Moonlight – the energy saving nightlight - www.GuardianEcostore.co.uk

What happens when you combine fear marketing, economy marketing, science marketing with eco marketing to sell product?

You get a nightlight (apparently it helps you feel safer at night) that runs on extremely low power (it'll cost you 50p per year to run), is based on something developed by NASA...the eco message I guess is that it uses less power than your current night-light assuming you have one, but the triple whammy of other marketing techniques ensures that you need one even if you never knew it.

Stupid feckin' arses.

Moonlight – the energy saving nightlight - www.GuardianEcostore.co.uk

Is this the ultimate folding bike?

A folding bike that rides like a normal bike? Bring it on. Not just for the commuters but those of us suffering from the curse of modern homes (no storage space).

If only they would sell them for a sensible price!

First Global Wind Energy Photo Contest

One for the photographers with an environmental bent.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has organised the first ever Global Wind Energy Photo Contest.The competition is open to all photographers around the world who want to look at wind energy from new perspectives. The challenge is to show the technology as it has never been seen before. New associations with colours and human beings, nature and modernity, landscapes and mechanics, or a mix of those are the trends to be explored with regards to wind energy and photography.

First Global Wind Energy Photo Contest

Blogged with the Flock Browser

LOL of the day - BNP accidentally promote immigration

In an amusing piece of right wing twattery educationally sub-normal UK facists the BNP managed an epic fail on a recent piece of anti-immigration propoganda.

The image in question is this one



Only problem for the BNP is that the Spitfire in the image belonged to 303 squadron from the Polish air-force. Meaning it was being flown by immigrants.

Oh dear Nick (or is that Peter) Griffin. That's a mixed message and a half eh?

Full story on el reg.

Formula 1 introduces fuel efficiency as a competitive performance differentiator!

F1 is in shit. At least that's what the doom-mongers are claiming following the sudden exit of Honda recently. With the world being in the grip of an economic recession even the biggest companies are struggling to justify the $200 million annually that it costs to compete.

With this as a backdrop the F1 teams and the ruling body of the sport met last week to agree some radical cost cutting measures. Some of these have the potential to deliver environmental benefit as a nice side effect.

First up there is the general reduction in power hungry and environmentally damaging development work - wind tunnels have been limited and testing is banned during the season. Hardly an environmental benefit but a reduction in harm we'll take at the moment.

But, and here is the biggie, from 2010 refuelling during races will be banned. This means that those teams with efficient engines will be able to run lighter cars and should out-perform their heavier rivals. Think about that, the collective brainpower of formula 1 engineers working towards more efficient engines, no doubt unlocking techniques that can filter down to road cars as F1 has traditionally done in the past. Of course we suggested as much should happen ages ago.

What have we done?

Amusing headline spotted

Earth Dream not to blame for Honda exit

Yeap, Honda quit F1 motorsport and it's our fault.

Big up our bad selves.

Green Extreme! Police warn of Eco-Terrorists.

In today's Observer (one of the "quality" UK Sunday newspapers) is an article entitled Police warn of growing threat from eco-terrorists which goes on to describe an organisation called Earth First! which allegedy advocates an 80 percent cut in the global human population in order to save the planet.

Apparently the organisation is being monitored by The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit who are expecting a 'lone maverick' acting on behalf of Earth First! to "attempt a terrorist attack aimed at killing large numbers of Britons."

Fucking psychos you might think. Especially if you stop reading shortly after the fold. Earth First! is clearly up there with Al Qaeda in the classmates most likely to bring about the end of your life shortlist. Probably all eco warriors are the same too, just like all Muslims probably want to kill you, and living in England in the 80's I'm still not so sure the Irish won't blow me up either. But those eco monkeys. Fuck, this is the worst yet.

Actually the article does work really hard to conjour up images of "climate camps" as terrorist training facilities where you can literally learn to put the warrior into eco-warrior.

The thing is if you carry on reading you find that Earth First! don't actually subscribe to mass culling of the species at all. As an anonymous spokesman suggests "the ecology also includes humans". That is a nod towards balance and actually demonstrates an amount of journalism (see I told you the Observer was a quality paper).

So they probably aren't really encouraging mass slaughter of innocents then, although a quick scan over the Earth First! (sorry, EF!) website seems to indicate that they are far from harmless. They might be non-violent, but they will quite happily publish tales of vandalism perpetrated by members of the organisation. Which does make them a bunch of idiots and an easy scapegoat if there is any value in creating the image of a radicalised dangerous form of eco-terrorist.

You see it all helps to discredit environmental causes in the current financial climate where green/ethical business practices will be unnecessarily expensive maintain and governments have spent all the money they had for dealing with climate change on bailing out the banks. It would be much easier if we all just thought these greenies were a bunch of loonies and didn't really want to associate with their ideals any more. Then we might be less inclined to ask our leaders to do difficult and expensive things like SAVING THE FUCKING PLANET!

So well done mass media, well done activist twats, well done credit crunch, you've given the spin-monkeys everything they need.