Victoria's Green Matters - 20th August 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It is now accepted by 95% of the world’s scientific community that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. There is now so much evidence that it is difficult to think that there are still people around the world who do not accept the facts.

There has been a 0.85°C increase in temperature between the years1880 and 2012 and 2014 is the warmest year on record; 14 of the warmest years have occurred since the year 2000. There is expected to be a further increase of 5°C by the end of the century if no concentrated action is taken to limit carbon emissions. 2100 is the year when all fossil fuel use must be phased out.

We are heading towards the next round of climate negotiations due in Paris in November. Work has been going on behind the scenes for some time by ministers of the EU to set out a framework for negotiators to follow. The US and China have already announced targets for reducing climate polluting emissions and the G7 nations have pledged to gradually end fossil fuel use by the end of the century. US President Barack Obama recently announced many measures to replace the coal industry with renewable technologies

We can look to Paris as a good start but work needs to go on at ground level and ordinary people must continue to fight for their communities. East Kent may well see a resurgence of the movement towards fracking which must be stopped.

Trains4Deal Meeting at BoHo Sat 14th August from 2pm

You may be interested in an open meeting about promoting our rail service. It's at the Bohemian (Deal seafront pop Pier) at 2-5pm on Sat afternoon, 14th August 2015.


As you may know, Trains4Deal has long pressed Southeastern to actively promote off-peak travel TO Deal and Sandwich, both:
- to help create local jobs in the visitor economy
- to ensure that the ongoing viability of our high-speed service rests on a secure foundation of growing all-day and weekend usage as well as commuting towards London.


Our speaker, PHILIP CERVERA of local egency CREATIVE HEADS is working on improving Southeastern’s perception and image of this market; he’ll discuss what they’re trying to do and share resultsgso far. He’d welcome your views about what Southeastern can and should be doing.


Trains4Deal is hosting this meeting of Railfuture, the national rail campaigning group. The later part of the meeting will discuss other Kent issues - local visitors are welcome to make an excuse and leave for the later part.


All welcome - please just come to the upstairs room in the Bohemian.

Kent Environmental Strategy 2015: consultation open to 25th Sept

KCC have a draft revision to the countywide Environmental Strategy which is under consultation to the 25th September.

Full details at KCC site:
http://consultations.kent.gov.uk/consult.ti/KESconsultation/consultationHome

Victoria's Green Matters - 6th August 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It seems, of late, that our ‘greenest government ever’ is determined to remove or modify any measures that have been put in place to mitigate climate change while continuing to state that their aim is to limit climate warming to an increase of 2°C by 2020.

Despite a previous pledge to take strong action against climate change we continue to hear about the removal of subsidies from various renewable energy systems such as wind and solar and an increase in taxes on renewable energy. The plan to create zero carbon homes has been axed and a flagship energy efficiency scheme has been abandoned. Before the election there was a ban on fracking in Britain’s most important nature sites but this has been overturned and a ban on the use of pesticides damaging to bees has been lifted in some parts of the country. Swedish company Vattenfall has scrapped plans to build a wind farm in Lincolnshire because of changes to planning laws.

Changes to the laws on vehicle excise duty or road tax means that from 2017 a Porsche will be taxed the same as a Prius after the first year, thereby removing any incentive to buy a low emission car. Not only were none of these measures in the Conservative manifesto before the election but there have been no positive measures to help the health of the environment or to grow a low carbon economy and represents the worst period for environmental policy for 30 years

Next Deal Seedy Saturday - Bee Fest on Sat 22nd August Landmark Garden

The next Seedy Saturday plant and seed swap will be on Saturday 22nd August at the Landmark Garden, Deal High St. This one will have a BEE theme.

We have Dover Beekeepers coming to show easy it is to keep bees, what we all can do to support Bees and other pollinators in our gardens and array of bee-related products and hiney to sample.

We are asking people to bring some bee friendly plants to swap. All starts at 10:30am 

This is a  International Permaculture Convergence Kent edge event

BIG Lunch: Dover Roadshow, August 2015

Saturday, 8 August, 2015 - 10:00 - 17:00

A one-day event at Pines Calyx, near Dover, offering a mixture of practical and creative workshops, facilitated sessions and networking opportunities. It's an ideal follow-up event for Big Lunch Extras participants who live in the area, or a great way to dip your toe into our programme to see if it's for you.

What's planned for this event?

• Find Funding with Trevor Skelton, Community Projects Adviser from local not-for-profit specialists Case Kent.
• Food for Free: Discover how to identify and prepare food for free as we go foraging with The Wild Kitchen’s founder Lucia Steward, a professional cook and food writer with an in-depth knowledge and love of wild plants and healthy, natural food.
• Art for Free: This workshop with local artist Cheri Hadaway will offer an introduction to the craft of upcycling books into something completely different… perhaps a traditional English paper rose!
• Bring a widget: We will be spending a bit of time at the camp talking about your ideas or projects and would love you to bring something with you that symbolises these – we like to call these items ‘widgets’. A widget can be anything you fancy – an object, a picture, a brochure or something that reflects your community project or ideas – you can be as imaginative as you like. If you can have this with you on the Saturday morning that would be great!

full details at http://www.biglunchextras.com/events/dover-roadshow-august-2015-0

Victoria's Green Matters - 30th July 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It was good to read recently about the creation of Europe’s largest man-made nature reserve here in the UK. Wallasea Island Wild Coast project is in Essex and has, so far, used 3 million tonnes of material excavated from the London Crossrail development to transform farmland into coastal marshland, back to what it was 400 years ago.

The first stage of this 20 year RSPB project was completed a couple of weeks ago when walls were breached to allow the sea to flow into the marshland. Eventually, by 2025, the RSPB aims to create many hectares of mudflats, salt marsh and shallow saline lagoons and to incorporate eight miles of coastal walks and cycle tracks to enable people to get closer to the wildlife that will colonise the area.

This project will show for the first time on a large scale how to future proof low lying coastal areas against the sea level rises that will result from global climate change and also provide benefits to wildlife. Many species are expected to re-colonise the area in large numbers including spoonbill, avocet, lapwing, and redshank and in winter the visitors will include large flocks of Brent geese, dunlin, widgeon and curlew. New visitors such as black-winged stilts will also be welcomed and plants such as samphire, sea aster and sea lavender are also expected to appear.

This wonderful partnership between the RSPB and Crossrail has created a lasting environmental legacy as well as supporting the economy and creating jobs through tourism. 

Victoria's Green Matters - 23rd July 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

Europe is getting tough on climate change. In the run-up to the climate talks in Paris in December, the EU’s commissioner for climate action is urging heads of governments around the world to encourage their ministers to come up with plans for a deal on limiting the effects of climate change.

In December, governments will meet in the French capital at a UN summit to make a new global agreement to limit carbon emissions which will come into force when the present one ends in 2020. This is seen as the last chance for the world to take action on scientific advice regarding the necessity to curb carbon emissions if we are to have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Developing countries are a crucial part of these negotiations. Poor nations do not have the finances to put in place the actions to limit carbon emissions and to deal with the effects of a changing climate. ‘Climate finance’ has been promised by the EU and other countries to the tune of £65 billion a year by 2020 to developing nations and the talks are expected to agree a system for providing finance well beyond then.

Developing nations, of course, are the ones at the ‘coal face’ when it comes to suffering from the droughts, floods and heatwaves that are the result of a warming world and they need to protect what infrastructure they have. Sufficient financial aid will encourage them to go ahead toward a low carbon world.

Victoria's Green Matters - 16th July 2015

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It was great to hear the news from Lancashire that the county council had turned down an application to allow fracking to take place in the county.

A recent report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), obtained after a freedom of information request, and released two days after the result in Lancashire, has shown that there are several reasons why fracking is bad news for communities, all of which have been voiced by our local campaign group, East Kent Against Fracking (EKAF).

There are four main reasons why fracking should not be considered an option and these are, firstly, house prices near fracking wells are likely to fall and the values of homes within a mile of wells have a potential reduction of 7%. Secondly, properties that are within a mile and a half of fracking sites may be subject to additional insurance costs. Thirdly, the leakage of fluids used in the fracking process has proved damaging to the environment in the USA and fourthly, even if contaminated water from the fracking process does not directly effect drinking water, which is by no means certain, there could well be human health affects through contaminated wildlife, agricultural products or livestock.

It has to be said that fracking could generate jobs and economic growth as well as providing greater energy security for the UK but at what cost? The jobs will not be long term or ‘quality’ jobs and the remains of fracking wells will scar our beautiful county.