A ugly picture is beginning to emerge of what the LDA (London Development Authority) are planning as 'legacy' in the so called post-Olympic 'park'. Neo-con insanity necessitates the inevitability of yet another property development scam but on Monday (9/11) I discovered a detail that helps bring it all into perspective. In making various calculations about where to site wind turbines the busy Olympics brains have worked out that the NW corner of East Marsh is the only possible place, chiefly because regulations require it must be at least 250m from any housing. A combination of the illegal St. Teresa Terrace housing estate on Main Marsh, requiring its own 250m exclusion area, and air flow to the other turbine at Eton Manor make the NW corner of East Marsh the only place left. When I enquired why the turbine could not go elsewhere on the Olympic site (i.e. south of the A12) I was told there was so much housing planned for the site there is NOWHERE that will be 250m from a flat!
So the sustainable, green, games and legacy park just means another massive residential development. Hackney will apparently get back a modest park (the size of London Fields, says LBH 2012 officer) for the destruction of Arena Field, White Heart Field, St Theresa Terrace and other encroachments. Whilst the vast bulk of the Olympics site will be more concrete boxes of unsustainable housing. Sure there will be some greenwash, e.g. better than average energy efficiency, and it will all be sold (in every sense of the word) as essential to meet the demand for housing. But the same dishonest greed that gave us the sub-prime banking catastrophe is feeding this whole game. The real housing crisis is in over crowded B&Bs, privatised council stock and increasingly on the streets. None of those people will be re-housed in the profit led orgy that will be the Olympic legacy. What is more none of the well paid LDA/ODA/LBH engineers, bureaucrats and consultants or the aspiring politicians bother to analyse anything long enough to realise they are stoking the boiler of another berserk carbon frenzy. The Olympic games will cost 4m tonnes of CO2 and that excludes the legacy development. People need to believe there is some hope so after the great New Labour fraud of 1997 and 30 years of corrupt, free market, capitalist ideology even the propaganda can be out sourced. Atomised individuals lying to themselves, constructing personalised justifications for whatever they can get, desperate to believe its OK.
So if you want some hope amidst the reality of environmental mass suicide, don't construct threadbare rationalisations to fill the gaping holes in the lies they keep telling you. Get out and do something positive. Plant a tree, feed a bird or hug a friend in need. We are our only hope but only when we start thinking and acting for ourselves, our communities and our planet is there any chance of avoiding climate disaster. Trust me, it may be a painful journey but you will feel much better.

Thanks to a very poorly attended consultation event at the Town Hall this evening (9 members of the public) I think I now understand why East Marsh was chosen as the location for the 2nd Olympic turbine (another is to be built at Eton Manor in Waltham Forest). Evidently 'our' turbine will not be operational before Nov 2013, too late for the Olympics; but it must be within the Olympic site to satisfy a planning condition for Olympic legacy renewable energy. East Marsh is deemed to be inside the Olympic site even though it is supposed to come back to Hackney in 2013.
The turbine cannot go elsewhere in the Olympic site because the plan is for so much residential development in the legacy 'park' that anywhere else would be too close to housing (I think 250m is the exclusion zone). That should give a fair idea of the sort of park it will be. It cannot go elsewhere on East Marsh because it would interfere with wind flow to the Eton Manor turbine.
So the raison d'etre is to comply with a planning condition for 20-35% (the figure seems to vary) renewable energy for the legacy development. However the ODA/LDA now say they may not need the turbine to achieve this figure so Hackney gets to decide whether or not it goes ahead. So it's an Olympics turbine that's not an Olympics turbine. Still with me?
Carefully sifting through Charlie Foreman's spin (LBH 2012 officer) it appears the site of the turbine has been moved away from the Old Lea river, further into East Marsh, because of concerns raised in bat and bird surveys commissioned by the ODA. I think I persuaded Mr. Foreman and those present from the ODA to make public those surveys.
Other data gathered: it's a 2kw turbine, will take 9 months to repay its carbon build (it's 120m of steel on a big concrete platform); some other output data went over my head/wasn't explained.
I did however learn the Olympics carbon footprint, excluding legacy developments, is 4m tonnes!
Consultation ends 14 December.

Well, with the sacking of the drugs advisor we see a certain pragmatic absurdity (big tobacco and big alcohol are fantastic revenue earners and a large slice of what we jokingly call 'industry') creep into government's thinking. Science yes, but not if it involves (makes quote gesture) 'evidence' and 'independent thought'.

Why does this matter so much to environmental activism? Well most of the descriptions of the current problems, likely outcomes and remedies are science-based.They are not based on what would suit us (although I suspect that life without cars might be rather pleasant) or pragmatic/political deals with the devil or (our current political/industrial posture) greenwash and tokenism. We're going to actually have to do something and measure it.

Russell, I'm surprised you're so concerned with land ownership between two arms of government! National government is committed to the 2012 Olympics and has acted to bring that about by creating the ODA etc; LB Hackney is another level of government and shares the same aim.

I favour the substitution of non-renewable energy sources with renewables. But any particular energy-generating proposal must be judged on its merits and de-merits.

The point is, is the proposal reasonably likely to satisfy these questions;
does it make economic sense in the foreseeable energy market?
will it place an unreasonable burden on Hackney rate-payers?
what are the impacts on people's use of Hackney Marsh?
will it impact adversely on the “natural” environment in which it will be located?

Nothing is known of the environmental effects of a proposal such as this (a large turbine) on the flora and fauna of a semi-urbanised area rich in wildlife such as the Marsh - there are no precedents that I can find, either in UK nor in the USA. I don't believe sufficient investigation of environmental impacts preceded the emergence of the proposal; these are adequate reasons to oppose this proposal.

If the proposal were confined to the Olympic site, the same points would apply, though arguably we wouldn't be having this discussion. Arguments on this turbine proposal which focus on the land ownership issue divert us from the actual impacts and are beside the point.

One of the many issues not discussed in the Hackney Pravda advert for an Olympics wind turbine on East Marsh is why the turbine is not on the Olympics site. It is an Olympics project, i.e. ODA (Olympics Delivery Authority). The primary reason for building it is to create the illusion that the 2012 games will be Green and to help meet the 25% renewables condition of the IOC (Int. Olym Cmte) award.
Rather than debate whether a turbine on East Marsh is a good or bad idea we should be asking why it is not on the Olympic site. If it is to power the Olympics,the closer the better. Remember Hackney lost 10Ha of open space to the Olympics (Arena Field, White Hart Field and part of the east corner of Main Marsh) and will not receive any exchange land. So the very least that could be done is to put the turbine on what was Hackney land and then pay LBH rent for the site. What we are actually being offered is another land grab for the Olympics with the fig leaf that LBH can charge the private energy provider some ground rent. So no I don't want a wind turbine on East Marsh. Instead lets have 3 on the Olympics site, the one at Eton Manor (in Waltham Forest), the one the ODA are trying to export to East Marsh, and another one for good measure!
Once we have a wind farm legacy on the Olympics site and compensation for the 10Ha of stolen land, then we can discuss the merits or otherwise of further turbines on other sites.

Went to Oxford to a meeting at OSS Watch. This is an open source advisory service for higher education and further education. During this, and all the associated anoraky discussions that make these things such a pleasure (to me, anyway), I met Paul who has written a fine apple map for Frome.

I think in the next few weeks, we might think about an adaptation for Hackney or for the whole East End?

Team Hackney's Sustainable Environment Group, on which the Environment Network has 3 representatives, is planning a half-day workshop in October/November to devise a work plan for the coming year. To date (this is the 3rd mtg) the Sustainable Environment Group has considered a pilot carbon reduction awareness raising scheme and the council's climate change strategy. (I will try to embed the papers from the September meeting below, or email me for a copy.)

The coming work plan is open to all suggestions, and anyone who would like to put forward ideas is very, very welcome. For example, the issue of water quality was raised after the last meeting as a possibility. Please reply here or directly to me if you'd like to get involved.

I live on a fairly friendly housing estate, but there are still many neighbours I haven't met. Sometimes you need mechanisms, and activities, to bring people together. We have started up a project to grow food in dumpy bags on an unused drying area on the estate. The soil and manure arrived early on Friday morning, and I decided to get started filling the bags. When one of my neighbours saw me wrestling with a wheelbarrow and a tonne of manure on my own, he offered to help, and between us we made light work of filling two bags. In return for his help I was able to get a longstanding problem with his TV aerial fixed, by emailing a contact at Hackney Homes (my neighbour had long since given up after being fobbed off so many times.)

Then another man on the estate, a Turkish man who doesn't speak much English, turned up with his young son to fill his bag. Meanwhile I had told my immediate neighbour about the project and he was keen to join in. Since it is easier for two people to fill a bag, I suggested they both work together, which they did, despite the language problem. It was lovely to see two neighbours who had never met work together, and at the end we all shook hands. It felt like the project had already delivered results, before any vegetables have even been planted!

I spend many hours hiding in Abney Park's woodland and when there this summer had a wonderful encounter with a butterfly. I watched as a Holly Blue fluttered around a muddy patch on the path one hot day. I wondered if it was thirsty and looking for water. Taking out my water bottle I sprinkled some water on the path. My friend came and went and came and went. A short while later it came again and instead of going to the water on the path it sat on top my water bottle! We then spent several minutes together as it refreshed itself as my guest. I then picked up the bottle, butterfly attached and managed to unscrew the cap. I put a drop of water on my thumb and amazingly the butterfly walked from the cap to my thumb to drink!
I have a video I will post once I've reduced it in size.
Close up, deep connections with Nature are possible, even in Hackney. You just need to be still and sensitive to wild spirits.

Interview at Buddhist Economics Conference This is a transcript of the interview I gave in April during the Buddhist Economics conference. I've put it here because radical-economic-replumbing (to coin a phrase) should be (my opinion, of course) part of any comprehensive green agenda.

It's the hard bit though, we believe so firmly that economics works in only one way. My central tenet is that exchange and storage of value is merely technology but one that we have allowed to master us, in recent (well, 500 years or so) times. It's within our gift to correct it, if we should so decide.

Actually, Schumacher said it a lot better than anyone, up to now, bringing us back to a Buddhist Economics conference in a predominantly Buddhist country.