City Council adopt peak oil

This is good news! At the risk of being cynical, can we now expect the Council to oppose carbon-intensive developments, such as EastMidsAirport expansion, M1 widening etc? As climate change becomes more threatening, diverting money from that sort of grandiose project into stimulating the LOCAL economy will be vital!

About one fifth of all petroleum used in the US is used in agriculture. With the UK following US trends we too are consuming huge amount of energy in our diet. Ten calories of fossil fuels are used in the production of each calorie of food today.

It requires many times the resources to produce meat and dairy products than plant-based foods. Oil (and gas) is consumed in the production of the fertilizers and pesticides needed to grow animal feeds. Oil is used to fuel tractors, combines, harvesters, and other large machinery. This allows larger plots to be farmed and encourages mono-cropping. These crops are then likely fed to livestock or processed into the oils used in packaged food. As meat is a corpse, already decaying before it leaves the slaughterhouse. Yet more energy is required for the refrigeration needed to keep diseases of decomposition at bay.

With the largest proportion of the food value being lost by conversion into animal products, it is vital that we eat more direct foods.

We cannot afford to maintain 2 population explosions, that of consumers of western livestock-based diets and that of the billions of animals raised to satisfy a system based on greed not need. A staggering 55 billion animals are raised for meat every year - 55 billion living beings who have to be fed and watered, all of which results in the consumption of more oil.

We should be urging everyone to reduce and eliminate their use and abuse of animals for food and other purposes. This is surely a more compassionate way to reduce the effects of livestock production on peak oil, climate change, excess water use, wasteful use of land and food resources and the promotion of a dangerously unhealthy diet.

It is appropriate then that the East Midlands Vegan Festival was (independently) held at the very same Council House where the Council had a few days earlier passed its peak oil policy.

East Midlands Vegan Festival Report:  http://notts.indymedia.org.uk/2008/12/414972.html

Veganism - The Low Carbon Diet:  http://www.veggies.org.uk/climate

'What percentage of food production costs is due to oil-based pesticides?' - article at  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080423093116AAESeU5

but I cant help feeling that "supporting research and production within the city which helps develop local effective alternative energy supplies and energy saving products in order to encourage a move away from oil based fuels and also in order to create local ‘green collar jobs’" Will be used as an excuse to further line the pockets of companies like e.on who claim to be environmentally friendly and producing 'energy solutions'.

For f**ks sake! All these cynics. Next you'll be telling me that Nottingham isn't clean, proud and ambitious despite my massively expensive PR campaign to tell it that it is. We do need East Midlands Airport for convenient winter breaks you know. Not all of the council can afford luxury yachts like I used to. Have some seasonal goodwill!

is needed! not more research & unlabelled undemocratic use of extremely dangerous nano products that arent regulated properly at the moment. We already have stagecoach starting to drive through the city with its fleet of dirty buses using envirox nano fuel that seriously worries safety experts, but is sold as environmental.
Places like the Biocity research facility in Nottingham do some good research but alot of it is very dubious, they dont produce many jobs here either, most of the manufacturing then gets done in China.
We need production here, its called real sustainability. At same time these problems are related to the fact we dont live in much of a real democracy & our "representatives" have their hands tied by banks & corporations. Its still worth voting, we need direct democracy & socially & economically.