Transition Island Blog

I missed National Potato Day - 3/2/08.

Laugh not, we can’t afford to take the humble spud for granted.

The world’s population is expected to rise by more than 100 million a year over the next two decades.

The UN is looking to the potato to provide nutritious food for the poor and hungry. It declared 2008 the Year of the Potato.

Anton Rosenfeld of Garden Organic’s R&D said that the potato is easy to grow, flexible to a range of conditions, undemanding of labour, and will often far out-yield any cereal crop.

But we must remember the Great Irish Potato Famine, which reduced the Irish population by 20 to 25 percent between 1845 and 1852.

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Free insulation scheme for 64,000 houses.

The first phase of the scheme to cut fuel bills and reduce the city’s carbon footprint is announced by Sheffield City Council on 30/1/08.

Householders will be offered free loft and cavity wall insulation. A third of money spent on energy is lost through poor insulation, and insulating a house can reduce energy bills by as much as £300 a year!

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Bono has joined forces with former US vice president Al Gore to urge world leaders to tackle climate change and global poverty together.

The pair shared the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. They said environment and poverty should be seen as linked because the effect of climate change will have the most-dramatic effect in the developing world.“The climate crisis is unfolding more rapidly than the most pessimistic assumptions,” warned Mr Gore. He said: “In addition to changing the light bulbs, it is far more important to change the laws and to change the treaty obligations that nations have.” (more…)