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DEFRA have launched their new online carbon calculator, as David Miliband proudly announced on his blog. I'll give you the link in a second, but don't all rush - because this has got to be a prime example of how not to design a user-friendly online tool. Think irritating flash popup that does that thing where it fills your entire screen. Then takes several minutes to load due to the volume of gratuitous animation. Then every time you fill in a question, takes ages to move onto the next one, and even more time when you finish a 'section'. And an html version that runs even more slowly, if that is possible. When all you need is a series of simple questions in html, with almost no graphics, running on a nice fast server so that you don't get so irritated that you stop bothering half way through and never do find out quite how much you are damaging the environment. I applaud the idea behind a good online calculator (this one includes a postcode function), but guys - th...

A quick update from a project that I'm working on in my birth county of Suffolk - the new initiative Suffolk: Creating the Greenest County (skeleton website here that we launched a couple of weeks ago) which is starting to gather momentum. Not nearly as fluffy as it sounds, the project is bringing together lots of passionate and active people in the county to strategise some ambitious targets, and the actions needed to get there. As part of this we're holding a conference in October that will spread the message wider to community leaders, business, and the local authorities, and start to get them all to consider what their organisations or communities can do to contribute to the bigger aims. It's very much going to be a hands-on event with a series of seminars on different themes that are all about stimulating discussion, creating learning opportunities and sharing experience from those who've already started to take action. But we're also talking high-level with k...

The debate that Nigel Lawson has so effectively ignited by arguing that we should concentrate on adapting to climate change rather than stopping it, is an interesting one and exactly mirrors a (less polarised) conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of the leading City investors in low carbon technology. It is foolish to claim that Lawson doesn't have a point. Climate change is happening, and even if we do manage to turn the ocean liner around, the emissions that we have already produced will continue to have an effect for many years, and it will be decades, if not longer, before the effect of any cutbacks we make now will be felt. And that's without even getting into the possible effect of feedback loops. It is not enough to put our collective heads in the sand, hope that the government legislates for carbon cuts and that the problem will go away. So like it or not, we have to concentrate on adapting to the effects of a warming climate. Strategies for our water resources...