Birmingham Friends of the Earth Campaigning at local, regional and national level to protect the environment NEWSLETTER AUG - SEPT ‘11
Fighting for a Sustainable Energy Future Energy is a crucial part of the climate change debate. How we have used energy to generate power over the past 200 years is the reason we are faced with the threat of runaway climate change today and the decisions we make now about where we get that energy from will determine whether or not we will be able to stop runaway climate change in the future. James Watt wasn’t to know when he invented his steam engine in 1769 that this miracle source of energy had a draw back. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that has not been in the atmosphere for millions of years. As it turns out, this is bad news for us because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, increasing Continued on Page 14