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The Week in Green: reasons to be cheerfulNovember 7

For a few days at least, cynicism is officially suspended.

Yes, the world is in many ways exactly the same place as it was at the start of the week, its myriad problems just as intransigent as they were before Barack Obama's historic election victory.

But for now it is hard not to join in the global outpouring of optimism that has accompanied the election of the US' first black president - a man who single-handedly promises the diametric opposite to so many of the Bush administration's failed economic, environmental and diplomatic policies.

Of course, all those commentators counselling the world to take a deep breath and gain some perspective are entirely right to do so.

Throughout history the left has often been elected to clear up the right's mess and Obama is no exception. In fact, he has been handed a chalice so poisoned it would make a cyanide and olive Martini look almost appetising.

He has the advantage that Bush - a man whose approval ratings are lower than Nixon's on the day he resigned - has set the bar limbo-dancing snake low. In terms of policy, leadership, trust, credibility, and popularity Obama can only improve upon his predecessor.

But at the same time the challenges he faces are immense. The recession is only going to get deeper (it is worth noting there was no Obama bounce from the hard nosed realists that work the world's markets), the budget is a car wreck, the global energy crisis is worsening (as the

The Week in Green: How to avoid the "Starberks syndrome"October 9

The whole capitalist system is teetering on the brink, Gordon Brown's recall of Peter "Mandy" Mandelson represents the last throw of the dice, the Tories have reversed everything they stand for and are calling for a halt to executive bonuses, it looks like Spurs could get relegated, and if needs must you could always cobble together a story on asylum seekers or Kerry Katona's kids.

So what does the good old Sun choose to run as its front page splash on Monday morning? An expose on Starbucks' policy of leaving a tap running behind its counters to clean utensils.

It is hard to imagine that even six months ago a story about a company wasting water would represent a front page story anywhere, let alone in a tabloid. But The Sun obviously thinks its readers are now sufficiently interested in environmental issues to justify such a splash - and even if they aren't, they are probably interested in the paper's official green Page 3 girl, Keeley Hazell.

The immediate aftermath of The Sun splash - which saw The Guardian and the BBC pick up the story, and environment secretary Hilary Benn issue statement rebuking Starbucks - suggests the paper was right.

Looking closer at the story it is possible to feel a smidgen of sympathy for Starbucks, or "Starberks" as the inimitable Sun dubbed the company.

It was a classic hatchet job, and the already much quot

The Week in Green: Time to get insulatedSeptember 26

Yesterday, I had my now annual flirtation with nihilism after sitting through a truly terrifying presentation on the latest climate change science.

Back in 2006 it was Al Gore giving me nightmares with an Inconvenient Truth, last year I caught Robert Watson, former chief scientist at the World Bank and now a scientific advisor at Defra, delivering a keynote address that made Gore's slide show seem gloriously optimistic, and yesterday it was the turn of Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum and former head of the British Antarctic Survey, to give a speech that made me want to rush home, draw the curtains and curl up under the duvet clutching a bottle of scotch.

Like many scientists, Rapley is not one for the fire and brimstone. Instead, he delivered his facts in a measured manner, which allowed the gravity of what he was saying to hit home all the harder.

In a nutshell, Rapley spent 40 minutes explaining why the threat from climate change is much, much worse than climate scientists first thought and why action to address the problem is taking place far too slowly.

He may have finished on an upbeat note, quoting JFK's famous assertion that, "Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man", but it was hard to share this optimism when it followed a graph showing that both temperatures and carbon emissions are rising faster than climate models predicted.

In short, the worst case scenarios keep getting worse

Hang overs, smoke stacks and the case for decentralised powerSeptember 17

I spent much of the weekend being ferried around Yorkshire (friend's stag do since you ask; the St Leger at Doncaster, followed by several evenings of, well, enough of that).

One of the most noticeable features of the landscape is that you are never too far from a dirty great big smoke stack.

A quick Google Maps search tells you there are at least four power stations near Leeds and I think I saw three of them, although in fairness, as with all good stag dos, things were a bit hazy at this point and I might have been looking at the same one twice.

There were two things that were immediately striking about these power plants.

Firstly, how anyone has the nerve to complain about the visual intrusiveness of wind turbines when the alternative is these monstrosities is as intractable mystery as any Lehman Brothers' derivatives contract. They dominate the landscape for miles around like later-day cathedrals, so much so that you can nod off and wake up a few minutes later and still see the blasted thing. To call them ugly would be an insult to ugliness - they are the visual equivalent of putting your money on a horse that doesn't even get out of the gate.

And secondly why are there so many of them concentrated in such a small area?

The answer

The Week in Green: Gordon Brown and some unfinished sympathySeptember 5

I've been feeling a bit sorry for Gordon Brown.

I know that as admissions go this is pretty much on a par with confessing to a penchant for the hits of James Blunt and a sneaking admiration for the "comedy" of Jim Davidson, but I'm afraid I can't help it.

It was the kicking the prime minister has taken in the past 24 hours over the decision not to slap a windfall tax on energy firms and increase fuel assistance payments that finally brought on this wave of sympathy.

It is possible, indeed logical, to disagree with many things Brown says and does, but it is surely impossible to disagree with his assertion that faced with a period of rising energy prices that is likely to continue for at least the next decade we should eschew "short-term gimmicks or giveaways" in favour of long term energy efficiency programme that can bring down bills permanently.

The campaign for a windfall tax and increased winter fuel payments was always a crass populist measure drummed up by Labour backbenchers increasingly fearful over their political future.

There are undoubtedly serious problems approaching this winter that will leave many poorer households struggling to pay their energy bills, but if you take a dispassionate look at what was being proposed as a solution you realise that it is quite simply insane.

There is arguably a relatively strong cas