Rob Edwards

Revealed: deception over plan for new Forth road bridge

from Sunday Herald, 28 June 2009

 

The public is being deliberately deceived about the government’s plan to build a new road bridge over the Firth of Forth to make it an easier sell, according to internal documents obtained by the Sunday Herald.

 

The £2 billion bridge - by far the largest construction project proposed by ministers - is officially badged as a “Forth replacement crossing”. This is despite the fact that it will not replace, but supplement the existing road bridge at Queensferry as part of a “twin crossing strategy”.

 

The documents reveal that advisers recommended last year that the name be changed to reflect the real role of the new bridge. But this was rejected by the government’s Transport Scotland to protect “political sensitivities” and to avoid “confusion among the public”.

 

Outraged opponents of the bridge are this weekend demanding that the Scottish government comes clean, and cancels the scheme. In a letter to the finance minister, John Swinney, last night, the Green MSP, Patrick Harvie, accused Transport Scotland of failing to be honest with the public.

 

Harvie said: “The problems with the crossing are not simply public relations problems. It is now fatally flawed, and I would urge you to scrap it before more money and effort is wasted.”

New Forth road bridge ‘could be cancelled’

from Sunday Herald, 28 June 2009

Government plans for a new road bridge over the Firth of Forth, airport improvements and coal-fired power stations have been thrown into doubt by the target to cut climate pollution agreed by the Scottish Parliament last week.

Senior civil servants are privately warning that major polluting projects will now be vulnerable to legal challenge and cancellation because they pose a threat to the new statutory target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 42% by 2020.

As a result, fears are growing that ministers will backtrack on the historic and world-leading climate change bill passed unanimously by MSPs on Wednesday. The eleventh-hour government amendment agreed by the parliament enables the 42% target to be lowered if experts advise that it is not achievable.

‘We got it wrong’ admits McDonalds

from Sunday Herald, 28 June 2009

It’s one of the world’s most popular brands, but also one of the most hated.  It makes children happy and saves parents money - or it kills us with calories while trashing the planet.

The American fast food chain, McDonalds, has often provoked fierce arguments. But it’s never been known for its humility, its tact or its diplomacy.

Yet there, between the horse manure and the hordes at the Royal Highland Show last week, were the company’s sharp-suited, short-haired executives sounding almost apologetic. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, they admitted that they had got things wrong, and that their business had suffered as a result.

Naturally they insisted that the company was now getting things right, but new evidence suggests that it is still exploiting children in its advertising, still destroying tropical rainforests and still making a massive contribution to global warming.

Whatever way you look at it, McDonalds is a $24 billion phenomenon. It serves more than 58 million people a day in 31,000 restaurants in 118 countries, and has become perhaps the most ubiquitous and high-profile symbol of American capitalism.

Revealed: the 1,700 problems plaguing nuclear plants

from The Observer, 21 June 2009

Britain’s ageing nuclear power and weapons plants have been plagued by more than 1,700 leaks, breakdowns and other mishaps over the past seven years, according to a secret report by the government’s chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman.

The report, released under freedom of information legislation, reveals the catalogue of incidents and accidents that have confronted the UK safety watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), as it struggles to cope with a growing workload and a severely depleted staff.

The NII faces “major challenges” in ensuring that old nuclear plants are run or dismantled safely at the same time as checking that new plants are safe to build, Weightman says. There are problems “across all areas of existing nuclear plant”, including Sellafield in Cumbria, Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, and reactors around the country.

With relatively fewer inspectors than any other nuclear-powered country in the world, the NII has to police the safety of 39 nuclear sites across the UK, some of them dating back more than half a century. It is also having to assess foreign reactor designs proposed as part of the government’s new nuclear power programme.

In January this year, Weightman put a 37-page report to the board of the NII’s governing body, the Health and Safety Executive. Marked “restricted”, it lays bare the crisis that is afflicting the regulation of the British nuclear industry.

World calls on Scotland to act tough on climate

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

Scotland’s target for cutting the pollution that is wrecking the climate will still hurl the world into an environmental catastrophe in which billions will suffer, scientists are warning.

The Scottish leader, Alex Salmond, and other political leaders are being told by 13 top climate experts that the current aim to reduce emissions 34% by 2020 is “wholly inadequate”. The target must be raised to at least 42% to help save the planet, they say.

The scientists’ dramatic plea, to be delivered tomorrow, is the latest in an extraordinary global groundswell of voices putting mounting pressure on ministers and MSPs to strengthen their climate change bill, due for its final debate in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday.

Business leaders, celebrities, politicians, trade unions, students, faith groups, community organisations and environmentalists have united with leaders and campaigners in developing countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and the Maldives to demand tougher action from the Scottish government.

Three days to save the world

from Sunday Herald 21 June 2009

In three days time the Scottish Parliament will take the most important decision of its life. Ministers and MSPs will vote on what the nation will do over the next few years to combat one of the greatest threats facing the world.

There is now no doubt that, without urgent action to cut the pollution that is warming the globe, disaster beckons. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms will sweep across continents, killing millions and evicting millions more.

This is the year in which the world will decide, at a summit in Copenhagen in December, how to respond. And this is the week in which Scotland will choose how to help shape the arguments now brewing in London, Brussels, Washington and Beijing.

Alex Salmond and his Scottish Nationalist ministers are adamant that they are crafting a bill to combat climate change that will lead the world in its ambitions. But almost everyone else disagrees, including, most pointedly, an impressive collection of leading climate scientists.

As the Sunday Herald reveals today, 13 experts from major universities and institutions are damning the Scottish government’s target to cut emissions 34% by 2020 as “wholly inadequate”. They say that a target of at least 42% is essential to prevent “catastrophic climate change”.

BP lambasted for ‘greenwash’ over £10 tree-planting scheme

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

One of the world’s biggest oil multinationals, BP, has been accused of climate “greenwash” by environmental groups for funding a £10 million project to plant trees in Scotland.

Part of BP’s investment in a massive ten-year woodland creation scheme has paid for a study to estimate the amounts of carbon stored by the trees. This information could be used by the company to duck responsibility for cutting the carbon pollution caused by its oil business, campaigners say.

The Scottish Forest Alliance, which brings BP together with the government’s Forestry Commission, the Woodland Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is today unveiling its annual results.  Since 2000 almost 3.5 million trees have been planted or allowed to regenerate over an area one and a half times the size of Inverness.

The alliance predicts that this will result in the capture, or sequestration, of 377,000 tonnes of carbon over the next 100 years. This suggests that more than 50 tonnes of carbon pollution could be “offset” by planting a hectare of woodland.

Changing Cockenzie from coal to gas would create ‘carnage’

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

A plan to upgrade one’s of Scotland’s dirtiest old power stations from coal to gas has come under fire for failing to do enough to cut climate pollution and for threatening “environmental carnage”.

Spanish-owned ScottishPower has announced a proposal to turn the coal-fired station at Cockenzie in East Lothian into a modern gas-fired plant. Because it is so polluting, the old station has to close by the end of 2015, and the company is now “examining options” for its replacement.

But environmentalists say that it may not be necessary to replace Cockenzie if enough electricity is generated by renewable sources like wind, wave and tidal power. And they point out that that gas, while less polluting than coal, still results in significant emissions of climate-wrecking carbon.

“Replacing one fossil fuel plant with another is the logic of the 20th century,” said the Green MSP, Patrick Harvie. “Ministers and power companies should be drawing on our own clean energy resources rather than making our future dependent on unreliable Russian gas imports.”

Revealed: Scotland’s dirty three dozen

from Sunday Herald, 21 June 2009

A record number of stinking, rule-breaking, pollution-spewing industrial plants across the country are being unmasked, named and shamed by the government’s official green watchdog this weekend.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is outing 36 sites from Shetland to the Borders as poor pollution performers in 2008. They include corporate giants like BP, Lafarge, Marine Harvest and INEOS, as well as 12 landfill dumps, nine food industry facilities and eight local authorities.

This is by far the highest number of sites ever fingered by Sepa, and it means that the agency has failed to meet its target to clean up industrial plants. Sepa points out that eight sites have flunked pollution assessments two years running and six have failed three years running (see below).

Companies and councils have frequently breached their legal permits, with equipment breakdowns, process failures, leaks, spills and nasty smells. Some have been served legal enforcement notices, and others taken to court.

Four of the offenders are in Grangemouth, three in Glasgow and three in Aberdeen. In Angus there is a trio of smelly and polluting meat factories and in Peterhead an offending oil waste plant and fish processor.

Perhaps the best known company named by Sepa is the oil multinational, BP, for failing to report and investigate incidents in line with its permits at the Sullom Voe oil terminal in Shetland. The company “cannot demonstrate a good knowledge of permit requirements,” says Sepa.

‘Silly’ secrecy over nuclear bomb convoys

Exclusive, 16 June 2009

They are the most dangerous weapons on earth. They trundle through your town in heavily-armed convoys and they sail up the Clyde in submarines, but the Ministry of Defence (MoD) won't admit that they are there - and it may not tell the emergency services.

A secret MoD manual released under freedom of information legislation reveals that it is official policy neither to confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear bombs even when it is “obvious”. And in some accidents police, fire and ambulance services may not be told unless they ask.

The revelation has provoked alarm amongst councillors for the safety of members of the public and emergency workers. It is “downright silly” of the MoD not to warn councils when nuclear convoys are on the move, they say.

Large convoys carry warheads for Trident missiles by road several times a year between the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long, north west of Glasgow. Vanguard-class submarines operating out of Faslane on the Gareloch are armed with the warheads.

Row over Edinburgh ban on biomass boilers

Exclusive, 16 June 2009

The government’s targets to boost renewable energy and cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate are being jeopardised by a ban on wood-burning boilers in Edinburgh.

The renewable energy industry is accusing the city council, run by a coalition of LibDem and Scottish Nationalist councillors, of blocking plans for biomass boilers in schools, while similar developments are being given the go-ahead across the rest of the country.

Burning wood from Scotland’s forests is seen by the Nationalist government as a vital way to provide renewable heat to communities. It has set a target to deliver 11% of the nation’s heat energy from renewables by 2020, and supported 26 schemes around the country.

But the City of Edinburgh Council has rejected plans to install wood-burning plants to heat seven primary and high schools. This is despite the city’s ambition in 2006 to become the most environmentally friendly city in northern Europe.

Revealed: Ramblers Scotland at risk of extinction

from Sunday Herald, 14 June 2009

One of the nation’s most effective and influential campaign organisations, Ramblers Scotland, is facing closure due to draconian financial cutbacks being imposed by its London headquarters.

Its budget is being slashed, its office closed and its staff sacked or relegated, leaving no more than a rump reporting to managers in the south. According to one insider: “Scotland was wiped off the map in about 30 seconds of conversation.”

The shock move has been angrily condemned as “an insult to the people of Scotland” by the convenor of Ramblers Scotland, the former MSP Dennis Canavan. It has also provoked strong messages of support and sympathy from across the political spectrum.

Ramblers Scotland is one of Scotland’s leading environmental and recreational bodies. Over the last few years it has played a major role in the land reform legislation which has given Scotland amongst the best arrangements for public access to land and water in the world.

Argument erupts over when to shoot deer

from Sunday Herald, 14 June 2009

Chaps with guns and tweeds like bagging stags. But they only do it for three or four months a year, and that’s how they want it to stay.

So when the Scottish government launches a proposal tomorrow to abandon the traditional close season for shooting stags, it will ruffle landowners’ feathers. But it will please environmentalists, some of whom regard deer as the plague, rather than the monarch, of the glen.

Arguments over managing Scotland’s deer are as old as the hills. Over the last 50 years the number roaming the slopes and forests have doubled - or even trebled - to approaching a million animals.

Landowners have been accused of keeping the numbers artificially high so that there are plenty to be shot at by paying visitors. But the beasts have become so prolific they are wrecking the environment - eating saplings, destabilising the landscape and stunting the growth of native forests.

Scotland’s waters to stay polluted for many years

from Sunday Herald, 07 June 2009

Delays in cleaning up Scotland’s polluted rivers, lochs and coastlines will breach European law, leaving vast reaches of water contaminated for many years.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that over 800 stretches of water covering more than 11,000 square kilometres will still be classified bad, poor or moderate in 2015 under official plans to improve the nation’s water quality.

Scotland is aiming so low that it has dropped down the league of European countries, according to a new international ranking. Places in England and Germany are now doing better, environmentalists say.

At the moment more than third of Scotland’s waterways are officially rated as polluted or ecologically damaged. This is condemned as a “national disgrace” by one of the country’s most powerful conservation groups, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Poor countries could be paid to go nuclear

from New Scientist, 5 June 2009

For the first time in eight years, countries are contemplating giving nuclear stations carbon credits in the run-up to the crucial world summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December. This could greatly boost prospects of a global nuclear expansion.

Draft text currently under negotiation at climate change talks by 182 countries in Bonn, Germany, includes an option to make nuclear facilities eligible for funding from 2012 under two schemes meant to help poorer countries develop low-carbon technologies: the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation.

Nuclear power was excluded from these schemes under the Kyoto protocol in 2001, after opposition from European and developing countries. Now the nuclear industry is hoping to overturn that, and open the door for funding to flow to nuclear stations across the developing world.

Revealed: Scottish Water condemns thousands to pongs and pollution

Exclusive, 3 June 2009

Thousands of people in Glasgow are being condemned to years of pungent pongs and pollution because because of a secret decision by Scottish Water to abandon investment in a dilapidated and overloaded sewage works.

Communities across Scotland are also suffering from smells and overflows at ageing or inadequate sewage works deprived of much-needed money. There have been a series of problems in Edinburgh, Inverness, Fife and Lanarkshire, while Scottish Water has frequently being prosecuted for pollution.

In Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre the water company has been humiliated by the consumer watchdog, Waterwatch Scotland. It has been ordered to apologise for repeatedly mismanaging sewage operations and “systematically trying to rubbish” the complaints of local people.

Eloquent plea for climate action now

02 June 2009

This short video makes an eloquent plea for action to cut the pollution that is wrecking the climate. It was made for Friends of the Earth Europe, and made quite an impression when it was shown at a climate change conference for environmental activists in Edinburgh at the weekend. 

It was made by the award-winning film director, Nic Balthazar, and involved more than 6,000 people cavorting in a highly choreographed fashion on the beach at Ostende on the Belgian coast. Further details about the video are here.