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It has long been said we are addicted to oil. Like the tobacco companies before them, oil giants don’t publicly admit to addiction, though privately they love it. But oil is only the delivery mechanism for our drug of choice – like a needle is to heroin – oil is to our drug: energy. The average British resident has access to the same energy that a chain-gang of 25 salves could deliver. It means we don’t have to walk to work, we can have cooked dinners, and zone out to X-factor at the end of the day. We can be confortable in our houses year round without wearing twenty-five knitted sweaters because of the energy available to us, and  once or twice a year we can go and fry our skin off somewhere near the Mediterranean.

This addiction – the energy addiction – is driving our debates over the future of energy. You can be an advocate of renewables, happy to cover 10% of the UK in wind turbines; or you can support nuclear, or point towards the possibilities of capturing all the pollutants from coal-fired power stations and sweeping them under the North Sea. But each of these viewpoints depends on an assumption: we need the energy!

It is an unfortunate assumption because if true each of these viewpoints isn’t valid. Take wind power: cover 10% of the UK surface (the windiest, and often the most beautiful) and we can just about cover our electricity demand ‘on average’; there will still be the issues of dealing with the mis-match between when the energy is available and when we want it. What about nuclear? It does its job in small quantities, but if world electricity production were transferred totally to Nuclear we would run out of Uranium in approximately 20 years. Similar holes can be picked in any argument that rest on continued use of energy.

The nub of the matter is this: if we keep demanding energy at our current rate the planet will be stuffed one way or another, end of story. That doesn’t even begin to consider the huge mass of humanity who have so far missed out on the benefits of the energy revolution. As the populations of China, India, South America and Africa begin to demand equality the impossibility of carrying on with our addiction becomes more apparent.

The only solution is to reduce our energy usage.  And turning your TV off standby will not cover it. Making any of the proposed energy solutions viable requires reducing our energy usage to a fraction of its current level; say 20% of 2010 levels. What does that mean? It means this: globalisation is off; no more holidays outside the UK; super-hyper efficient negative carbon insulated homes;  living within walking distance of work; eating only what can be grown locally.

Have you taken that in? To become sustainable, we cannot just put up a few wind turbines, or even a few thousand wind turbines. We need to massively change how society works. This isn’t a message many people want to hear. Well, by that I mean many folk in the UK or America, although I’m willing to bet that if you sat down a group of villagers in Sudan and said ‘we in Europe are going to give up our cars and stop flying over to the States to tell everyone how badly off people are in Sudan’ those villagers may not be too upset.

Energy efficiency isn’t near the top of the agenda for our politicians today. It isn’t even on the agenda. Why? Because it has nothing to offer the budding statesman. Energy efficiency is seen to mean less demand for energy, less demand for energy-infrastructure like wind turbines, and less demand  for business. In a nut shell: negative growth. No politician to date has got anywhere near power with a negative growth agenda. Alex Salmond’s recent claim that Scotland can provide 100% of its electricity from renewables in 9 years is testimony to the fact that to politicians, greenness means growth with its appeal of promising jobs and prosperity. There is a need to build more turbines, and I’m all for them being built in Scotland, growing Scottish businesses and giving work to people living in Scotland. But the only way to meet this target of 100% renewable electricity is to reduce Scotland energy use, and this requires a new type of economics.

There are organisations championing the ideas of zero growth societies, localising and reducing our consumption. Most of them are looked upon as something dreamed up by a bunch of hippies, but a few are beginning to break the mould. The spirit level a book about how sad we have all become in this money grabbing world has managed to reach up, even to our oh so frugal Prime Minister David Cameron.  The New Economic Foundation is another group starting to put a veneer of respectability on these no-growth economics. We need more of this. We need more scientists, economists and politicians to stop for a few hours and try totting up the numbers. They will find out that our energy addition will just not work.

When our access to our drug is restricted, our addiction may force us to raid other sources of money. We may have already entered the phase where we may break the law to secure access to our drug. In our case the law is international, and access comes from the Middle East. Like any addict it’s time for rehab.

Fuel prices seem to be going up and up at the moment, I’m sure you have noticed. Prices near me are around £1.30 per liter, that’s up from £1.10 just over a year ago. Is it making a difference to the way you travel? When I replaced my car in October it was partly the price of fuel that nudged us to scale down from the Rover 1.4 to a Corsa 1.0.

The sharp increase in costs is certainly causing many people to think about fuel prices, and to demand that the government helps out. That isn’t surprising when you remember that the Tories promised to investigate a fuel price stabailiser (maifesto pg 24) before their unconvincing election win.  Almost every organization with any link to motoring is now pushing for a reduction in duty and for the government to ensure that prices are ‘stable’ – the AA , The Tax-Payers Alliance , The Road Haulage Assotiaition to name a few.

But there is at least one group calling for the government to keep the taxes and continue raising duty. The Green Alliance reports that for every penny reduction in fuel duty, the government’s income will reduce by £540million (link to pdf document) . With crude oil prices showing a steady upward trend, they argue that stabalising fuel prices would be unsustainable.

I agree with the Green Alliance, as a country we should not be funding car use which produces lots of carbon emissions. Instead we should be taxing emissions which will cause long term damage and using the funds to promote low-emission lifestyles. In  this case: local provision of services (so that people don’t have to travel),  public transport, development of electric and hybrid cars.

But there is a role for variable duty on fuel. Decisions like which car we buy or where to live relative to our work are long term decisions. They can be changed by long term trends in the cost of that choice. Short term price spikes however will not change lifestyles but will cause major cash flow issues for poorer people. Variable fuel duty could be used to help reduce the effect of short-term changes in price, whilst leaving an overall increase in duty in the long run.

The green alliance is right; the government cannot overcome the long-term upward cost of oil and it would bankrupt the country to try and do so. Instead they need to smooth the upward rise so that, for example each year the price rises by 10p. Whilst predicting the price of oil is difficult and fluctuations will not be totally removed, the price of petrol will go up. The governments job should be to help society get used to this idea. For people to change the way they live will take a while, but it has to happen.

Sitting two meters below the surface of a snow bank in a roughly hewn cave, it is impossible to tell what conditions are like on the surface. Today it is calm and clear, but other times I have been sat in a snowhole whilst snow attempts to fall through storm force winds. Outside the air may may be quite, or it may roar with the intensity of a wounded stag; but here, cocooned in the snow you would not know.

Cairngorm summit is eerie on a calm January night, with torches off you get an eagles eye view of the star-lit loch Avon and Speyside. To be here at any time when the wind is less than a gale is a privilege. To let eyes adjust to the low light, and see where it is reflected into the snow, where it falls on black rocks or
disappears into the glens. We are alone; here where a couple of hours ago a hundred walkers and skiers were reaching the top of the tows and the funicular railway, ready to plunge back down again, chaperoned by flags and fences. I like to sit here and take in all the feelings of freedom, all those things that the day tripper misses out on.

We had wandered for a couple of hours, practicing the skills of mountain navigation, and at the same time enjoying the place. To share a mountain top with nothing but air and snow, not even sunlight for company is a rare feeling for me, but one that never fails to leave an impression that won’t be driven out by the weekday city routine.

Tomorrow the wind will rise, the clouds will drop, the skiers and the day-trippers will return. These are all elements that make the Cairngorm plateau what it is. I don’t begrudge them their time on Cairngorm. But for now, a short wander, no-one else about, back to camp, to bed into the mountain and to sleep, part of it for a few hours.

What happens in a privatised forest? Whatever it is, most organisation that can afford to buy a forest will be aiming for profit; the forest must be made to pay. This probably means shooting, logging or charging people to visit. In England, without the universal right-to-roam that we enjoy in Scotland, one thing that isn’t guaranteed is public access.

If the government in Westminster sells off the public  forestst, and it is suggests that they may sell all of them, they will be open to these forms of exploitation. The new owners are hardly to blame, they will only buy if they can make a return on their investment. So the governments plans must not be allowed to make it into law.

First off, forests provide a huge social benefit. This is how way policy-makers might say that forests are amazing places, that plenty of people enjoy them, and that more visitors should be encouraged. Secondly, David Cameron and Chris Hune promised to be the greenest-government ever . This includes a commitment to tackle the loss of biodiveristy (pdf document) . In many cases there are conflicts between environmental policy and other goals that government is pursuing. For example, new housing is needed in this country is needed. The building of new estates will often confict with the aim of retaining natural habitats and bio-diversity, politicians difficult job is to arbitrate beetween these goals. With forest privatisation, this is not the case. There is no conflict. If the forest are sold there will be no social improvement, and certainly no enviromental improvements, the only effect is likely to be reduced access for people, and a reduced environmental quality for wildlife. David Cameron is keen on reducing the size of the state, but our national forests forfill a key role that the state should retain. They provide experienced, and a sense of wellbeing available to everyone in the country, private forests may not take this goal onboard. Obvioulsly land owned by charties such as the The National Trust or The John Muir Trust do provide public access and environmental protection, but I doubt that they will be able to afford much of the land for sale.

Not that forests are, or have ever been, wildernesses in the sense of remaining uninfluenced by humans. Since before we evolved into homo-sapiens we have been changing the world’s wooded landscapes. In the UK hunter-gathers have used the woods and forest for 10,000 years. In the middle ages woodland was coppiced, dead-wood was removed for fuels and timber trees felled. If a privately owned organisation were likly to be trusted to manage forestry in a sustainable way many of the problems I have with this policy would be gone. But companies can not be trusted to do that. They exist, in our society,  to make profit, not to preserve woodland for coming generations. And the timescale for making profit is measure in years at most, by contrast forests eco-systems developed over centuries.

The coalition government must not be allowed to sell England’s forests. If you have read this please contact your MP ask them not to vote against the bill. The hands off our forest web site provides news of the campaign.

At National Geographic they know about great places to experience nature. So if you want an out-of-this-world experience without leaving the planet, the NG Top 20 trips for 2011 is a good place to start. The Scottish Highlands makes it onto the list, which confirms what I already knew, that I manage a tip of a lifetime about twice a month.

What does NG think makes the area so special? Visitors are attracted by “mist-shrouded mountains, shimmering lochs, sheer cliffs, and sandy beaches”. It’s a shame the photo of some slightly sickly looking boys straining at tug-of-war does not quite do justice to the rhetoric.

To me, living in Scotland close to the Highlands it has all the majesty, emotion and beauty that the National Geographic writers experienced on their visit. But there is one more. I am part of this landscape, Scotland is the place I live, and the Highlands is a place I have explored for more than 10 years, and continue to learn about. It is the landscape that I know best. Because I see it all year, in all weather and lights I have the chance to know it much deeper than I could every know a more distant landscape. Even if I visited foreign mountains several times a year, the fixed nature of the visits would not allow me learn more about it.

So for all the reasons that NG, but more importantly because it is that place I call home, the Scottish Highlands will remain the number 1 trip in the world for me.

There are places that people call home that cannot be reached by car, and an atmosphere can be felt when you visit them. Islands have it in abundance. The smaller the community the easier it is to feel. It is hard to pin it down but it is , at least in part drawn from the local people’s relationship with their environment. People in remote locations have to interact with nature in a way that is wholly different from those of us living in cities. The natural world forces its self into their way of life. I always envy the laid back way in which a person from the Western Isles greets the news of a cancelled ferry. A few of them used to sit in my front room in Ullapool for a day or two whilst a  November storm passed and they could get home, get back to work. Contrast this with the childish sulk seen at any railway station when the morning train is half and hour late.

Inverie on the Knoydart peninsula is one of these atmospheric communities. Access is either by small boat from Mallaig, or on foot for 15 miles through an area that even Highlanders call remote. Nature presses in on you when you are in the community of Inverie. No street lights shield you from the night sky, whose penetrating gaze fixes you on the walk back from the pub. The forests border the top of the 1 street village, often reaching to within 20m of the sea. The whole village has an air of fragility to it, sandwhiched between Loch Nevis  and the hills.

Knoydart, a vast peninsula of stunning natural scenery and wildlife is also a place that is owned and managed by those who live their. Community residents work along side wildlife organisations, stalkers and foresters in The Knoydart Foundation to manage the environment – natural and human – in a way that benefits them. The outlook is decidedly long term, and nature has high priority.

The feeling of nature blending in to become an integral part of everyday life is what creates the atmosphere of Inverie, North Ronaldsay, Benbecula and a thousand other isolated communities. If the rest of us could take a lesson from these places make it this: give nature a space in our own environment; let it breath and remember that it has its place here amoung our everyday. Maybe next time the snow or rain stops a few trains we can be learn to be a little more relaxed about it and enjoy the time it can give us.

The man-made is pushing out the natural these days. In the UK there is concern over our wild land – areas where the impressions people leave behind are at their weakest. Pinning down a definition of wild lands is a subjective issue; deciding to protecting them is not . The John Muir trust tries this
definition of wild areas : “large areas of high scenic and wildlife value, with minimal evidence of modern human development”. They have created a map of ‘wild-ness’ within the UK showing that, following this definition, wild land is found almost exclusively in Scotland, Wales and the far north of England. Despite this definition the JMT valiantly explains that small pockets of wildness can be found “anywhere anywhere that nature prevails”. Despite this, the underlying message seems this: there is no wildness, no real nature near where you live you have to go way up North to find it.

I love these so called ‘wild-places’, I spend my weekends climbing the mountains of Scotland, spending nights in a tent away from towns and roads so that I may experience the thrill of sitting to watch the red deer rut, or a Golden Eagle soaring above the summits. But there are other places that I enjoy nature. Sitting in front of my window and watching the curlew as they pick their way between the stranded boats on the mud flats outside; looking upwards and catching the last shooting star of the night whilst waiting at the station for my morning train.

In today culture humans and nature are segregated by a fence, we can go and look at nature, but don’t interact with it. The border guards to that country seem more and more to include our environmental organisations. It is time to remember that we are natural, we are part of nature and we should interact with it nature as we and every other specie has continued to do for a billion years.

We have major environmental issues to deal with today. The scale of our ‘resource use’ continues to increase, and on a purely ethical level we must remember that our high consumption lifestyles have implications for other people in other places, our children and theirs.

It may be important to preserve a definition of wild-places. But is is surely more important to connect with other parts of nature as part of a day-to-day routine. Remember that in the depths of our ‘wild-places’ people have lived in the past, and each day they found a way to be part of the environment. Let’s attempt to reconnect to the nature in our own daily life, that is our environment, and nature and us should interact here too.

Above this paragraph should be the H1 heading for your web page. If it is not visible, the design settings for the H1 tag is set to display:none which many WordPress Themes use to hide the blog title text and replace it with a graphic. Do not use H1 within your blog post area.

If the design in the H1 heading looks like your blog title or blog post title, then that is the style set for that HTML tag and you should not use it within your blog post area.

Inside of this test data section are most of the basic HTML and XHTML and CSS styles that you might use within your WordPress Theme.You need to know what that will look like as part of structuring your styles.

This is the H2 Heading

While WordPress assigns the H1 and H2 headings to specific places, such as the header and post title, not always are they in the same places. For your Theme, the H2 might be the post title, or it might be used in the sidebar for the section titles, and the H3 is used for the post title. You need to know what each looks like and identify it on your Theme and layout.

Look at how the heading is styled, but also look at the space around it. It might have a huge amount of margin or padding above or below, background colors, and other effects. If you want them for that heading, fine, but if not, change them.

This is the H3 Heading

Is this the same heading as is in your post title or is this the section headings found within your sidebar? Or is it different? This is the post content heading for the HTML tag h3, as is the one below, H4, for section headings within your post to divide up topics. If there is an H3 or H4 tag in your sidebar, you will need to identify the parent HTML and CSS container for the sidebar and style those appropriate in your blog’s stylesheet.

For more information in searching for your styles in your WordPress blog, see CSS: Studying Your CSS Styles and Finding Your CSS Styles in WordPress.

Also notice how the links in that paragraph are styled so you can style links within your post content area. Links have three styles. There is the link color, link hover color, and visited link color. Be sure and design for each style.

This is the H4 Heading

In this section under the H4 heading, we’re going to look at what the post content, the meat and potatoes of your site looks like. In general, you will have multiple paragraphs, so we will add another paragraph so you can adjust the spacing in between them to the look you want.

Paragraphs are not just for typing your blog babble, they can also hold frame and hold other information within your content area to help make the point you want to make in your writing. For instance, you will commonly have three types of lists.

• General Lists using the <ul> tag
• Ordered Lists using the <ol> tag
• Definition Lists using the <dl> tag
  • Definition Lists use two other tags to generate the list:
    • <dt> sets up the word or phrase to be “defined”, usually set in bold, and
    • <dd> sets up the definition, which is usually in a normal or slightly smaller font and indented under the definition.
• And that’s the end of the lists

And we’ve just tested a paragraph before and after a general list along with a nested list to help you see what at least three levels of the list will look like. Make sure that each level of the list is styled to match your specific needs. You might want to use the default disc or circle, or you might want to add graphic bullets to your list, too.

This is the H5 Heading

While the H5 heading is not always used, maybe you might find a need for it if your H1 and H2 and H3 headings are used. You might need one to two levels of subheadings in your post content, so this one gives you another option.

We also need to look at the other two lists and then add some images and other styles to flesh out your WordPress Theme sandbox.

1. You need to do this first.
2. You need to do this second.
   • You could do this in between.
   • Or give this a try, too.
3. But this is the third and last thing to do.

This should give you an idea of how a nested number list would look on your site. Now, let’s look at a definition list.

WordPress Themes

A WordPress Theme is not a “skin”. Though many young people call it one. The reality is that a WordPress Theme contains many files that come together in various ways to generate a WordPress web page. A “skin” simply changes the look, and rarely the results.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins add flexibility, features, and capabilities to your WordPress site. There are hundreds to choose from. Some add power and control like monitoring and busting comment spam and enhancing your administration features. Others add fun things like random elements and polling and rating systems.

And here is another paragraph to show the relationship between the various parts and pieces.

This is the H3 Heading

If the H3 heading is your in-post section heading, then you need to see how it works within the post itself. If it isn’t, simply change the H3 to whatever heading number you are using.

We need to look at how images, another major feature of most WordPress sites, are used within the site. Images tend to sit on the left, right, or middle of your post, depending upon how you are using them. For an image sitting on the left or right, you need to add appropriate padding around the image on the text side to push the text away from the image so the text won’t push up against the edges of the image.

A centered image is a little different. It is centered in the middle and the text is pushed above and below it. NOTE: Currently, the Theme used here doesn’t feature “right” or “left” or “centered” styles. It uses the CSS deprecated “align”. Please change the code here from align to class so your site will validate and you will have much more control over image placement.

How to add the CSS styles for images is discussed in the Codex article, Using Images.

Testing Font Looks – H3 Heading

You will need to test the looks of the different font styles, too. This is bold and THIS IS BOLD. This is italic and THIS IS ITALIC. This is bold and italic and THIS IS BOLD AND ITALIC. This is code and THIS IS CODE. And now let’s look at what the PRE tag, also known as the preformatted tag, looks like:

This is the pre tag.
It should be formatted as written
     so if you add spaces to the front of the line
  it will show the spaces and the <code> as written

This should be back to the normal paragraph style and we hope you have been paying attention to the margins and padding around each element, including the paragraph, so you can position things appropriately to the rest of the content.

Your CSS Here – H3 Heading

Let’s look at the blockquote, one of the most common tags used in most blogs. It is designed to “frame” a quote from another blog, website, or reference that you are “quoting” from. For the most part, there are three examples of usage:

This is a simple quote. It is either preceded or followed by a link within the text to the credited source. A blockquote must be designed to stand out from the rest of the text content, but it does not have to “really” stand out, just separate itself from the content so we know it’s not your words.

A second style to the blockquote is one that includes a citation. Under HTML guidelines, this citation should be wrapped in the <cite> tag and then that tag can be styled to be in italics, bold, or whatever look you want in your design.

Take care with the style of the <cite> tag as some WordPress Themes use it in the comments area. I recommend you style it specifically withblockquote cite {style declarations} in your stylesheet.

This is an example of a blockquote which also contains a link to Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a SandBox to help you see what links will look link within a blockquote.
Lorelle on WordPress, your guide to all things WordPress and blogging

The citation includes a link and text to help you see what a link and text will look like within the cite tag.

There are many tags that can be found within a blockquote, just as can be found within any container within your web page design, but a last example includes an unordered list. Many bloggers love to quote examples from lists, so this is a good tag series to test.

Within this web design sandbox test page, we’ve tested:

• Headings
• Text styles like bold and italic
• Ordered (numbered) and unordered (bullets) lists
• Links
• Code and PRE tags
• Blockquotes
• And much more…

Which should show you what a list looks like within a blockquote.

Each website is unique with it’s own look and feel for the various parts and pieces. This cut and paste section looks only at what you might have within your content section. So if you will have boxes for lists or little aside information, you will need to add them so you can see how they will look in the overall page layout.

Some elements in a WordPress Theme are controlled by the style sheet, while others are controlled by the Template files. Try to work on as much as you can from the style sheet first, then you can mess with the template files.

Remember, any changes you make to the style sheet and template files will be not available if you change themes. If you want them carried over, you will need to copy and paste them into the new Theme folder.

As a last element in the content area and throughout your site, check the hypertext links. These are the links to external websites and/or internal pages within your site. They come in three flavors: active, visited, and hover. Make sure you work on the styles for each of these.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!