NEWS: The CityHippy Week

Ladies & Gentleman, it's Friday night! Welcome to...

The CityHippy Week!

Blastards!
CityHippy was down all day today and much of yesterday. Blogger had server trouble. Grrrrr! Do not want to move the blog for various reasons but any more of that and I might have no choice. Apologies folks.

Fairtrade Finale
As Fairtrade Fortnight 2006 draws to a close I do feel like the agenda has been shifted and that more people than ever before are thinking instead of just consuming.

Lots of Fairtrade noise around this week but the one that gets a special mention, seeing how I am always giving them a hard time for not really trumpeting in-store the fact that they sell Fairtrade coffee, is Starbucks.

For the first time ever I saw them advertising Fairtrade coffee in their window. Albeit a small tasteful promo...but it is a good start.

Has anyone ever noticed a Fairtrade window ad before in a Starbucks? If not then perhaps the Starbucks Challenge had an effect? Would like to think so. Am sure Starbucks would deny such a thing.

Some other interesting green stories of note this week that caught my little green eye include:

London is heading for a hard summer as the first major hosepipe ban to be imposed in over 15 years comes into force in April. With a third of water lost in transit due to inefficient water systems combined with very hot summers in previous years basically all non-essential use of water is now not allowed. Crisis? What crisis?

A worthy campaign has been started to save London's small shops. The Evening standard has stirred it up and created the SAVE OUR SMALL SHOPS campaign. Worth checking out.

Apparently Nitrogen Dioxide fumes at some major UK Airports exceeded EU recommended levels by as much as 75%. Needless to say at least one airport thought this was 'misleading'. They think we should rely on their readings taken from within the airport compound. Funny that.

Antarctic ice melting faster then previously thought. This really scares me as the film 'The Day After Tomorrow' is dismissed as being too fast a scenario. Well clearly we need to reassess our knowledge of the systems that sustain us and start planning for a worst case scenario sooner rather than later. Surely it is better to err on the side of caution?

More scary news of an impending potential energy crisis. Talk to people. Speak to your MP. Ask questions on phone-ins. Engage with others. Write letters. Raise the issue. Or do nothing...clearly your government has your best interests at heart [ahem].

And finally...new carnival hosts include:

Aug 21 - Frugal For Life
October 9th - EnviroPundit

Make 'em welcome folks!

And don't forget to sign up yourselves. Host for the first time or if you have hosted before why not host again. More info of course available here.

…and that's the way it is folks!

Namaste

Al

Technorati tags:
cityhippy
green
organic
week
news
fairtrade
business
supermarkets
local
investment
travel
flying
tourism
holiday
vacation
carbon
climate change
emissions
ice
water
antarctic
london