and this one has figures too. It more or less speaks for itself. The only thing to watch out for is that these figures relate to American agricultural subsidies, but highly distorting subsidies like this are rife in Europe too.
 

Nightmare on Oil street - Peak oil effects will arrive earlier than we think

Any planning for a sustainable future must take into account that, barring a miracle, energy will be much more expensive and less freely available than in the past.

Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of “Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller” built his reputation as one of Canada's top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.

This video is 45 minutes long but is very well worthwhile – persevere!

Here’s some good news

Ray Anderson is founder and chairman of Interface Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet for commercial and residential applications and a leading producer of commercial broadloom and commercial fabrics. He is known in environmental circles for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability. It didn’t used to be that way until he had an “epiphany” in 1994 when he read The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken, who argues that the industrial system is destroying the planet and only industry leaders are powerful enough to stop it. This video is just Ray explaining himself with a short section where he addresses fellow “plunderers”. 

Sustainability is not just a lifestyle choice for those who feel that way, while all those who don’t carry on regardless. It’s something that everyone has to learn about and do whether they are individuals or giant corporations or governments – anything else is just irresponsible.

“Oh brave new world that hath such people in it, denied the right to stick their own foot in it”  - P.L.

The bigger they are, the bigger the impact?

There is a significant movement, at grassroots level, whereby individuals are making decisions to pursue a particular aspect of sustainable environmentalism and then blog about it to encourage and help others, and to act as a source of information so that others can join in. It doesn't mean they are totally going green because, in an extreme consumer society, like those we live in, that would probably be a bridge too far. Putting oneself out a lot - denying oneself various things - would be pointless if the vast majority carried on regardlessly trashing the planet. If one is a campaigning environmentalist, one will get the odd clever-clogs snarking that you can't be very green if you have a car. They miss the point that one campaigns for alternatives to the car so that just about everyone can free themselves of car dependence.

Being a hero is all very well , but the majority have to fall in line or there is no point! Up until the point at which systems are brought in that enable the majority to automatically "do the decent thing", the pathfinders will necessarily have to be more dedicated and endure more than the usual amount of fuss that life throws at us to show the way.

The following individuals are heroes. They go beyond normal effort in pursuit of their targets. If they success in converting sufficient numbers of others to at least want to follow in their footsteps, they will be creating an increasing market pressure on manufacturers and suppliers to green up their act, redesign their methods and products, and generally to operate in a sustainable way. This then, in a snowball-down-a-mountain way, will make it easier for the heroes to recycle everything effectively; to reduce their residual waste yet further and reduce the embodied carbon footprint of the goods and services they buy. The easier it gets - the less dedication it takes - the more the general population will join in exponentially

Three great examples that I regularly monitor are:

THE RUBBISH DIET where “almost Mrs Average” (Karen) asks herself -“can an average person really create Zero Waste?”  The challenge was set and during the week 10-17 March 2008, this mother in Bury St Edmunds gave it a go. She only threw out a plaster. Now she runs a regular blog about the subject and is frequently invited onto radio shows and is featured in articles in the press. Here’s a sample post explaining her general principles, although there are tons more.

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MyZeroWaste.com is a website run by “Mrs Green” (aka Rachelle Strauss) with her family “Mr Green” and “little Miss Green” regularly featuring. Some of the videos on the site are pretty funny with Mrs Green sniping gently at Mr Green. Again, it is about a family’s efforts to reduce or eliminate their household waste. These were initially just personal targets but have expanded to the point where both website/bloggers contact manufacturers and lobby to make the products and packaging that we buy more recyclable or re-usable. Bravo!

Here is a cartoon from their mission statement

And this is a link to their very busy and informative blog

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Further afield we have the heroic Beth Terry at Fake Plastic Fish in the U.S. who is trying to eliminate all plastic waste from her life - indeed not to use plastic at all - in California!!

This website came about because she saw film of the horrendous plastic garbage “gyre” in the Pacific ocean and decided not to contribute. Again she now has lots of media attention.

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So, why did I call this post “The bigger they are, the bigger the impact”?

Did I imply individuals making an effort can’t make much of a difference? That only large moves are worth it? Not in a million! The three individuals I have highlighted have made a difference not only in their own lives but also by blogging about it online, whereby they act as a source of information and encouragement to many others. They might have started out “small” but they’re rapidly getting “bigger”. Suggestions they make are taken up by readers and pressure on manufacturers is slowly but surely increasing.

Every single person may be only a drop in the ocean but never forget that the ocean is only made of drops. The more “drops” willing to choose the path towards zero waste, the more manufacturers will alter their designs and processes to reflect that, and the easier it will become for people to reduce waste. It's hard right at the start but it gets rapidly easier as time goes by.

That still sounds a bit idealistic, along the lines of “if everybody was nicer to each other, then wouldn't it be a wonderful world?” but wait! Hard evidence follows, that is rather under-reported in the main stream media, that shows some of the biggest "collections of drops" around are taking up the same challenges and winning.

The story that sparked off this whole post was about how the Subaru car plant in Indiana set itself a zero waste to landfill target and achieved it!

The Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Indiana, became the first auto manufacturing plant to achieve a zero landfill status. None of the plant’s manufacturing waste goes into a landfill, because all of it is recycled and reused.

Here’s a 7 minute Youtube video – Subaru Sustainablity Story – that is inspiring stuff. They did it because it was right, and the groundswell of popular support for zero waste initiatives certainly got through to these chief executives. A small but growing number of drops had an effect on at least one manufacturing sea of drops.

Difficult nit-picky types might snipe here "only one manufacturing sea? – but surely there are oceans of industry out there?". What would you say if one of the biggest “oceans” out there was to commit to sustainability and zero waste? That would be a huge driver for change. A huge retail ocean demanding that all of its suppliers adopted sustainable environmental practices would be a gigantic victory for the movement that started with the voices of the individual “drops”. N’est-ce-pas?

Step forward Walmart, the world’s largest public corporation by revenue. Walmart is not usually flavour of the month environmentally or socially and has attracted lots of flak for its employment practices and the way its giant economic clout can rip the heart out of smaller businesses – link to wiki article about criticism of Walmart.

However, two years ago, they came out with a rather remarkable sustainability strategy. This built on earlier work that had led arch greenie website Treehugger to say that - “It's Getting Harder to Hate WalMart”.

At Walmart’s sustainability summit in 2007, the main event was a speech by CEO Lee Scott in which he stated in no uncertain terms that Wal-Mart is in this for the long haul, and expects its suppliers to be in it for the long haul too. Scott pointed out that while his company is aiming for zero waste and 100% renewable energy, this still only accounts for 8% of its footprint, and that WalMart must green its supply chain if it has any chance of becoming sustainable. This is a very remarkable insight (for a corporation) that one's environmental responsibility does not extend solely to the energy etc that one's corporation uses directly but also to the footprint of the suppliers one deals with and their energy and materials choices too. Incredible.

Walmart has colossal influence on its suppliers, who jump to their every word, which has often proved a bad thing in the past but it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Every other retailer just might have to tag along now “the boss” is going green.

Walmart announced its sustainability index last July which will evaluate every WalMart product's environmental impact throughout its entire lifecycle, and will condense the data into an easy-to-understand rating for shoppers. Choosing Green will get a lot easier. If any company wants to supply Walmart, they will be forced to be greener or lose the business.

Here’s a link to a 90 minute Walmart DVD entitled Sustainability 2.0 which they sell (for $1) or you can watch it online free. Walmart is working to be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy, create zero waste and sell sustainable products. Included are strategies for energy efficiency, making waste profitable, developing sustainable packaging, upgrading manufacturing, reducing product energy intensity, offering affordable fair trade and organic products, addressing environmental trends, designing lifecycles, solving network problems and engaging associates in sustainability.

Here’s an up to the minute link suggesting that Walmart are actually fulfilling their pledge about renewable energy as they announce three new solar energy installation projects in Southern California.

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So, in conclusion. To all those who never do anything because they feel like they’re just an insignificant drop in the ocean – remember that enough drops moving together make an unstoppable tsunami…

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Disclaimer – Subaru or Walmart haven’t given me anything at all to write about them positively – it’s just that some things need to be shouted out louder than they are.

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” Well, that was then…

I almost titled this post "Peak Everything" but that will be for another day. Anyone who follows environmental matters will, by now, be sick of hearing about climate change - although it's going to have a huge impact on our future. If we voluntarily take action to avoid the worst by transitioning to a non-fossil fuelled sustainable economy A.S.A.P., then a whole lot of the ways we do things now will have to change, or be radically modified. If we don't take any action, or if we don't take enough action, then a whole lot of the ways we do things now will change, whether we like it or not. It won't be voluntary or under our control - we will be forced.

Food security in the future, although less publicised, is another huge problem that we are going to have to contend with. Conventional agriculture cannot give us the security of supply that the 6.7 billion (so far) inhabitants of Earth need. The only way we are feeding that many people is because of artificial fertiliser, which is made - in an energy intensive process – from fossil fuels. Literally, feeding the current world depends on us "eating" oil. If we take no voluntary action now to head off the forecast problems, they will likely overwhelm us as Nature forces changes on our civilisation that will be much worse than any possible effects of the prudent action we should have taken.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Perhaps even bigger than the food security problem is "peak water" which refers to the even less publicised problems ahead with fresh water. Both quality and quantity. Water is even more vital to life than food.

Below is, first, a trailer to “Flow” Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. After that, in bite-size 10 minute chunks, is the documentary itself. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question "CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?"

Here is a link to the website of the film.

As this is such a huge topic to cover, the film obviously has to simplify and skate over some aspects but that shouldn’t be a criticism – just concentrate on the overall feel of the narrative and the massive relevance to everyone’s future.

GM Rice petition

In just a few weeks, the European Union will decide whether or not GM rice can enter EU countries, appear on supermarket shelves and end up on our dinner plates. If the EU approves the import of Bayer GM rice, farmers in the US and elsewhere may soon start planting it.

The GM industry, and their supporters, often claim that we need GM food to feed the world but this is a very simple and highly misleading position to take (like most of the anti-environmental arguments, it appeals to the gullible and the self-interested who seem not to analyse any topic beyond the point at which they confirm their innate biases and their own wishful thinking). It is yet another example of an unsustainable solution with huge hidden drawbacks.

If you want to have your say, here is a link to a Greenpeace petition which states:

“We ask all governments around the world to protect consumers and farmers, their crops and fields by rejecting Bayer’s GM rice, and to stop GM rice field trials”.

Wile E. Coyote runs over the cliff edge, not immediately realising that gravity is going to do him in soon

September 25 was “Earth Overshoot” Day.

Earth Overshoot Day is a dangerous annual milestone: the metaphorical time in the year when humanity begins living beyond its ecological means. Beyond that day, we move into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilising resources at a rate faster than the planet can regenerate in a calendar year. In other words, the planet can sustainably supply us with a certain amount in a year but unfortunately humanity as a whole is now using that amount up in under 10 months. The United Kingdom’s National Overshoot Day is about 22nd April. Jersey’s extreme consumer lifestyle obviously makes our own Island Overshoot Day a fair bit earlier than this. For shame.

Globally, we now require the equivalent of 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles. Put another way, in less than 10 months humanity has already used up the ecological services that it has taken 12 months for the Earth to regenerate.

Global Recession Barely Slows Ecological Demand

Because of the current global economic slowdown, we reached Earth Overshoot Day one day later than last year, according to Global Footprint Network projections. By comparison, in the past, Earth Overshoot Day has steadily moved four to six days closer to January 1st each year. “The fact is that in spite of a very painful world economic situation, we are still way over-budget in our use of nature,” said a spokeman for footprintnetwork.org.

Cold Fusion and climate change together

• This piece, taken from today’s Wall Street Journal shows that Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu (finally, a real scientist!) is at least thinking out of the box. Once they realise that it’s not JUST climate change and not JUST energy supplies that need to be solved  - it’s the whole non-sustainable nature of much of what we do that needs addressing holistically (I hate to use the word), then we might start to see real progress being made. I suppose I might be one of the “naysayers “ that the article refers to. At least they’re taking things more seriously than Bush and co.
• 
• May 12, 2009, 12:10 PM ET

Secretary Chu: Calling All Cold Fusion Inventors—and Other Revolutionaries

If you’ve got a plan to transform America’s energy future, now’s the time to put it on paper.

Put it in writing

Starting today, the Department of Energy is accepting proposals for energy R&D projects that “disrupt the status quo. The Nation needs transformational energy-related technologies to overcome the threats posed by climate change and energy security, arising from its reliance on traditional uses of fossil fuels and the dominant use of oil in transportation.”

The DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, modelled on a successful Defense Department research scheme, is offering up to $20 million assistance to make moonshots reality. Small thinkers need not apply: “We are not looking for incremental progress on current technologies.”

The $400 million program is part of the Energy Department’s new emphasis on breakthrough technologies. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has repeatedly said that the U.S. needs “Nobel-level” breakthroughs in energy technology in order to tackle the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. Some naysayers figure all the emphasis on technological breakthroughs distracts from the task at hand—using existing technology to tackle the same challenges.

ARPA-E is meant to help get new energy technologies through the “valley of death,” which happens when new ideas can’t make it out of the lab or when they can’t quite make it to market.

What kind of technologies is the DOE looking for? Whatever—as long as they meet four criteria: “reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.”

That means 90% of the work must be done by American companies on American soil, the DOE says.

Some technology firms are champing at the bit—such as Califon, N.J.-based Energetics Technologies LLC, a firm that’s spent the last eight years working on cold fusion and which helped spark fresh interest in the subject from “60 Minutes.”

Photo credit

The Story of Stuff

I had this famous cartoon on my election website so, because it is highly relevant to sustainability, I am reposting it here. Edit: MSN soap box is going to discontinue their video hosting service (which is where I put this video) so I am going to, instead, put a link to a YouTube version of it.

If you want to go directly to the author’s website to see it (recommended) then click on this link

  The film addresses, in a highly entertaining and amusing way, the trap we find ourselves in of apparently having to consume more and more "stuff" to keep the economy growing. It shows how the end result is almost certainly not what we need or should aspire to.

Ecological debt: no way back from bankrupt

NATURE DOESN’T DO BAILOUTS!

This recent BBC article points out that Britain goes into "ecological debt" in about mid-April. This means that Britain’s impact/demands on the planet will have exceeded, in under four months, what the planet can sustainably supply in the whole year.

Another way of looking at the same idea is to realise that if the whole world made the demands of the average Brit on the planetary systems we would need about 3 planet’s worth of resources to supply them. Clearly unsustainable!

Somebody tell Terry le Sueur that sustainability means the average person internationally uses no more in one year than the planet can supply in one year – our States seem woefully (or is that wilfully) ignorant of this concept.

Age of Stupid movie to be released March 20th

The "Age of Stupid" is the new movie from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel) and producer John Battsek (One Day In September). Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? It will be released in UK cinemas on 20 March 2009, followed by other countries.

The film was simultaneously premiered in 65 places (including the Eden project)

website www.ageofstupid.net

U.K. Minister for Energy and Climate Change Ed Milliband was interviewed afterwards onstage (video below), but he continues to use "growth" as an option! They say that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem and so Milliband must be part of the "Age of Stupid" problem. Until these people begin to integrate their thinking about all the threats - climate change; peak oil; economic meltdown and global population - into one seamless strategy, they will not comprehend that economic growth is no longer an option. Economic development is. Further conventional economic growth is impossible without the worst of all consequences. Somebody please try to get this through to our "Age of Stupid" States.

I am fed up with being polite. I think the time is ripe for people who know their stuff to stand up and call into question the "Age of Stupid" and the politicians and their advisers who promulgate it as somehow sensible and maintain and enhance it with their half baked hubris and their delusions of adequacy. Above all else, they are recklessly fooling the public - whether deliberately or inadvertently is moot. Sustainability is not merely desirable, it is a matter of life or death.

Alice in Wonderland

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

Deputy Tracey Vallois asked a question of our Chief Minister, Terry le Sueur, ahead of the strategic policy debate. This was to define "sustainability" so that all Members knew his understanding of the term ahead of important debates.

The JEP (25th Feb 2009) quoted him as saying (and this needs preserving for posterity just to show the colossal ignorance/blind-eye-turning we have in our senior politicians).
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"Sustainability is a difficult thing to define," said the Chief Minister. "There are various definitions and interpretations. As far as I am concerned, sustainability refers to the ability of the Island to continue in a financial manner for a long time into the future, recognising circumstances and environments." He added that one should look at the Island's policies as a whole, rather than deciding on the sustainability of any particular one.

And he suggested that Islanders should ask whether policies delivered for Jersey and whether they would continue to do so.

It was often easier, he said, to think in terms of what was not sustainable and used the example of people who argued that a certain population level was not sustainable.
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Sustainability as a concept is rooted in the realisation that there are too many people having too much of an impact on the Planet. The unavoidable logical consequence of not changing this is an inevitable deterioration in the Planet's ability to support us. Unless we adopt sustainable methods of living, then plainly our future will be - well, dear reader, you do the math.

Once the non-sustainable nature of humanity's current civilisation is recognised by someone, it is highly irresponsible for them to continue advocating business-as-usual but unfortunately this is our Chief Minister's basic position. When he talks about "sustainability" he clearly means "how do we sustain business-as-usual?"

I think we can now openly describe him as highly irresponsible because we sent him a copy of the New Scientist (16 October 2008 ) special feature "How the economy is killing the Earth" which lays out in stark detail the future. Here is part of it
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html

In fact we sent all of the States Members a copy and assuming a) they read it and b) they understood it, we should have been able to look forward to them all making highly responsible environmental and economic decisions from then onwards. Fat chance! They completely failed to take into account the climate changing carbon footprint of continuing with an incinerator policy, so nobody should hold their breath, while waiting for sustainable decision making, anytime soon. Indeed, Constable Mike Jackson who is the Minister for Transport and Technical Services (the Department who planned and ordered the incinerator) said of Deputy Daniel Wimberley (who brought forward the proposition to cancel the incinerator)

"He seems to think we should all revert to living in caves and wearing animal skins. With all due respect, the Deputy has gone stark, raving bonkers"

BTW, Deputy Wimberley at no point said anything like that! - it is just the sort of appalling misrepresentation we have to suffer over here from too many of those who mysteriously (to many) get voted into office, of which Senator Terry le Main is probably the main example (his speech in this debate was a classic...). We even had a bona fide global warming denier nailing her colours to the mast in the debate!

To any readers outside the Island - take pity on us because unfortunately cretinous beliefs and comments are commonly expressed over here by the-powers-that-be. What is particularly galling is that these people are so arrogant that they actually think they're being smart or knowledgeable! You simply couldn't make it up!

We're about to launch a bit of a sustainability Blitzkrieg on the Jersey States "powers that be". We don't want to but they must be expecting something to happen - they surely didn't think they could get away with their simplistic inappropriate nonsense for much longer? They are are so backward at coming forward (because they drive by exclusively looking in the rear view mirror). Where are the properly thought out strategic forward-looking policies to keep us all safe and secure in the medium to long term? Someone has to wake them up and if no-one else can be bothered to put their heads above the parapet, then we will!