1. Annual Lecture & Workshop - Planning for Sustainability November 21st/22nd
2. FEASTA Opposes BoI Denis O'Brien Appointment
3. NorthSouthEastWest Exhibition of Photography on Climate Change
4. Annie Sugrue to Represent FEASTA in Montreal
5. Anne Behan Award to be Presented at Annual Lecture
6. FEASTA Calls for Energy Rationing
7. Special Books Offer - 3 for 2 on Growth: the Celtic Cancer (FEASTA Review 2)
8. Report from FEASTA Members' Weekend
9. Membership

Annual Lecture Monday 21st November & Workshop Tuesday 22nd November

A reminder to all of you that the FEASTA Annual Lecture & Workshop is taking place on November 21st/22nd. Roger Levett is the speaker for the lecture at 7.30 pm on Monday November 21st at the Davenport Hotel at Merrion Square. He will be speaking on 'How to Live Well Without Carbon - Decouple Life Satisfaction from Economic Growth, as well as Economy fom the Environment' - a topic of interest to us all. This promises to be a stimulating evening with drinks and world-saving conversations in the bar afterwards. Admission to the lecture is only €10, students/ unwaged/OAP only €5

The following day (Tuesday 22nd November) Roger will be joined by Dr. Kevin Leyden for a workshop entitled Planning for the Future now - Building Sustainable Local Communities'. The workshop is for a limited number of participants to share knowledge in securing environmental and social sustainability in local communities. Workshop fee €100 includes previous evening's lecture and lunch. What a deal! 9.30 am - 2.30 pm, Mont Clare Hotel, Clare St, Dublin 2. For more details see www.feasta.org.

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FEASTA Opposes BoI O'Brien Appointment

See below for a recent vigourous exchange of views - FEASTA vs Bank of Ireland - to me, the most telling phrase is "the right man for the job"...

Mr Richard Burrows
Governor
Bank of Ireland
Head Office
Lr Baggot Street
Dublin 2

September 21, 2005

Dear Mr Burrows

Re: Appointment of Denis O'Brien as Deputy Governor Bank of Ireland

FEASTA is a registered charity currently conducting research on behalf of the EPA in the areas of energy availability and transport infrastructure. All our banking business is with the Bank of Ireland.

I have been asked to write to you by our Executive Committee to express our concern at the appointment last week of Mr Denis O'Brien as Deputy Governor of the bank with remuneration of €148,000 pa.

While nobody could deny the entrepreneurial flair of Mr O'Brien he comes with 'baggage'. He has been involved with the ongoing Tribunal of Inquiry regarding the awarding of the second mobile phone licence and there is a widespread perception that he has something to hide.

With capital gains tax at a mere 20% he chose to avoid (legally) his tax liability by establishing a residence for tax purposes outside the state, and he preferred to spend a large amount of money on professional advisors to take on the Revenue Commissioners when they disputed his residency. According to a recent RTE Prime Time Special on tax loopholes, Mr O'Brien won the case on the basis that the kitchen in his luxury home in Dublin was not fully functional and therefore he did not have a house available for him in Ireland!

While it is perfectly legal to employ high powered tax lawyers to minimise your tax liabilities, the much publicised story of Mr O'Brien's unwillingness to pay €50 million CGT out of a €250 million capital gain and the issue of his disputed tax residence status left a sour taste in many people's mouths.

After the various scandals affecting all the banks especially the non-residents accounts issue, people hoped that the banks would pay more attention to ethical issues.

The appointment of Mr O'Brien sends out a message that 'greed is good' and FEASTA is most unhappy to be banking with an organisation that appears to have this ethos.

FEASTA would like to know -

• the rationale for this appointment.
• will the Bank of Ireland be paying his travelling expenses from outside the state to attend to his new duties?
• how is it possible for a man who is clearly so involved with many international business ventures to have the time to spend on the bank's affairs to justify &8364;148,000 pa?

Yours sincerely

Enid O'Dowd FCA Feasta Co-ordinator

FEASTA received a prompt and terse reply from BoI governor Richard Burrows, the man Shane Ross refers to as the "cuddly old sailor"...

Ms Enid O'Dowd FCA
Feasta Co-ordinator
The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability
10a Lower Camden St
Dublin 2

Sept 26 2005

Dear Ms O'Dowd

Thank you for your letter of 21 September.

Denis O'Brien was appointed as Deputy Governor because we believe he is the right man for the job. In his five years membership of the Court he has made a useful and active contribution to our affairs and to the Bank.

He has been re-elected twice by the stockholders at Annual General Court in that period.

Denis O'Brien receives no expenses for travel to Court meetings and that situation will not change. He is enthusiastic about his appointment and his increased involvement in Bank affairs.

Yours sincerely

Richard Burrows

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NorthSouthEastWest - Photography of Climate Change

NorthSouthEastWest is the title of a British Council touring exhibition, on the theme of Climate Change. It will be visiting over 60 countries during 2005 and comes to Ireland in mid-November. The aim of the exhibition is to highlight problems associated with climate change, the major science campaign for the British Council this year. The exhibition was developed by British Council Science in association with the Climate Group (UK). Ten Magnum photographers were commissioned to capture images from diverse regions around the world to illustrate the impacts and solutions to climate change. British Council Ireland will be exhibiting NorthSouthEastWest in both Dublin and Limerick and are planning a range of activities during the visit to help focus the public on this crucial environmental issue.

The exhibition will be at the University of Limerick from 13th - 16th November and at the Cultivate Centre, Temple Bar, Dublin from 18th - 26th November.

FREE events at Cultivate include Policy and Climate Change, a session for government/NGO participants on Monday 21st November 10.30-12.30, Business and Climate Changefor Irish business stakeholders/NGOs to develop business response to climate change on Tuesday 22nd November 10.30-12.30 and An Interfaith Gathering on Climate Change This facilitated discussion will bring together a panel of representatives from different faiths and religious groups active in Ireland. This session, which is open to all, will explore the challenges and responses to Climate Change on Wednesday 23rd November 20.00-22.00. For more details on the exhibition at Cultivate, see the Cultivate Update ebulletin at www.sustainable.ie

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Annie Sugrue to Represent FEASTA in Montreal

FEASTA member Annie Sugrue, who runs the EcoCity Trust in South Africa and is chair person of the South Africa Climate Action Network, will represent FEASTA at the major UN climate conference which opens in Montreal on November 28th and runs until December 9th. She will be one of the two NGO representatives included in the official Irish delegation.

"This meeting will be largely about how the post-Kyoto process will be handled and not so much about actual commitments by governments" she says. Her position at the conference will be interesting as she has close links with members of the official South African delegation and will also be able to influence thinking in CAN International, the biggest NGO grouping at the conference.

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Anne Behan Award to be Presented at Annual Lecture

The inaugural presentation of The Anne Behan Community Sustainability Award is to take place at this year's FEASTA Lecture. The award will go to the community in Ireland which, in the opinion of a panel of judges, has done most during the previous few years to build its economic self-reliance, to strengthen itself socially and culturally and to protect and enhance its natural environment.

This is an annual award; for selection criteria and application details see Anne Behan Award

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FEASTA Calls for Energy Rationing

The recent tripling of oil prices is causing great hardship to the world's poor and their situation is likely to worsen in the near future as the increased cost of farm inputs like fertilizer and tractor fuel pushes up the cost of their food. FEASTA believes that energy rationing, introduced on either a national or an international level, could prevent malnutrition and fuel poverty increasing in the countries in which rationing is used. It could also provide a basis for slowing climate change.

If adopted by an individual country, its government would start issuing emissions ration coupons (alias transferable energy quotas) regularly to its population. Everyone would get the same allocation and the total ration for the first year would be just less than the country's expected CO2 emissions for that year. In each subsequent year, the total emissions ration could be cut by, say, 2%. Recipients would sell their coupons to the banks, which would sell them on to businesses which needed to buy fossil fuels. The competition among businesses for the limited number of coupons would give them an increasing value.

Even if other countries did not follow suit, this approach would bring three benefits.

• It would force the country's industry and the public to be more energy efficient. This would stand the country in good stead as the world price of fossil fuels rose over the years. Moreover, the techniques industry developed might find a market overseas, in the way that the encouragement given by the Danish government to its wind power industry has paid off many times in export sales.
• The cost of buying the coupons needed to purchase fossil energy would rise year by year as the size of the total national ration fell. The income from selling coupons would, in effect, provide everyone with a citizen's income which would be of most benefit to the poorest people.
• As the price of fossil energy rose because of the rising cost of buying the coupons to purchase it, it would become increasingly financially attractive to develop renewable sources of energy. As many of these could only be developed at a local level, the benefits would be shared out across the country.

FEASTA has recently made a submission to the Department of the Environment in which we suggested that Ireland should adopt such a system to help the country meet its Kyoto emissions target. The submission has been posted on the website here. We have also suggested to the Green Party this month that it should cease to press for the introduction of a carbon tax and back "transferable energy quotas" instead. A discussion of the relative merits of carbon taxes and energy quotas can be found on p. 136 of the most recent FEASTA Review - Growth - The Celtic Cancer.

But the full benefits of energy rationing can only be captured if it is adopted internationally. In this case a new international organisation would calculate the annual percentage rate at which global fossil fuel consumption needs to be reduced from its present level to give the world a good chance of avoiding a catastrophic climate change. That rate would determine the size of the emissions ration the organisation issued every year, the total ration being shared amongst the world's human population on an equal per capita basis.

The international organisation would then agree with the world's oil, gas, and coal producers the price they would receive for the total amount of fossil fuel that it was possible to burn under the emissions ration. In return for this guaranteed price, the producers would undertake not to supply fuel without collecting enough coupons to cover the emissions from it. Inspectors would check to ensure this was the case.

Accordingly, every quarter or every year, each person in the world would get an individual ration coupon entitling him or her to burn the amount of fossil fuel that would release their share of the greenhouse gas emissions allocated for that year. They would not, of course, be entitled to the fuel itself - they would have to pay for that - but they would be able to sell their ration coupons through banks and post offices which would in turn sell them on to companies needing to buy fossil fuels from the producers.

The advantage of having an international rationing system is not just that it goes a long way to solving the climate crisis. It also means that, instead of fossil fuel producers making huge windfall profits because of the scarcity of oil and gas after their production peaks, most of the extra money that energy purchasers will have to pay to secure their fuel will go to the poorest people in the world.

A leaflet setting out these ideas will be printed for distribution at the international climate change meeting which opens in Montreal later this month.

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Report from Members' Weekend

Twenty-four FEASTA members spent an enjoyable and informative weekend in the Nano Nagle Centre from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th October 2005. An Open Space process took place on Saturday morning, during which a number of presentations were made: - an eco-estate for Gaelic speakers in Co. Meath (Tomás O Maonaile), money systems (Richard Douthwaite), energy scenarios (Phoebe Bright), rural development (Emer O Siochru), Irish Doctors Environmental Association (Dr Philip Michael), Fairtrade (Margaret Irish) and a workshop on democracies also took place.

Delicious produce - pumpkins, home-baking and eggs from the nuns' organic farm ­ was sourced from the on-site Blackwater food market. Sr Lancia and her team were excellent hosts, and a great time was had by all.

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3 for 2 offer: Enlighten Someone You Love this Christmas

From now until Christmas, we are offering a special discount on FEASTA Review 2, otherwise known as Growth: the Celtic Cancer. This is the book referred to as "crazy stuff" by Mary Harney in Dail Eireann. 3 copies will set you back a mere €30, this is a 33% discount on normal pricing! If you are a FEASTA member, 3 copies is only €20 - a bargain.

Some other titles currently in stock:

The Pesticide Detox An anthology of essays on sustainable agriculture, edited by Jules Pretty. €34, Members price €30

The Living Land More on sustainable agriculture from Jules Pretty, in this meticulously researched book. Price €28, Members' price €26

The Party's Over and Powerdown Two powerfully gripping works about the end of the world as we know it, from Richard Heinberg. FEASTA members, see the newsletter (out later this month) for full length reviews of these books. Powerdown €16 / €15, The Party's Over €18 / €16

Also reviewed in the upcoming FEASTA members' newsletter is Living in the Cracks, an enchanting account of rural social enterprise in Britan and the Czech Republlic. Only €10 / €8 !

For those of you attending the FEASTA Annual Lecture, speaker Roger Levett's report for the Fabian Society - A Better Choice of Choice is a fascinating read, vital for anyone involved in planning for sustainability. Insightful, thought-provoking and lucidly written, this report will challenge all those interested in how public policy contributes to sustainable development and individual & social wellbeing. Price €15 + €1 post & packaging.

When ordering other titles listed above please add €3.50 post & packaging.

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Membership

Membership of FEASTA gives you the opportunity to support the foundation's work and entitles you to a discount on the Feasta review due out next month, two newsletters, quarterly e-mail bulletins, and concessions on our events and publications.

€20 for a years membership
€10 concession for students and unwaged
€30 for a voluntary group or organisation
€65 for a funded group or organisation

If you are not a member please consider becoming one. Credit card payments accepted, and of course, donations are very welcome.