I have an alternative but equally radical solution, which could help end war and poverty, whilst improving the livelihoods of millions. At the same time it will deal with climate change. Sounds impossible? Read on.

Africa’s deserts were once forested paradises, and so they must return. Using large scale desalinisation plants on the coast, fuelled by concentrated solar power, hydroelectric, and wind, water will be pumped across the land, to turn this arid landscape into a green paradise. The excess salt will be sold to the rest of the world, where amongst other things it can be used for assisting in extreme cold weather events. Where sand once existed plants will grow, fuelled by clean water, and it is these plants that must start to form the basis of a new strong economy. The biomass acting as a as carbon sink will also supply food, ecological services and anthropogenic resources. The clean water will be a keystone to improving health and fuelling economic development, just as it did for all the developed countries before.

The construction of such a large scale irrigation project will create thousands of jobs, and it must be the entitlement of all Africans to be able to provide their labour. Other than the benefit of employment, they will benefit from contributing to their continents development knowing full well that the water will improve the lives of their own people. Power tensions arising from low water reserves will diminish, and gradually the continent will transform. Enterprise from forestry will start to boom, and as it does more and more carbon will become locked away. Wealth will be made from helping the rest of the world lock carbon up in biomass, and as it does wealth will take on a new meaning. But here is the difference, Africa will have to show the rest of the world what a sustainable economy really looks like, and along the way the politicians will have to work out what is the most efficient and equitable political model to make this all happen.

This has the potential to be one of the greatest legacies of our civilisation.

To keep checking that things are not damaging the environment is no easy feat, but then again it’s probably easier to do if your slate is relatively clean to start off with.

Once the water is flowing, some of the greatest challenges can start to be overcome at a faster pace. Sustainable economic development, healthcare, climate change, poverty and technology will all advance at a quicker pace. Of course some will be jealous, it’ll threaten corrupt institutions and change power relations, but surely the long term reward for all generations is greater than the short term reward for the few? In the words of Nelson Mandela S., African black civil rights leader ‘Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation’.

The speed of the development need only be constricted by all our greatness and the speed of positive collaboration, co-ordination and competition.

Of course I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I’m only one person. Only together as humans could we make such an idea work.

If I won the lottery, I know what project I would start…. and it wouldn’t be a big car. I’d plant an acorn to start this green transition.

Take care

G

If one thing gets my attention it’s cheap alcohol.  I’ve had a few experiments with brewing my own alcohol over the years, but these have been from cans of prepared mix and never from straight from mother nature.

Elderflower champagne has to be some of the easiest alcohol I’ve ever made.  Though the problem was I never had a clue what elderflower looked like.  To me it was just another white flower, and in most countries going through spring you’ll soon notice there are an abundance of white flowers around.  Foraging books are useful but hand drawn pictures can be misleading.  Better to have a photo.  In the end in took the diligent eyes of my parents to snap a picture of the tree, opposite a local graveyard.

4 gallons (20 litres) of Elderflower champagne

4 gallons tap water
5 lemons, halved, squeezed into your tub
2 2lb bags of fair-trade white sugar
around 20 Elderflower heads
Few glugs of white wine vinegar
Pinch of dried yeast (I used bread making yeast)
10 old 2 litre fizzy drinks bottles (yes you’ll really have that much)

Equipment
One large bucket with a lid.  Try to use a recycled one but if not a fermenting bucket will do.

Clean your equipment out.  Many books will tell you to use sterilizing tablets, I just used a capful of thin bleach and a kettle of boiling water.  Flush the bleach and hot water around your large bucket, rinse with cold. Make it safe.

Put in the sugar, water, vinegar.

Heads in the bucket with water for a few days (until you think it looks ready –  3 to 9 days ).

Strain through muslin cloth into bottles.  Leave for as long as you want.  They will keep for a year if they do not burst before hand.

Looking for 20 other meat-eaters to join me between Fri 12th – Mon 15th JUNE and try out vegetarianism.

NO MEAT FOR 4 DAYS – EASY?

SIGNUP http://www.pledgebank.com/4DayVeggie OR text ‘pledge 4DayVeggie’ to 60022 (in the UK only)

Glasto 2008 : 16 people tried

CAN WE BEAT THEM?

People go vegetarian for many different reasons but for me it’s about the environment.

Reports say vegetarians have halve the carbon footprint of their meat eating counterparts.

I’ll be writing from the Isle of Wight festival on Green Guys Global, where I’ll be trying out:

• A solar oven
• A solar charger
• Homebrew
• Living cheap – camping green

Today I’ve been building a vegetarian food package that includes home made elderflower champagne, wild garlic pesto and ingredients for bannock, curry, veggie burgers and a fried egg breakfast roll.  I’ve even got a mesh tea ball incase I find any nettles on site.

You can read more about my efforts on GreenGuysGlobal, MySpace and Twitter

Twitter
http://twitter.com/GreenGareth

The GreenFestivalMan
http://www.myspace.com/GreenFestivalMan

Despite my best efforts to reduce my meat consumption I confess that I’m partial to a bit of bacon.  I may never get over the addiction, but I’ll still pursue my belief in a significantly skewed vegetarian diet for environmental reasons.  I can substitute meat with fish and veg, but I needed to deal with the meat ghosts in my diet.

Covered in plastic, mechanised, sanitised and ill-treated – that pretty much sums up most meat you find in supermarkets.  I’m keen to get away from that industrial consumption.

So I find myself at River Cottage HQ just past the Dorset border under the skilful guidance of their now world renowned in-house butcher Ray “The Meat Guru” Smith for a day of meat curing and smoking.  With half a pig on the wooden table in front of us, the ‘classroom’ looking like a scene out of the Sopranos was prepped, and people had come from all over the world to experience his training.  Hong Kong, Australia and Mexico. Ray had built quite a following and it was obvious from the start this was going to be a rewarding day.

Over the next 8 hours 26 people were shown how to cut up half a pig into useable cuts, make bacon, salami, chorizo, proscuttio, gammon, roasting joints, how to cure meat, how to smoke meat, how to build a smoker, make biltong and parma style hams.  Pig farmers, small holders and individuals alike, were entertained and amazed at the ease of many of these artisan ways and throughout the day the food kept coming.

There was an emphasis on welfare. Ray was keen to make sure people understood how to treat pigs well.  River Cottage practices sustainability in everything it does and not just in the food it produces.  The toilets were serviced by a sustainable reed bed system, the power from a wind turbine, plant pots from old wellies and a recycled wine bottle lampshades.  I felt happy here, knowing full well this was a low carbon initiative.  Ray was like the favourite teacher you had as a kid, and Steve “The boy” (his accomplice) was equally as entertaining. I just can’t wait to get my own meat hanging up in a fashion that would make Tony Soprano (and the pigs) happy.

I found bacon nirvana in a small cottage on the outskirts of Axminster, and I don’t think there’s any going back.  (That said I’ll still be carrying out my vegetarian Green Festival Man campaign this year)

Links:

Ray “The Meat Guru” Smith – http://raythemeatguru.com/about.htm

River Cottage Courses – http://www.rivercottage.net/Category9/HQEventsCourses.aspx

Jamestown Settlement – http://www.historyisfun.org/

Green Festival Mans 4 day vegetarian stint – http://www.pledgebank.com/4DayVeggie

In fact UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport. (1)

I’ve been sea fishing since I was a kid and this year for my birthday I chartered a fishing boat in Dorset, so all my friends could share the enjoyment.

It wasn’t until I got back home that I really appreciated how sustainable the trip had been. Line fishing must be more sustainable than fishing by trawler. Firstly you only pull out a few fish at a time; secondly you have greater control over those you keep, and the those that go back. Trawler fishing in Europe, means you are at the mercy of mindless fish quotas.  These quotas stipulate you are only allowed to catch a specific weight of each species, and it is hard to get fishing nets to discriminate. Over catch – and they frequently do – and the dead “extras” must be thrown back to the sea as waste.  At this point I should stipulate the problem here isn’t fishing but the quota system.  Better to limit fishing by the weight of all fish caught, however each solution has it’s own problems.  Maybe it would be better to remove all quotas and let people fish themselves into bankruptcy?

All day charters vary in price depending on how long you want to go out for, whether you have your own fishing tackle and where you go to. A day’s wreck fishing can cost around £50-70 pound in the UK, Wreck fishing tends to be productive because fish like sniffing around old boats on the sea bed.  But there are a number of different options at much cheaper prices. Go local, whether it’s in a river, fish farm or supporting a local skipper at sea.

Our greedy cats eat £10 worth of fish per month.  So using crude maths I’ve decided that if I can get enough fish for 3 months I’ve already covered half my costs.  Factor in my substitution of fish for meat and I reckon I could break even, have a great trip on the water, and take another step up the self sufficiency ladder. I think I might need a chest freezer though. (Freecycle here I come).

Fishing can be a fun way to get in touch with your food, and improve your self-sufficiency even for the squeamish – by the end of my birthday even the girls were threading their own bait onto the hooks wondering what they were originally protesting about.

Links
(1)    Shun Meat says UN Climate Chief.  BBC News

But why “dig for victory”, surely you can dig all you want and still end up with nothing to eat.

The problem is, I live in a flat with no garden.  For the last year or so I’ve been writing letters to my MP Robert Syms about the need for more allotments in my local area.  I’m on a 5 year waiting list for an allotment and according to the Small Holdings and Allotments Act ‘If the council of any borough, urban district, or parish are of opinion that there is a demand for allotments . . . in the borough, urban district, or parish, . . . the council shall provide a sufficient number of allotments, and shall let such allotments to persons . . ..’ (1).  A 5 year waiting list to me is demand.  But sadly, despite my lobbying – 3 letters and 2 visits later – I still haven’t convinced the Rt. Hon. Mr Syms (Conservative) to convince the local council that we need more allotments.

So I started to deal with the problem myself.  The 3m x 1m balcony area on my flat became my gardening canvass.  All that I needed was a little imagination.

I bought a bunch of seeds from an organic seed supplier on the Internet and over the past few weeks I’ve been stuffing seeds into pots like my survival depended on it.  Somehow I’ve managed to squeeze a compost sack full of potatoes, 2 tomatos, 2 courgettes, 2 climbing french beans and 2 okra plants onto my “garden”.  Be creative is my motto.  Using cloches (gardening lingo for plant covers) made from chopped up drinks bottles, I’ve protected my crop from the late cold nights of Spring.  I’ve even created a makeshift green house, from a Coca-Cola drinks stand round my girlfriend’s father’s house.   One thing I’ve learned is that it pays not to be too regimental.   Try to maximise your space.  Things don’t have to be in neat lines.  Use all available space, for example using a couple of bags from a local gardening centre, I’ve managed to put Nasturstiums on the wall  (this is my effort to give the Bees some nectar, to stop them becoming extinct).  The windowsills of my flat have made excellent seedling nurseries, for compost packed egg cartons, stuffed inside sandwich bags.  Their success has been remarkable.  Some days I’ve seen things start to sprout in as little as two days.

But be careful, growing food is addictive.  I’ve started to convince friends and family to let me cut up their gardens to grow things.  In excess of 100 onions, 12 potato plants, 30 carrots, squashs, pumpkins, peas, parnips and beans galore later, my attention is now turning to how I might preserve this sumptious feast in the later months of 2009.  Freezers?  Coldstores? Vegetable bartering at work?  Quite frankly I can’t wait to see the results of this experiement.  I still don’t feel as though I’d fair well in a conversation with UK’s gardening expert Allan Titchmarsh or Michelle Obama in her veg patch, but I’ve started my journey towards self sufficiency. I’ve started to take back, a skill many people once took for granted.

Links:

1. UK Small Holdings and Allotments Act. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1908/cukpga_19080036_en_2

About 5 months ago I went Vegan and have loved every last bit of it and I feel great being a vegan so I decided to create this post since it is “Green”.

What is a Vegetarian/Vegan?

Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian: One whose diet excludes meat and fish but permits milk and eggs.

Lacto Vegetarian: One whose diet excludes meat and fish and eggs but permits milk.

Ovo Vegetarian: One whose diet excludes meat and fish and milk but permits eggs.

Vegan (Strict Vegetarian): One whose diet excludes all animal products.

Why go Vegetarian/Vegan?

• Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is healthy because you can prevent many diseases and cancers like heart attack, strokes, prostate and colon cancers and can even lower your cholesterol levels, lower your blood pressure, lower type 2 diabetes.
• You are less likely to become obese and you will lose weight and keep it off with exercise.
• You will discover you have more energy to do things, need less sleep and need little to no caffeine to keep you awake during the day.
• Raising livestock for food accounts for about 1/3 of all the US fossil fuels and about 50 of all the water in the US is used by the meat industry.
• Going vegan/vegetarian stops cruelty to the animals you eat because they feel pain too.

(Taken from http://www.sugarrocket.com/vegan/why-i-am-vegan.php)

Daily water usage in the US for…
An omnivore : 4,200 Gallons
A vegetarian: 1,200 Gallons
A vegan: 300 Gallons

Yearly land usage in the US for food…
An omnivore : 3.3 Acres
A vegetarian: 1/2 Acre
A vegan: 1/6 Acre
To make one pound of “food”…
Pound of beef = 2,500 Gallons of water
Pound of apples = 49 Gallons of water
Pound of lettuce = 23 Gallons of water

But don’t take it just from me do plenty of research at your local library, search on the internet on what vegetarians and vegans can eat and what items you can order when you go to a fast food/restaurant.

Also you don’t have to go completely vegetarian/vegan by incorporating a day or meal each week to be vegetarian/vegan friendly.

In conclusion: Going Vegan/Vegetarian reduces animal suffering, consumption of natural resources, makes you healthier and reduces your carbon footprint!

Posts by the Green Girls you may like:

Veganism – Part 1 (The Reasons)

Guest Editor: Vika Lebedeva – 10 myths about vegan

Useful Links:

http://www.goveg.com/environment-globalwarming.asp

http://www.goveg.com/healthConcerns.asp

http://www.tryveg.com/img/vsg0501.pdf

http://www.goveg.com/feat/chewonthis/index.asp

http://www.backwardshamburger.com/

http://www.veginity.com/

http://www.vegbox-recipes.co.uk/index.php

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/

http://myhq.com/public/s/u/susanv/

http://www.viva.org.uk/goingvegan/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD67tltFyAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05zhL1YUd8Q

Movies/Documentaries to see:

Earthlings

Fast Food Nation

Super Size Me

The Future of Food

Some Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in poorer countries support the use of GM crop. These NGOs see it as another problem: the gap between the rich and the poor, between people that grow in order to survive, and those that grow for profit.

Corporate names like Syngenta and Monsanto have become dirty words for opponents of GM crop. Sometimes options are limited, drought, pest resistant GM crop? or famine? Some can not afford the choice. GM producers need vision to survive. If they want to help create the future perhaps they could identify ways to work closer with local communities to tackle food and environmental challenges together. Perhaps they could grow back the rain-forests, or grow plants on the moon? All companies can pursue ethical profit.

World food prices are on the up. Globally this means more people starve to death. But with that comes resource wars, famine, and mass immigration. Oh and the price of bread goes up in your local shop. (Ahhh – That’s why developing countries like GM crop).

GM food could still provide solutions. such as better use of natural fertilizers and local crop varieties. A UN report in April 2008 called for more local food production (1) . Developing countries will need to adapt quickly to survive in a world without the same levels of trade in cash crops with developed countries addicted to unseasonal, flown in food. I only hope that the World Bank accounts for this in their policy making.

Why do we hate those GM crops so much? Well at heart we’ve always been a nation of farmers in the UK (and many other countries). We can still afford the luxury of non-GM varieties. For the moment I prefer vegetables that haven’t been produced so intensively. Those that have used natural fertilizers, as opposed to those generated from oil.

Developed countries don’t have the same concerns as non-developed ones. We do not have wide-scale hunger and nutrition problems. But we do have a legitimate concern for our environment.

I love those local varieties of crop, those that help regional agriculture and resist the development of crop mono-cultures. They make me feel humble. I’m proud of Jersey Potatoes and British Strawberries. I support fair-trade for our farmers. I don’t want to see one type of wheat, I want choice.

The argument against GM is not one against feeding the needy, its one against the alteration of our national natural environment.

(1) UN report demands urgent action on soaring food prices. The Independent, April 2008.

I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to buying the stuff. Ironically I only buy bottled water for the bottle. One for the gym, one for a walk… I keep them knocking around until I lose them or simply get fed up of the sight of them.

It’s crazy when you think about it. Many developed countries, where most of the bottled water is sold, have safe tap water. Over a billion people on this world do not have access to safe water (2), yet when it is flowing freely in our own taps we still find the need to buy it.

Just as crazy is the bottled rain water featuring on the show. The pleasantly named ‘Cloud juice’, comes all the way from King Island, New Zealand. According to the Cloud Juice website the water comes from ‘11,100 km off the Great Southern Ocean where trade winds evaporate pure, clean water into rain clouds that don’t touch land until they meet King Island’ Sounds like a dream doesn’t it? That’s because that’s exactly what they want you to think. Advertising often attempts to link our emotions to a product. Just read a book on Neuro linguistic programming or advertising, and you’ll find that out. However that doesn’t stop London’s Claridges Hotel selling it for £9 ($18) per bottle.

Here’s my own poetic skew on the sales basics of the bottled water industry…

Plastic comes from oil,
Water is free,
Wrap the water in oil,
And sell it to thee.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that our America uses more than 70 million disposable plastic bottles a day. Just over 60 million of these end up in landfill (3), and the the market in Britain alone is worth £2 billion.

According to the National Geographic if you imagine your water bottle a quarter filled up with oil that’s how much oil it takes to create the bottle. (4) Recyclenow.com reports that recycling one plastic bottle can conserve up to enough energy to light a 60w light bulb for up to 6 hours. (5)

There are pioneers like ‘Belu’, (6) that have started to make bottles out of corn. Not only that they are the first bottled water manufacturer that doesn’t contribute to climate change, but all their profits go to clean water projects as well. If you feel compelled to buy water, even after the World Heath Organisation has given the water supply in your country the green light, buying from companies like Belu is a step in the right direction. Next time I go to the gym I’ll think twice about the volcanic energy, my drink alleges to give me.

(1) BBC Panorama – Bottled water – who needs it? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm
(2) WaterAid – Charity Number 288701 http://www.wateraid.org/
(3) Container Recycling Institute – http://www.container-recycling.org
(4) National Geographic Kids – http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Water-bottle-pollution
(5) Recycle Now – http://www.recyclenow.com/facts/interesting_facts/index.html
(6) Belu, Penguin approved natural mineral water - http://www.belu.org/home.asp