Yesterday, we reached a population milestone. More people now live in Urban areas than in Rural, according to research by North Carolina State University.

The government announced big plans today. The river Severn is being dammed! the Severn is about 10-20 miles from Bristol and apparently has the second biggest tides in the world. There's been plans for a barrage for years, Andy was telling me, they've just been constantly overruled by the environmental concerns. I guess the crisis has changed that.

You know the incredible thing? This one barrage, ten miles long, could power as much as one TENTH (although more likely around 6%) of all of Britain's power supplies, as much as three nuclear power stations. There's also plans to build smaller lagoons around Wales... The government have been touting how this is such a major step - where before they would say 'it's environmentally friendly' now the buzzword is 'self-generation'. It's been a big part of the white paper brought out, that we need to get rid of all these things we're importing from around the world.

It's still going to take as long as 20 years before the whole thing is done, though (even if it could last as long as 200 years). I hope we can wait that long...

-Mia

[author's note: week 25. Another short one - these exams are killing me. This was meant to go out yesterday but livejournal's being weird.

The 10% quote is true, by the way. There's that much power in the oceans. the Severn has a tidal change of 14m, more than anywhere except one place in South America. Actually what causes it is rotation of the earth.

With the rationing of energy in wwo it will probably end up being more than 10% too. As I researched this today I found out that my hometown of Swansea in Wales is producing a mini tidal lagoon over the next few years that could potentially power a large part of the city.

two very good op-eds in the British papers today. One by Tony Blair in the Times on energy futures and the other by Al Gore in the guardian about how misguided the policies of the Bush administration have been. I wish gore had been made president in 2000. There's little doubt the world would be a better place than under the current president. I hope he runs in 2008. ]