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Paul Mobbs
Mobbs' Environmental Investigations & Research

Articles and Papers

This page lists articles and other pieces that I have written over the last few years, organised by subject:

• Civil Rights/Digital Rights
• Energy & Environment
• Planning & Development
• Pollution
• Waste Management

In August 2009 I also started a blog, entitled 'Ecolonomics', that's been set up specifically to published long articles/papers on issues related to my work.

Civil Rights/Digital Rights

This section lists articles related to civil rights, the right to protest, and the parallel issue of civil rights within technologically mediated spaces ("Internet/Digital Rights").

The Internet, Disintermediation and Campaign Groups
Written for ECOS, the quarterly journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists, p25-32, Vol.21 No.1, 2000.
A study of the development of the Internet, its effects on grassroots campaigning, and the future prospects of the larger campaign groups (adapted from an earlier work I wrote for the Free Range Network, The Detractor's Convention).

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Energy & Environment

The following articles relate to my work on energy issues, and mostly follow on from my original research for the book Energy Beyond Oil.

The Simple Future Beyond Oil
An article for the Banbury and Evesham Quakers Adderbury Gathering, January 2010
Available from here as a PDF (HTML version available shortly) of an article to accompany my presentation on Britain's energy future. It explores the contrast between 'tradition' and 'change' and, using the Adderbury Quaker Meeting House (built in 1675!) as an example, how our perceptions of change or permanence affect how we may view energy, economic growth and consumption.

Face up to natural limits, or face a 70s-style crisis
The Ecologist, January 2010
Available from here in both PDF and HTML versions, the article outlines the parameters that will define our energy future. Recent gas shortages may have made politicians focus on energy security once more, but the deeper systemic problems of Britain's energy economy go far deeper than the limited capacity of our gas importation system. Energy represents far more to the economy than just a fuel source; understanding the biophysical limits on our future use of energy, and how this affects the general economy, is essential if we are to create a strategic vision that can address the ecological crises of the Twenty-First Century.

Peak Oil, the Decline of the North Sea and Britain's Energy Future
A presentation to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, Tuesday 24^th November 2009
This is the paper, slides and background data that I produced as part of a special presentation for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil. You can download:

• The presentation handout – coloured graphs
  (colour PDF version for viewing/colour printing)
  
• The presentation handout – shaded graphs
  (greyscale PDF version for photocopying)
  
• The slides of the talk
  (colour PDF export of presentation)
  
• Tables of background statistical information
  (PDF dump of spreadsheet data)
  
• Audio (MP3) and video of presentation/Q&A from the APPGOPO web site
  

The central message of the presentation is that Britain – irrespective of the ramifications of the global issue of peak energy –faces a series of problematic choices in order to re-negotiate our lifestyle within the biophysical limits that will assert themselves over the next few decades. These problems cannot be avoided, and they are complex because they affect so many aspects of our economic, social and material well-being today. For that reason they are innately political, and thus require the political parties of Britain to engage with these issues in order to map out a means of dealing with the crises these changes will generate.

Uranium Supply and the Nuclear Option
Published in Oxford Energy Forum, the quarterly journal of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Issue 61, May 2005.
A short paper on the global availability – past, present and future – of uranium, and the critical limitation that the likely future shortage of uranium represents to the much trumpeted "nuclear renaissance".

Turning the World Upside Down
Published in an edited form in The World Today, the journal of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), vol.60 no.12, December 2004.
An article I wrote for Chatham House, to which they added the snappy introduction, "Could you live with the same amount of energy now available to those in the third world? A dramatic change such as this is likely within fifty years as present energy sources are used up. So future generations will have to manage with just a third of the energy we use now."

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Planning & Development

This section covers articles and papers related to town planning and development.

New Labour and the Planning Agenda
Written for the CorporateWatch journal, 2000.
An article, written for and published by Corporate Watch, on the way that New Labour has sought to restructure the planning system to favour corporate interests and keep out the public.

• My original article
• The published article

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Pollution

Short articles, speeches and papers on the issue of environmental pollution and nuisance.

AEA Harwell – Nuclear and Environmental Hazards
1990
An article published in SCRAM on the hazards of the Harwell Laboratory site in Oxfordshire.

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Waste Management

Short articles, speeches and papers on the issue of waste.

'Best Value' and Waste Management in Local Authorities: An Independent View
A report for the Institute of Waste Management's 'Best Value in Waste Management' Seminar, November 1998
A paper for a seminar I gave to the Institute of Waste Management's conference on 'best balue'.

Sustainable Waste Management – Possibility or Pipe-dream?
February 1994
An article on the meaning of the word 'sustainable' as applied to the term "sustainable waste management" – written for The Recycling Council's annual seminar in Birmingham, 17^th February, 1994 (and published in the proceedings of the conference, Why Recycle?, A.K.M. Rainbow [editor], A.A. Balkema publishing, 1994). Please note that this report has been converted from a now redundant file format and so the pagination has been lost, along with any graphics.

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