Inspired by a certain “ethical” internet company, who sent me some fair-trade earl grey tea and some Christmas decorations in a box the size of a small cattle barn. N.B. Said Company shall remain nameless in the interests of defamation and slander lawsuits and also because they might cut off my supply of fair-trade earl grey.
1)Put old plastic shopping bags over feet/ feet with shoes on to use as substitute wellington boots
2)Use old boxes to hide things in, e.g. Christmas presents – no-one thinks to look in the plain old brown cardboard
3)Use old fancy shopping bags, a là Zara/ La Senza, to hide all your Christmas presents in when you dim-wittedly reveal your secret Christmas present hiding place on your blog, in case anyone you’re buying presents for actually reads it – they surely wouldn’t dare to look in a bag from an underwear shop
4)Use old cereal boxes and old toilet roll tubes, and a bit of glue/paint, to build endless models of ferry boats, until you have an entire fleet and can play a life size version of battleship
5)Use old newspapers to help dry out wet shoes/boots*
6)Put dinner candles in aesthetically pleasing old wine bottles so you can pretend your kitchen/lounge/designated eating room is an Italian restaurant, saves you money on going out to a real one
7)Make bizarre and, er, unique cushion covers out of old clothes or other rags
8)Go all Maria-von-Trappish and use old curtains to make new clothes (warning: may lead to yodelling )
9)Use old yoghurt pots, and quite a lot of string, to build a carbon neutral telecommunications system
10) Make earrings and necklaces out of old can ring pulls
11) Build a CD/DVD rack out of old ice lolly sticks and a bit of glue
12) Make a placard out of an old, inside-out cereal box and an old garden cane, and go and peacefully protest against the unsustainable rise in university tuition fees*
13) Fill old plastic bottles with sand and use as skittles for home-based bowling
14) Collect old jam jars/ fancy pudding dishes and use as tea light holders
15) Use old-fashioned glass milk bottles as mini vases
16) Make bizarre mobiles out of broken or scratched CD’s and vinyl
17) Build a set of steps over many many years through the diligent collection of old phone directories and Argos catalogues, and the canny application of glue
18) Cut words out of old newspapers and use them to leave menacing ransom-style notes to your flatmate next time they steal your milk or don’t do their washing up
19) Use old lampshades as cutting-edge fashion sun hats
20) Take all your old, but still good quality, books, clothes, DVDs, CDs, shoes and other random tat down to your nearest charity shop – you might not want it anymore, but somebody else might, and you’ll be helping out a good cause into the bargain.*
Disclaimer: Please do not actually attempt any of the above at home, unless item is marked with a *
Friday, 10 December 2010
Friday, 22 October 2010
Toxic Greenwash Alert
So unless you’ve taken a spontaneous trip to Jupiter’s Moons in the past week, you can hardly have failed to hear that the Government has finally published its Comprehensive Spending Review, a.k.a. how it plans to reduce government spending to 1920 levels. The ConDems have claimed that they intend to be the greenest government ever, and if you believe what each respective culprit promised us in their party election manifestos, you’d certainly be forgiven for mistakenly thinking this was the case (for a quick reminder, see Who’s the Greenest...Yellow, Red or Blue?).
I have to admit; years of seeing the environmental lobby sidelined, laughed at and generally ignored in UK politics have left me with a deeply ingrained sceptical streak. This doubt was fuelled by the presence of bodies such as Natural England, the Carbon Trust, the Energy Saving Trust, the Environment Agency and the Forestry Commission on a leaked list of Quangos whose future was being seriously re-considered. All of the above have been spared Osborne’s Axe, although some are to undergo “substantial reform”. However, it seems Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change secretary, managed to get his department spared – relatively – from the worst of the cuts, with only 5% annual budget cuts over four years. Certainly, the Department for Energy and Climate Change got off more lightly than the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which faces 8% annual budget cuts, which adds up to 29% by the end of the spending review period. But a cut is still a cut, so where is money going to be saved? Is the devil in the detail, after all?
George Osborne pulled a green rabbit out of a hat last Wednesday by announcing that a key election manifesto pledge for both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, the creation of a Green Investment Bank, would go ahead. Much heralded and trumpeted in his hour-long dismembering of the state in the House of Commons, Osborne knew that to the working single mother about to lose her child tax credit, £1bn for the transition to a low carbon economy was going to sound like an awful lot. What Osborne didn’t mention was that the creation of the Bank is to be delayed until 2013, and that the £1bn of public money to be put up to fund the Bank is drastically short of the £4-6bn that many in government such as Chris Huhne and Vince Cable, backed by independent analysts and a timely report from Ernst & Young, believe is needed to kick-start the transition to a low carbon economy by 2025. It is not even clear if the Green Investment Bank will be an independent, stand-alone entity or whether is purse strings will be tightly controlled by Westminster. However, there is a vague reference to extra funding coming from “private companies and the sale of government owned assets”. So, to sum up, £1bn of public money is to go towards an entity, of some kind, in 2013, to fund the decarbonising of the UK’s infrastructure, even though everybody who knows anything about the finances behind greening the economy say that up to six times that amount is needed if we’re to really encourage businesses to invest in low carbon infrastructure projects on any meaningful scale.
Far be it for me to suggest that big business is hard done by, but many in the business world are less than impressed by the announcement that money collected from the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme will no longer be recycled back to the companies taking part. The scheme, in which companies paid money to the Treasury on the understanding that the money would be repaid to them if they reduced their carbon emissions, will now simply be a means of collecting extra revenue to support public finances. Already, this is being called a “stealth carbon tax”. Unfortunately, businesses are businesses and Tory Governments are Tory Governments. It is hard to see why a business should now reduce its carbon emissions if there is no financial support available to do so. Yes, I know they should cough up their own money from their own profits to finance their own bit towards the Greater Good, but a business is a business at the end of the day and, in my experience, if you expect them to do something for nothing chances are you’ll end up bitterly disappointed. And yes, at the end of the day a Tory Government is a Tory Government (and make no mistake, this is a Tory Government) and if you expect them to cough up money for anything, you will again be bitterly disappointed.
Another of Wednesday’s announcements which betrays the fact that the Tories are firmly in the driving seat of the ConDem-ing Cuts was the revelation of up to £1bn of funding for a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plant at one of the four proposed new coal power stations. Forget for a moment, if you can, that building new coal power stations, albeit with CCS technology attached, was a Conservative Election manifesto pledge. For a minute, put out of mind that coal is the dirtiest of the dirty when it comes to fossil fuels, and that the Government has just axed every single last Quangos advisory committee on CCS. Ignore, for a few precious moments, that every single CCS expert in the country is incredibly sceptical about the feasibility of making coal power plants immaculately clean simply by tacking on a CCS plant. To understand what the real world thinks of this particular shade of greenwash, please note that on Wednesday morning, just before the state’s public guillotining in the House of Commons, the energy company E.ON announced it was shelving plans to build a new coal power plant in Kingsnorth, Kent. E.ON had planned a new coal power plant at Kingsnorth for years, and after the government last year announced a ban on the building of new coal power stations unless they were fitted with CCS technology, E.ON entered its Kingsnorth plans in the competition to build the first of four new coal-fired power plants that were to trial the use of CCS on a commercial scale. On Wednesday morning, E.ON decided that current market conditions were not good enough to justify building Kingsnorth. Does this perhaps imply that if there had been more funding available from government for CCS, market conditions might have been less of an influencing factor? E.ON are unfortunately not answerable to the electorate, although it would have been interesting to know exactly how much of an impact Osborne’s proposed £1bn fund for CCS had on E.ON’s decision to scrap its plans for Kingsnorth. Is it possible that Osborne’s magic figure of £1bn is the figure that he has decided will sound sufficiently large enough to the policeman whose job is on the line in order to convince him that the government is still doing something about climate change, but is in fact the figure that, in the real world, qualifies as The Bare Minimum?
As much as it makes us choke on our tea that £1bn really doesn’t go that far in the great battle against our warming climate, it is, unfortunately, the sad truth, and as much as anything a mark of how much trouble we’re really in. And as much as it stings that such amounts are still being spent on the environment when we’re faced with half a million public sector job losses, £7bn cuts in welfare spending, a drastic decrease in social housing, and a rise in the retirement age, not to mention the possibility of sliding back into recession, we need to remind ourselves that much, much more could be lost if we sit back and do nothing in the fight against climate change. Let’s just hope that Osborne’s flimsy greenwash does a little more than just act as a fig leaf for the so-called greenest government ever.
xx
I have to admit; years of seeing the environmental lobby sidelined, laughed at and generally ignored in UK politics have left me with a deeply ingrained sceptical streak. This doubt was fuelled by the presence of bodies such as Natural England, the Carbon Trust, the Energy Saving Trust, the Environment Agency and the Forestry Commission on a leaked list of Quangos whose future was being seriously re-considered. All of the above have been spared Osborne’s Axe, although some are to undergo “substantial reform”. However, it seems Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change secretary, managed to get his department spared – relatively – from the worst of the cuts, with only 5% annual budget cuts over four years. Certainly, the Department for Energy and Climate Change got off more lightly than the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which faces 8% annual budget cuts, which adds up to 29% by the end of the spending review period. But a cut is still a cut, so where is money going to be saved? Is the devil in the detail, after all?
George Osborne pulled a green rabbit out of a hat last Wednesday by announcing that a key election manifesto pledge for both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, the creation of a Green Investment Bank, would go ahead. Much heralded and trumpeted in his hour-long dismembering of the state in the House of Commons, Osborne knew that to the working single mother about to lose her child tax credit, £1bn for the transition to a low carbon economy was going to sound like an awful lot. What Osborne didn’t mention was that the creation of the Bank is to be delayed until 2013, and that the £1bn of public money to be put up to fund the Bank is drastically short of the £4-6bn that many in government such as Chris Huhne and Vince Cable, backed by independent analysts and a timely report from Ernst & Young, believe is needed to kick-start the transition to a low carbon economy by 2025. It is not even clear if the Green Investment Bank will be an independent, stand-alone entity or whether is purse strings will be tightly controlled by Westminster. However, there is a vague reference to extra funding coming from “private companies and the sale of government owned assets”. So, to sum up, £1bn of public money is to go towards an entity, of some kind, in 2013, to fund the decarbonising of the UK’s infrastructure, even though everybody who knows anything about the finances behind greening the economy say that up to six times that amount is needed if we’re to really encourage businesses to invest in low carbon infrastructure projects on any meaningful scale.
Far be it for me to suggest that big business is hard done by, but many in the business world are less than impressed by the announcement that money collected from the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme will no longer be recycled back to the companies taking part. The scheme, in which companies paid money to the Treasury on the understanding that the money would be repaid to them if they reduced their carbon emissions, will now simply be a means of collecting extra revenue to support public finances. Already, this is being called a “stealth carbon tax”. Unfortunately, businesses are businesses and Tory Governments are Tory Governments. It is hard to see why a business should now reduce its carbon emissions if there is no financial support available to do so. Yes, I know they should cough up their own money from their own profits to finance their own bit towards the Greater Good, but a business is a business at the end of the day and, in my experience, if you expect them to do something for nothing chances are you’ll end up bitterly disappointed. And yes, at the end of the day a Tory Government is a Tory Government (and make no mistake, this is a Tory Government) and if you expect them to cough up money for anything, you will again be bitterly disappointed.
Another of Wednesday’s announcements which betrays the fact that the Tories are firmly in the driving seat of the ConDem-ing Cuts was the revelation of up to £1bn of funding for a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plant at one of the four proposed new coal power stations. Forget for a moment, if you can, that building new coal power stations, albeit with CCS technology attached, was a Conservative Election manifesto pledge. For a minute, put out of mind that coal is the dirtiest of the dirty when it comes to fossil fuels, and that the Government has just axed every single last Quangos advisory committee on CCS. Ignore, for a few precious moments, that every single CCS expert in the country is incredibly sceptical about the feasibility of making coal power plants immaculately clean simply by tacking on a CCS plant. To understand what the real world thinks of this particular shade of greenwash, please note that on Wednesday morning, just before the state’s public guillotining in the House of Commons, the energy company E.ON announced it was shelving plans to build a new coal power plant in Kingsnorth, Kent. E.ON had planned a new coal power plant at Kingsnorth for years, and after the government last year announced a ban on the building of new coal power stations unless they were fitted with CCS technology, E.ON entered its Kingsnorth plans in the competition to build the first of four new coal-fired power plants that were to trial the use of CCS on a commercial scale. On Wednesday morning, E.ON decided that current market conditions were not good enough to justify building Kingsnorth. Does this perhaps imply that if there had been more funding available from government for CCS, market conditions might have been less of an influencing factor? E.ON are unfortunately not answerable to the electorate, although it would have been interesting to know exactly how much of an impact Osborne’s proposed £1bn fund for CCS had on E.ON’s decision to scrap its plans for Kingsnorth. Is it possible that Osborne’s magic figure of £1bn is the figure that he has decided will sound sufficiently large enough to the policeman whose job is on the line in order to convince him that the government is still doing something about climate change, but is in fact the figure that, in the real world, qualifies as The Bare Minimum?
As much as it makes us choke on our tea that £1bn really doesn’t go that far in the great battle against our warming climate, it is, unfortunately, the sad truth, and as much as anything a mark of how much trouble we’re really in. And as much as it stings that such amounts are still being spent on the environment when we’re faced with half a million public sector job losses, £7bn cuts in welfare spending, a drastic decrease in social housing, and a rise in the retirement age, not to mention the possibility of sliding back into recession, we need to remind ourselves that much, much more could be lost if we sit back and do nothing in the fight against climate change. Let’s just hope that Osborne’s flimsy greenwash does a little more than just act as a fig leaf for the so-called greenest government ever.
xx
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
A note on the impromptu hiaetus
As you may have noticed, there has been quite a gap in my nonsensical moan-a-thons on The Noisy Tree of late. This is due to a combination of me trying to develop some new ideas for the blog, including a potential website move, and my trying to lead about four lives at once, and not giving myself enough time to research and write articles that don't entirely massacre either the english language or the art of journalism.
Anyhoo, this is just a note to say please bear with me, and stay tuned for some exciting changes in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future!
xx
Anyhoo, this is just a note to say please bear with me, and stay tuned for some exciting changes in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future!
xx
Exactly how far would you go to keep your lights on and your iphone charged?
Aw. Pretty, isn’t it?
This is a picture of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, somewhere between Lake Louise and Jasper (sorry, it was a long journey, I lost track of where exactly we were). You are looking at the playground of grizzly bears, black bears, elk and mountain lions, to name but a few of the weird, wonderful, and downright dangerous creatures that Parks Canada went to great lengths to warn us about. Not far from this spot is the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefield, the last remaining fragment of a mighty ice sheet that once covered most of Western Canada’s mountains . Here’s a random fact about glaciers that you won’t know unless you’ve been near one: they “sing”. When the wind blows through their many narrow cracks and crevices, there’s a high pitched humming sound, a bit like that which results from blowing on the rim of a glass bottle half filled with water, except on a somewhat larger scale.
The Athabasca Glacier, the Columbia Icefield and Jasper National Park, in which they are situated, are facing one heck of a threat. For the last 125 years, the Athabasca Glacier has been retreating, due to, yep; you guessed it, a warming climate. This monument to the last Ice Age has lost half its volume in the last century, receding a total of 1.5 km¹. Now I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, in the grand scheme of things, and yes, I know that there’s no way we could know how much the glacier might have receded if the planet’s thermostat hadn’t jumped an average 0.76°C in the last hundred years . But when you consider the distinct possibility that this enormous river of ice has been hanging around quite happily since the end of the last Ice Age, that is, for the last 10,000 years, it puts this recent melting into perspective. And, if you really trust the author that much, which you shouldn’t by the way, you can take my word that the walk between the sign that marks the position of the glacier’s foot in 1950 and the actual foot of the glacier is a lot longer than the walk between the sign for the glacier’s foot in 1900 and the sign for 1950.
In an ironic twist, the Athabasca glacier lies in the same province as the scene of what some environmentalists consider to be the most destructive mining project on Earth. You may or may not have heard mutterings about the Canadian Tar Sands before, probably from people you would normally dismiss as eco-nutters, extremists who wear hemp jumpers and claim to be friends with Swampy (that guy that lived in a tunnel to stop a road being built years ago – whatever happened to him, eh?). Well, prepare to suspend your disbelief. Tar sands, which are basically oily sand deposits, are what the likes of BP and Shell have resorted to mining to keep up with our society’s insatiable hunger for the thick black stuff.
In a way, it seems almost unfair to blame the oil companies for wanting to exploit the second largest proven oil reserve in the world – their business, at the moment, is oil, and Alberta Energy reckon there are 173 billion barrels of the good stuff that are economically recoverable from the pristine Canadian wilderness . However, the phrase “economically recoverable” hints at one of the biggest problems with Tar Sands oil production. One reason that the Tar sands have not been exploited up till now is because the mining and production process is extremely energy and resource intensive, and thus costly. So in order to justify the cost of exploiting the Tar sands, oil companies such as BP and Shell have been sitting tight waiting for the price of oil to rise³. Frankly, I’d rather they did because we all know about the almighty screw-ups BP alone is capable of when it tries to cut corners and save a few pennies (*cough* gulfofmexico *cough*). Anyway. The National Energy Board Canada’s estimate for the production of oil sands bitumen for 2015 is 474,000m³ per day, based on the scenario of a sustained high oil price and an economically attractive environment, both of which seem likely³. Try and keep that colossal figure in mind...
As mentioned before, oil sands production is incredibly energy and resource intensive. Extraction alone consumes between 3 – 5m³ of water per m³ of bitumen produced . So, producing 474,000m³ of bitumen a day would use up at least 1,422,000m³ of water, every single day. That is a lot of water. And where does all this water come from? The Athabasca River, which is fed by our friend, the 10,000 year old singing glacier. Believe it or not, the amount of water being used is not the biggest problem - how waste water is dealt with reads like something out of a bad horror film. Currently occupying an area of 140km² are a collection of “Tailings ponds”, where waste water that has been previously used in the mining process is held in storage⁴. Too toxic to release back into the environment, these giant lakes of industrial soup have been shown to contain traces of lead, arsenic, benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which, depending on their structure, can be highly carcinogenic⁴. Expensive to maintain, it is not known whether any of this poisonous potion has leaked back into the environment; however, an alleged explosion of rare cancers in Fort Chipewyan, a small town downstream from the largest oil sands mining operation, has raised several eyebrows and even more questions . A study conducted in 2009 by Alberta Health Services concluded that the incidence of some cancers in Fort Chipewyan – most significantly, cancers of the digestive, blood and lymphatic systems – were higher than expected, however not dramatically so⁵. Still, in a town with a population of around 1,200, 51 cases of cancer in 47 people between 1995 – 2006 does sound like a statistic that should be ringing governmental alarm bells to me⁵.
At the risk of frying dear reader’s brain with figures, here’s a few more for you to mull over whilst you ponder exactly how far we as a society are prepared to go to throw more fossil fuels on the proverbial bonfire – Canada’s Kyoto emissions target for 2020 is 449,202kt CO₂e³. The Tar Sands mining operation’s greenhouse gas emissions estimate for 2015 based on a sustained high oil price and an economically attractive environment is 80,740kt CO₂e, in the absence of mitigation³. Alberta’s own individual greenhouse gas emissions target for 2015 is, even in the case of a low GDP growth rate, 257,536kt CO₂e, which in 2015 would be 57% of the Canadian Kyoto Protocol emissions target³. I wonder if the government of Alberta realises that a) they’re not the only province in Canada and b) they’re not much of a population centre, with more people living in the big cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Fair targets, or a bow to big business? Here’s something to tell you exactly how seriously greenhouse gas emissions targets are taken in these parts. The Tar Sands mining operation would have to cut CO₂e emissions by 66% in order to stay even within 20% of Alberta’s greedy slice of Canada’s total Kyoto emissions target³. Here’s to daydreams and puddles of water that used to be 10,000 year old singing glaciers.
xx
1. Parks Canada: Athabasca Glacier and the Columbia Icefield - http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/jasper/visit/visit32.aspx
2. IPCC summary notes for policy makers - http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
3. Climate Change Policy and Canada's Oil Sands Resources - http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/oilsands_report.pdf
4. Carbon Capture and Storage in the Alberta Oil Sands - http://www.co-operative.coop/Corporate/PDFs/Tar%20Sands%20CCS.pdf
5. Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan study - http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/files/rls-2009-02-06-fort-chipewyan-study.pdf
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Who's the Greenest..Yellow, Red or Blue?
I spy with my little eye something beginning with E. No, I’m not referring to illegal amphetamines, nor am I (completely) referring to the Environment, for once. I’m referring to that minor thing that’s happening tomorrow, that we’re all supposed to go and participate in – the election. Before you all groan like an Icelandic volcano and hit the close button on your browser, I should probably mention that the purpose of this post is to shed some light on the murky waters that are the different parties’ environmental agendas, heavily laden as they are with words like Future and Green, which nice as they are don’t tell us much about what each party is actually proposing. I’m also going to have a vague attempt at this Impartiality thing that the BBC in particular is so fond of (*cough* I Agree With Nick *cough*). So, bear with me...
On this, The Night Before The Fateful Election, which, like it or not, could actually drastically change the course of the future of Britain, most people’s assumptions are that of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrat’s manifesto is the greenest. This assumption seems to have been conjured up in recent weeks and passed around in pubs and coffee shops like an urban myth crossed with a ferocious STD. But are the Liberal Democrats really the greenest of the three? The first thing to bear in mind is that the Climate Change Act 2008, which sets a target for reducing Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, is legally binding, regardless of who is sitting in 10 Downing Street - unless, that is, whoever is sitting in 10 Downing Street seeks to throw the Act out, in much the same way as the Conservatives want to throw out the ban on foxhunting. However, this is unlikely as whoever did this would not only make themselves extremely unpopular with a vast majority of the electorate at home but would also naff off the EU, UN and most other transnational organisations that the UK is a part of. So when you’re in that curtained booth tomorrow, and your pencil is hovering over your ballot paper, just remember that whoever you vote for, they are legally required to make at least some effort in the pursuit of that magic target of an 80% reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050. However, it ain’t all about the crap coming out of our chimneys (believe it or not), and there are key differences between each party’s environmental agendas.
The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto states that they want to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by over 40% of 1990 levels by 2020. This statement worries me for three reasons. Firstly, it refers only to Carbon emissions, not Greenhouse Gas emissions. I know this is only a tiny point but it is worth considering nonetheless. Secondly, this target is in fact also part of the Climate Change Act 2008, as a “carbon budget”, so the Liberal Democrats can shout this one from the rooftops all they want but they’d only be doing what they are legally required to do. Thirdly, the Lib Dem’s manifesto goes on to trumpet a target for 40% of UK electricity to come from “clean, non-carbon emitting sources” by 2020, “rising to 100% by 2050”. I really really hope the dear old Lib Dems haven’t got their targets mixed up, as they are incredibly similar. Just because 40% of our electricity is coming from non-carbon sources doesn’t mean that our carbon emissions will be reduced by 40%. Again, this is a small point, but worth asking questions about, as it is still a point. Of this 40%, the Lib Dems want to ensure that at least 75% comes from “marine, offshore sources”, rejecting a new generation of nuclear power stations (bit too optimistic? http://thenoisytree1.blogspot.com/2009/10/political-hot-air-part-2.html). This is where the Lib Dem’s manifesto gets interesting – they propose a £400 million investment in the refurbishment of old disused shipyards in the north of England and Scotland to manufacture offshore wind turbines and other marine renewable energy knickknacks. In areas that still experience extreme poverty since the decline of UK shipbuilding, the Lib Dems want to invest money to create green business and the green jobs, at a time when, at last count in February, 2.5 million people are unemployed (Office for National Statistics, February 2010). Ever since the beginning of the recession, the environmental lobby has been crying out for the government to invest more in creating green jobs and investing in green business. Let’s face it; if we’re going to reach our magic target by 2050, we’re going to need a few more wind turbines. What better time to start investing in green business to encourage the creation of sustainable, long-term green jobs to create the green infrastructure the UK is lacking than in the middle of a recession?
Another interesting part of the Lib Dem’s environmental agenda is their intention to turn our transport system completely on its head, and shake it up and down until reduced emissions figures start falling out of its pockets. They propose a £140 million bus scrappage scheme, to help bus companies replace old polluting buses with newer, cleaner, more energy efficient ones, a scheme which, they argue, will also create green jobs (until, presumably, every dirty old bus in the country has been replaced). Also proposed is a UK Infrastructure Bank, a.k.a. the Money Tree (investment source unknown) whose sole purpose, it seems, would be to bankroll the greening of our national infrastructure, including the creation of high-speed rail, investment in local rail improvements including the reopening of closed lines and adding extra track. I live across the road from a recently re-opened railway track and, irony of ironies, it seems to be used mostly for transporting coal to a coal-fired power station up the road. Needless to say I curse the reopening of said railway track nightly, whenever I get woken up by what seems to be an earthquake but always turns out to be a particularly heavily-laden coal train. Anyway. The Lib Dems also propose to overhaul Network Rail to put passenger interests first, bring it under the Freedom of Information Act and refund 1/3 of the price of your rail ticket if you’re forced to get a replacement bus. As excited as I am about the prospect of bankrupting Network Rail, I seriously wonder whether these measures will actually bring any long-term benefit in terms of the future of the railway network, or whether they’re just crowd-pleasing platitudes shoved into the manifesto to win votes. The Lib Dems also propose to promote safer cycling and pedestrian routes in local transport plans, give councils greater powers to regulate bus services according to community needs, and replace the Air Passenger Duty with a Per Plane Duty, which would capture taxes from freight planes as well as passenger planes (warning: this may increase the price of your coconuts). However, considering the need to save cyclists and pedestrians from White Van Men and other nutcases in tin cans, the need to not cut off small communities from the outside world just because the only people who catch the bus from them are pensioners off to the nearest post office on a Thursday and the need to Do Anything to regulate the aviation industry, these can all only be good things, so long as they are all actually carried out, and not just crowd-pleasing vote-winners.
The Labour Party, in power, has a good track record on Getting Things Done to protect the environment. The Climate Change Act 2008 is, after all, their baby, and I’ll think most people in the country will now agree that their number of bins and the amount of effort required in the disposal of waste has increased by at least two-thirds since 1997. I have been reading too many manifestos. Anyway, the Labour party are proposing exactly the same as the Lib Dems on certain issues. For example, they too trumpet the 40% low-carbon electricity by 2020 target as if it’s not exactly what they are required to do by law – their own law, but still. One difference here is that the Labour Party are in favour of getting at least some of this low-carbon electricity from nuclear power. This either makes the Lib Dem’s energy policy look very optimistic or the Labour Party’s policy a quick fix, depending which side of the fence you sit on in the Great Nuclear Debate. As I’ve said before on here, it seems pretty optimistic to say that we can reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050 without nuclear power – but if it can be done, I’m all for it. Big If there, though.
Also like the Lib Dems, Labour are also proposing the overnight creation of a Money Tree, this time called the Green Investment Bank, to bankroll the greening of Britain’s infrastructure. One important difference between the two parties here, though, is that Labour do not go into any detail about how this bank will be used – the kind of projects it might finance, the expected outcome of such projects, and how these projects will help in the transition to a green economy. This point may be academic since we are talking about a Money Tree after all which I doubt will ever actually exist but it does show that the Lib Dems are at least prepared to stick their necks out to make firm detailed promises rather than rely on spin doctors to sell nice sounding yet vague platitudes to the general public. One promise the Labour Part do go into detail on is that they will create 400,000 new Green Jobs by 2015, no more, no less. One big detail left out of this promise is the hows, whys and wherefores. Presumably, Labour are simply going to change the job title of every bin man in the country to Green Waste Co-ordinator on 31st December 2014. With their track record on broken promises, and, let’s face it, it is a hell of a track record, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Another policy that Labour champion in their manifesto is the introduction of a “Pay As You Save” scheme, in which householders can improve the energy efficiency of their home, by, for example, insulating their loft or buying a more efficient boiler, and pay for these improvements with the savings said improvements will have on household energy bills. This is a clever policy, as most of us have currently only just scraped our jaws off the floor after receiving our gas bills for the coldest winter since 1978, and are somewhat receptive to the idea of savings on fuel bills. The Lib Dems propose something similar; however, again the Lib Dems do not try and sell an idea, or a dream, but make us a detailed promise – a “home energy improvement package” of up to £10,000 per home, also paid for by the savings we’d have from lower energy bills, and a one-year “Eco-Cash back” scheme, which would give £400 to homeowners if they installed a new boiler or double glazing.
But that’s it. Labour’s environmental policies do not even touch on transport – it’s worth remembering that this is the government that wants to keep the aviation industry in this country growing even though to do so would mean that the rest of the economy would have to cut emissions by 90% by 2050. There are no solid promises in relation to the railway network, although we do know that a high-speed rail line has been proposed between London and Birmingham. There is a lot of talk in their manifesto about supporting the rural economy – but no details on how this would be done. The improvements to both the rail and bus network that the Lib Dems propose would have a knock-on positive effect on the rural economy, provided, of course, that these schemes branched out even into the most rural areas in the country, as it is common sense that a business will have a better chance of surviving if more people can actually travel to it. The one saving grace the Labour Party have on environmental issues is a man. That man is Ed Miliband. One day he will wear a green Superman suit, fly up into the atmosphere for a day and return having Fixed The Hole in the Ozone Layer, and even the editor of the Daily Telegraph will kneel before him and weep. Maybe not...but seriously, if there is one person in the House of Commons more passionate about the environment than Ed Miliband, they are yet to be found. However, one person does not make a party, and it’s the rest of them that really worry me.
The Conservatives' environmental agenda is even starker and even more packed with pretty adverbs and adjectives than Labour’s. Two pages into the chapter on the environment in their manifesto, and all you’ll have read is about Labour’s supposed failure to act on environmental issues and about the environmental sustainability of Friedberg in Germany. That’s really nice that they’re doing so well, but we’re in Britain, not Germany (although there is a very nice page-length picture). Three pages in, and all you’ll have been promised is that the Conservatives will also make some sort of legally-required effort to reach the magic legally-binding target of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050. Lalalala, haven’t I heard this somewhere before. The Conservatives, like Labour, are in favour of nuclear power, providing they “receive no public subsidy”, which is as good as saying they are not in favour of nuclear power because there is no way on this earth that an energy company is going to completely foot the humungous bill of building a new nuclear power station from scratch. The Conservatives, like the Lib Dems, also see the future in marine renewable energy, and intend to build at least two “Marine Energy Parks”, although I’m not sure why they think making their energy intentions sound like a new attraction area at Alton Towers is going to win them votes. There is a vague reference to allowing community renewable energy projects keep the “additional business rates” they produce for 6 years, although this seems more like a throwaway gesture towards micro-generation rather than a groundbreaking initiative, and scarily there is also a reference towards four new coal-fired power stations, although these will apparently be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.
The Conservatives, like both Labour and the Lib Dems, have also picked up on this idea of getting people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. They, however, are only offering up to £6,500 for every home, which seems paltry compared to the Lib Dem’s offer of £10,000. However considering both of these promises end with the householder having to foot the bill, oh, sorry, “pay with savings made from reduced energy bills”, the Conservative deal at least means you’d owe the government less money. However, the Lib Dems’ promise may mean the difference between double glazing and a new boiler or just double glazing under the Conservative’s promise. There really isn’t much between the two; however, there is a world of difference between these promises and Labour’s vague, figureless niceties.
The Conservatives’ other environmental policies include reducing litter, making the governance of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty more accountable to local communities, launching a national tree-planting campaign, press for the reform the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy at EU level, reforming the water industry (once again, no mention of how), improving flood defences, taking a dim view of new housing developments on flood plains, tackling bovine tuberculosis through “badger control” (watch out for those badger traps when you take your dog for a walk, then) and reducing the regulation and inspection of farms. The general, overwhelming impression received from reading the Conservative Party’s manifesto is that they seem to be getting the idea of protecting the Environment confused with the idea of protecting farmers. I am all for protecting rural livelihoods and supporting farmers who understand the importance of the environment and how it works as a system, and providing them with incentives to improve the environmental sustainability of their businesses. However it is worth remembering that farmers are essentially businessmen and will always do what is in their businesses’ best interests; if this means using cheap but environmentally degrading pesticides which reduce biodiversity, they will; if this means removing habitats such as hedgerows to create bigger fields which are easier to plant and harvest, they will; if this means opting for a diesel generator rather than a wind turbine, they will. Do not be fooled by the person who wears a green hat, it’s just a hat.
I realise I risk being sued by Alex Salmond for not including the environmental agendas of every other political party that resides within these Isles, however I figure by now if you’ve got this far you’ve had enough already, and most people are probably only going to vote one of three ways tomorrow anyway. When it comes to the environment, there is not a lot of difference between the three main parties. All are promising similar targets and incentives. Of the three, the Lib Dem’s environmental policy is certainly the most detailed and the most comprehensive. Interestingly enough, the Lib Dem’s environmental policy is not restricted to its one chapter in the Lib Dem’s manifesto, but green, environmentally-friendly policies that crop up in other chapters are highlighted as being so. Whilst this risks looking sloppy, as if whoever wrote the manifesto couldn’t be bothered to come up with one solid environmental agenda but just simply flipped through and highlighted policies which could be construed as being green, it in fact comes across as an understanding that the environment impacts both on society and the economy, and therefore has a role to play in these areas too; it screams of an integrated approach to the environment, a realisation that every area of our lives and our country could be improved to become more environmentally-friendly. Compared with Labour’s pretty sounding vagueness and lack of detail, and the Conservative’s confusion of the environment and farming, this approach certainly seems to be the most realistic and workable, however it doesn’t stop the Lib Dem’s promises sounding extremely optimistic at best. My advice? If you really want a party in government who is utterly obsessed with protecting the environment, who will genuinely deliver a more environmentally friendly economy and society, who will spout nothing but green policies – vote for the Green Party. Maybe that’ll make the others sit up straight.
xx
On this, The Night Before The Fateful Election, which, like it or not, could actually drastically change the course of the future of Britain, most people’s assumptions are that of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrat’s manifesto is the greenest. This assumption seems to have been conjured up in recent weeks and passed around in pubs and coffee shops like an urban myth crossed with a ferocious STD. But are the Liberal Democrats really the greenest of the three? The first thing to bear in mind is that the Climate Change Act 2008, which sets a target for reducing Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, is legally binding, regardless of who is sitting in 10 Downing Street - unless, that is, whoever is sitting in 10 Downing Street seeks to throw the Act out, in much the same way as the Conservatives want to throw out the ban on foxhunting. However, this is unlikely as whoever did this would not only make themselves extremely unpopular with a vast majority of the electorate at home but would also naff off the EU, UN and most other transnational organisations that the UK is a part of. So when you’re in that curtained booth tomorrow, and your pencil is hovering over your ballot paper, just remember that whoever you vote for, they are legally required to make at least some effort in the pursuit of that magic target of an 80% reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050. However, it ain’t all about the crap coming out of our chimneys (believe it or not), and there are key differences between each party’s environmental agendas.
The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto states that they want to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by over 40% of 1990 levels by 2020. This statement worries me for three reasons. Firstly, it refers only to Carbon emissions, not Greenhouse Gas emissions. I know this is only a tiny point but it is worth considering nonetheless. Secondly, this target is in fact also part of the Climate Change Act 2008, as a “carbon budget”, so the Liberal Democrats can shout this one from the rooftops all they want but they’d only be doing what they are legally required to do. Thirdly, the Lib Dem’s manifesto goes on to trumpet a target for 40% of UK electricity to come from “clean, non-carbon emitting sources” by 2020, “rising to 100% by 2050”. I really really hope the dear old Lib Dems haven’t got their targets mixed up, as they are incredibly similar. Just because 40% of our electricity is coming from non-carbon sources doesn’t mean that our carbon emissions will be reduced by 40%. Again, this is a small point, but worth asking questions about, as it is still a point. Of this 40%, the Lib Dems want to ensure that at least 75% comes from “marine, offshore sources”, rejecting a new generation of nuclear power stations (bit too optimistic? http://thenoisytree1.blogspot.com/2009/10/political-hot-air-part-2.html). This is where the Lib Dem’s manifesto gets interesting – they propose a £400 million investment in the refurbishment of old disused shipyards in the north of England and Scotland to manufacture offshore wind turbines and other marine renewable energy knickknacks. In areas that still experience extreme poverty since the decline of UK shipbuilding, the Lib Dems want to invest money to create green business and the green jobs, at a time when, at last count in February, 2.5 million people are unemployed (Office for National Statistics, February 2010). Ever since the beginning of the recession, the environmental lobby has been crying out for the government to invest more in creating green jobs and investing in green business. Let’s face it; if we’re going to reach our magic target by 2050, we’re going to need a few more wind turbines. What better time to start investing in green business to encourage the creation of sustainable, long-term green jobs to create the green infrastructure the UK is lacking than in the middle of a recession?
Another interesting part of the Lib Dem’s environmental agenda is their intention to turn our transport system completely on its head, and shake it up and down until reduced emissions figures start falling out of its pockets. They propose a £140 million bus scrappage scheme, to help bus companies replace old polluting buses with newer, cleaner, more energy efficient ones, a scheme which, they argue, will also create green jobs (until, presumably, every dirty old bus in the country has been replaced). Also proposed is a UK Infrastructure Bank, a.k.a. the Money Tree (investment source unknown) whose sole purpose, it seems, would be to bankroll the greening of our national infrastructure, including the creation of high-speed rail, investment in local rail improvements including the reopening of closed lines and adding extra track. I live across the road from a recently re-opened railway track and, irony of ironies, it seems to be used mostly for transporting coal to a coal-fired power station up the road. Needless to say I curse the reopening of said railway track nightly, whenever I get woken up by what seems to be an earthquake but always turns out to be a particularly heavily-laden coal train. Anyway. The Lib Dems also propose to overhaul Network Rail to put passenger interests first, bring it under the Freedom of Information Act and refund 1/3 of the price of your rail ticket if you’re forced to get a replacement bus. As excited as I am about the prospect of bankrupting Network Rail, I seriously wonder whether these measures will actually bring any long-term benefit in terms of the future of the railway network, or whether they’re just crowd-pleasing platitudes shoved into the manifesto to win votes. The Lib Dems also propose to promote safer cycling and pedestrian routes in local transport plans, give councils greater powers to regulate bus services according to community needs, and replace the Air Passenger Duty with a Per Plane Duty, which would capture taxes from freight planes as well as passenger planes (warning: this may increase the price of your coconuts). However, considering the need to save cyclists and pedestrians from White Van Men and other nutcases in tin cans, the need to not cut off small communities from the outside world just because the only people who catch the bus from them are pensioners off to the nearest post office on a Thursday and the need to Do Anything to regulate the aviation industry, these can all only be good things, so long as they are all actually carried out, and not just crowd-pleasing vote-winners.
The Labour Party, in power, has a good track record on Getting Things Done to protect the environment. The Climate Change Act 2008 is, after all, their baby, and I’ll think most people in the country will now agree that their number of bins and the amount of effort required in the disposal of waste has increased by at least two-thirds since 1997. I have been reading too many manifestos. Anyway, the Labour party are proposing exactly the same as the Lib Dems on certain issues. For example, they too trumpet the 40% low-carbon electricity by 2020 target as if it’s not exactly what they are required to do by law – their own law, but still. One difference here is that the Labour Party are in favour of getting at least some of this low-carbon electricity from nuclear power. This either makes the Lib Dem’s energy policy look very optimistic or the Labour Party’s policy a quick fix, depending which side of the fence you sit on in the Great Nuclear Debate. As I’ve said before on here, it seems pretty optimistic to say that we can reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050 without nuclear power – but if it can be done, I’m all for it. Big If there, though.
Also like the Lib Dems, Labour are also proposing the overnight creation of a Money Tree, this time called the Green Investment Bank, to bankroll the greening of Britain’s infrastructure. One important difference between the two parties here, though, is that Labour do not go into any detail about how this bank will be used – the kind of projects it might finance, the expected outcome of such projects, and how these projects will help in the transition to a green economy. This point may be academic since we are talking about a Money Tree after all which I doubt will ever actually exist but it does show that the Lib Dems are at least prepared to stick their necks out to make firm detailed promises rather than rely on spin doctors to sell nice sounding yet vague platitudes to the general public. One promise the Labour Part do go into detail on is that they will create 400,000 new Green Jobs by 2015, no more, no less. One big detail left out of this promise is the hows, whys and wherefores. Presumably, Labour are simply going to change the job title of every bin man in the country to Green Waste Co-ordinator on 31st December 2014. With their track record on broken promises, and, let’s face it, it is a hell of a track record, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Another policy that Labour champion in their manifesto is the introduction of a “Pay As You Save” scheme, in which householders can improve the energy efficiency of their home, by, for example, insulating their loft or buying a more efficient boiler, and pay for these improvements with the savings said improvements will have on household energy bills. This is a clever policy, as most of us have currently only just scraped our jaws off the floor after receiving our gas bills for the coldest winter since 1978, and are somewhat receptive to the idea of savings on fuel bills. The Lib Dems propose something similar; however, again the Lib Dems do not try and sell an idea, or a dream, but make us a detailed promise – a “home energy improvement package” of up to £10,000 per home, also paid for by the savings we’d have from lower energy bills, and a one-year “Eco-Cash back” scheme, which would give £400 to homeowners if they installed a new boiler or double glazing.
But that’s it. Labour’s environmental policies do not even touch on transport – it’s worth remembering that this is the government that wants to keep the aviation industry in this country growing even though to do so would mean that the rest of the economy would have to cut emissions by 90% by 2050. There are no solid promises in relation to the railway network, although we do know that a high-speed rail line has been proposed between London and Birmingham. There is a lot of talk in their manifesto about supporting the rural economy – but no details on how this would be done. The improvements to both the rail and bus network that the Lib Dems propose would have a knock-on positive effect on the rural economy, provided, of course, that these schemes branched out even into the most rural areas in the country, as it is common sense that a business will have a better chance of surviving if more people can actually travel to it. The one saving grace the Labour Party have on environmental issues is a man. That man is Ed Miliband. One day he will wear a green Superman suit, fly up into the atmosphere for a day and return having Fixed The Hole in the Ozone Layer, and even the editor of the Daily Telegraph will kneel before him and weep. Maybe not...but seriously, if there is one person in the House of Commons more passionate about the environment than Ed Miliband, they are yet to be found. However, one person does not make a party, and it’s the rest of them that really worry me.
The Conservatives' environmental agenda is even starker and even more packed with pretty adverbs and adjectives than Labour’s. Two pages into the chapter on the environment in their manifesto, and all you’ll have read is about Labour’s supposed failure to act on environmental issues and about the environmental sustainability of Friedberg in Germany. That’s really nice that they’re doing so well, but we’re in Britain, not Germany (although there is a very nice page-length picture). Three pages in, and all you’ll have been promised is that the Conservatives will also make some sort of legally-required effort to reach the magic legally-binding target of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050. Lalalala, haven’t I heard this somewhere before. The Conservatives, like Labour, are in favour of nuclear power, providing they “receive no public subsidy”, which is as good as saying they are not in favour of nuclear power because there is no way on this earth that an energy company is going to completely foot the humungous bill of building a new nuclear power station from scratch. The Conservatives, like the Lib Dems, also see the future in marine renewable energy, and intend to build at least two “Marine Energy Parks”, although I’m not sure why they think making their energy intentions sound like a new attraction area at Alton Towers is going to win them votes. There is a vague reference to allowing community renewable energy projects keep the “additional business rates” they produce for 6 years, although this seems more like a throwaway gesture towards micro-generation rather than a groundbreaking initiative, and scarily there is also a reference towards four new coal-fired power stations, although these will apparently be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.
The Conservatives, like both Labour and the Lib Dems, have also picked up on this idea of getting people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. They, however, are only offering up to £6,500 for every home, which seems paltry compared to the Lib Dem’s offer of £10,000. However considering both of these promises end with the householder having to foot the bill, oh, sorry, “pay with savings made from reduced energy bills”, the Conservative deal at least means you’d owe the government less money. However, the Lib Dems’ promise may mean the difference between double glazing and a new boiler or just double glazing under the Conservative’s promise. There really isn’t much between the two; however, there is a world of difference between these promises and Labour’s vague, figureless niceties.
The Conservatives’ other environmental policies include reducing litter, making the governance of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty more accountable to local communities, launching a national tree-planting campaign, press for the reform the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy at EU level, reforming the water industry (once again, no mention of how), improving flood defences, taking a dim view of new housing developments on flood plains, tackling bovine tuberculosis through “badger control” (watch out for those badger traps when you take your dog for a walk, then) and reducing the regulation and inspection of farms. The general, overwhelming impression received from reading the Conservative Party’s manifesto is that they seem to be getting the idea of protecting the Environment confused with the idea of protecting farmers. I am all for protecting rural livelihoods and supporting farmers who understand the importance of the environment and how it works as a system, and providing them with incentives to improve the environmental sustainability of their businesses. However it is worth remembering that farmers are essentially businessmen and will always do what is in their businesses’ best interests; if this means using cheap but environmentally degrading pesticides which reduce biodiversity, they will; if this means removing habitats such as hedgerows to create bigger fields which are easier to plant and harvest, they will; if this means opting for a diesel generator rather than a wind turbine, they will. Do not be fooled by the person who wears a green hat, it’s just a hat.
I realise I risk being sued by Alex Salmond for not including the environmental agendas of every other political party that resides within these Isles, however I figure by now if you’ve got this far you’ve had enough already, and most people are probably only going to vote one of three ways tomorrow anyway. When it comes to the environment, there is not a lot of difference between the three main parties. All are promising similar targets and incentives. Of the three, the Lib Dem’s environmental policy is certainly the most detailed and the most comprehensive. Interestingly enough, the Lib Dem’s environmental policy is not restricted to its one chapter in the Lib Dem’s manifesto, but green, environmentally-friendly policies that crop up in other chapters are highlighted as being so. Whilst this risks looking sloppy, as if whoever wrote the manifesto couldn’t be bothered to come up with one solid environmental agenda but just simply flipped through and highlighted policies which could be construed as being green, it in fact comes across as an understanding that the environment impacts both on society and the economy, and therefore has a role to play in these areas too; it screams of an integrated approach to the environment, a realisation that every area of our lives and our country could be improved to become more environmentally-friendly. Compared with Labour’s pretty sounding vagueness and lack of detail, and the Conservative’s confusion of the environment and farming, this approach certainly seems to be the most realistic and workable, however it doesn’t stop the Lib Dem’s promises sounding extremely optimistic at best. My advice? If you really want a party in government who is utterly obsessed with protecting the environment, who will genuinely deliver a more environmentally friendly economy and society, who will spout nothing but green policies – vote for the Green Party. Maybe that’ll make the others sit up straight.
xx
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Is it a... fish? Is it a Submarine?...No, it’s a Polar Bear
It seems Polar bears have been having a bit of a rough ride of late. This whole global warming business, and the resulting thinning and breaking up of Arctic sea ice in recent years, has meant that the Yogi Bear’s cousins’ natural habitat has been decreasing rapidly. Polar bears are naturally found on the sea-ice edge, hunting seals and other things that hang out on the sea-ice edge. However, over the past ten years, whilst the Arctic sea ice has been disappearing like an ice cube in a glass of warm Coke, Polar bears have been finding it more and more difficult to firstly hunt, since their natural hunting habitat, the sea-ice edge, is in decline, and secondly, to get to places where they can hunt, because these places are now few and far between and usually have a lot of sea in between them. According to one study of a group of polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay area of Canada, between 1987 and 2004 its population declined by 22%. Polar bears are having trouble finding food, but also getting to places where food might be found, and this is resulting in hungry polar bears in poor health having to swim long distances in order to find food and survive.
Polar bears are one of nature’s better swimmers, considering they are bears, and big hulking flabby heavily furred ones at that. Considering the environment they have evolved and adapted to, they have to be. However, they are still big hulking flabby heavily furred bears, and add hunger and poor health into this mix and it’s easy to see how swimming long distances could become a problem. But this problem is getting worse. As the Arctic sea ice continues on its current thinning trend, the more the polar bear’s natural hunting habitat becomes few and far between.
Yet Yogi Bear’s cousins appear to have a trick up their sleeve. A study conducted in Greenland, published last week, has dared to suggest that all is not lost. This study, which observed a group of polar bears on the North Greenland ice sheet, has revealed an amazing development in polar bear anatomy – webbed feet. The study suggests that this is probably a new and recent mutation, as the incidence of webbed feet in the population of bears studied was 17%, with a high proportion of these (11%) being in animals under the age of 6 years. Professor Ike Bergmann of the Greenland Arctic Research centre, who was part of the scientific team conducting the study, has said that the discovery of webbed feet in a young group of polar bears, given the context of global warming, was nothing less than “Evolution in action...animals adapting to the conditions of their habitat, fighting for survival, before our very eyes”. Although it is still not known exactly how much of an advantage webbed feet will be to hungry polar bears who have to swim long distances to hunt, it’s certainly an evolutionary step in the right direction, as webbed feet would, theoretically, allow polar bears to use up less energy when swimming, which would in turn allow them to firstly conserve more energy for hunting and secondly swim longer distances on fewer calories. I guess it would be like buying a more fuel efficient car; suddenly, you find you’re spending a lot less on petrol, meaning you can spend money on other things instead. Darwinism in action, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s not good news for every species in Greenland though. A company called Noah’s Arks, based in the Greenland capital of Nuuk, has in recent years been busy developing inflatable life-belts and arm bands designed specifically for polar bears, in a range of grey/white colours so as to blend in with both the polar bear’s fur and their natural surroundings. Perhaps a little too premature, you say? Recently, there has been a rash of high-tech solutions to various problems cropping up due to global warming. I’ve gone on about the uselessness of certain “eco-gadgets” on here before. Life-belts for polar bears is, however, the most hats-off-to-the-eco-nutter-who-invented-this, out of this world, loony idea I have heard of in perhaps forever. First prize for imagination anyway. On that note, let me simply say that it seems survival of the fittest may be about to change into survival of the most buoyant. Or perhaps Mother Nature will prevail and we’ll all be able to swim a lot better in the near future. Life seems to have found a way for Polar bears....why not us?
Xx
p.s. Take the first letter of the first word of each complete sentence of the last paragraph to see what they spell out (except the first sentence)
p.p.s. Sorry couldn’t resist.....
Polar bears are one of nature’s better swimmers, considering they are bears, and big hulking flabby heavily furred ones at that. Considering the environment they have evolved and adapted to, they have to be. However, they are still big hulking flabby heavily furred bears, and add hunger and poor health into this mix and it’s easy to see how swimming long distances could become a problem. But this problem is getting worse. As the Arctic sea ice continues on its current thinning trend, the more the polar bear’s natural hunting habitat becomes few and far between.
Yet Yogi Bear’s cousins appear to have a trick up their sleeve. A study conducted in Greenland, published last week, has dared to suggest that all is not lost. This study, which observed a group of polar bears on the North Greenland ice sheet, has revealed an amazing development in polar bear anatomy – webbed feet. The study suggests that this is probably a new and recent mutation, as the incidence of webbed feet in the population of bears studied was 17%, with a high proportion of these (11%) being in animals under the age of 6 years. Professor Ike Bergmann of the Greenland Arctic Research centre, who was part of the scientific team conducting the study, has said that the discovery of webbed feet in a young group of polar bears, given the context of global warming, was nothing less than “Evolution in action...animals adapting to the conditions of their habitat, fighting for survival, before our very eyes”. Although it is still not known exactly how much of an advantage webbed feet will be to hungry polar bears who have to swim long distances to hunt, it’s certainly an evolutionary step in the right direction, as webbed feet would, theoretically, allow polar bears to use up less energy when swimming, which would in turn allow them to firstly conserve more energy for hunting and secondly swim longer distances on fewer calories. I guess it would be like buying a more fuel efficient car; suddenly, you find you’re spending a lot less on petrol, meaning you can spend money on other things instead. Darwinism in action, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s not good news for every species in Greenland though. A company called Noah’s Arks, based in the Greenland capital of Nuuk, has in recent years been busy developing inflatable life-belts and arm bands designed specifically for polar bears, in a range of grey/white colours so as to blend in with both the polar bear’s fur and their natural surroundings. Perhaps a little too premature, you say? Recently, there has been a rash of high-tech solutions to various problems cropping up due to global warming. I’ve gone on about the uselessness of certain “eco-gadgets” on here before. Life-belts for polar bears is, however, the most hats-off-to-the-eco-nutter-who-invented-this, out of this world, loony idea I have heard of in perhaps forever. First prize for imagination anyway. On that note, let me simply say that it seems survival of the fittest may be about to change into survival of the most buoyant. Or perhaps Mother Nature will prevail and we’ll all be able to swim a lot better in the near future. Life seems to have found a way for Polar bears....why not us?
Xx
p.s. Take the first letter of the first word of each complete sentence of the last paragraph to see what they spell out (except the first sentence)
p.p.s. Sorry couldn’t resist.....
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate...oh yeah, and that thing called Easter
Easter has sort of sneaked up on us quietly this year, hasn’t it? I mean, sure, crème eggs appeared in Tesco as soon as they’d sold off the last of their Christmas biscuits and tinsel, but all things chocolatey and egg-shaped seem to have stayed confined to one aisle in the supermarkets and last time I walked past Clintons I wasn’t assaulted by anything yellow, fluffy or bearing two rabbit ears so it seems they’ve kept a bit of a lid on their usual Easter mania too. Which means, for once, as an atheist I’m not feeling too guilty about not buying into the whole over-hyped bonkersness that surrounds Easter. What the heck is the point of Easter anyway? Christmas is different; it’s the one time of year when we’ve all got a good excuse to get together with friends and family, spoil them rotten with presents and food, and have a bit of a party and good cheer at the darkest time of year. Easter, on the other hand, seems to have turned into a festival of chocolate, whose meaning is lost to all except those who go to church every Sunday.
Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate as much as the next red-blooded female, but I seriously wonder about the effect the consumer culture has had on Easter. One thing in particular has, especially in recent years, made me think twice about why we buy each other Easter eggs. We’ve all come across Fairtrade products on our weekly shop; goodness knows I’ve banged on about them on here enough in the past. Lots of us now opt for Fairtrade-certified tea, coffee, bananas, pineapples, sugar, and chocolate. Recently, both Cadbury’s and Nestle have switched to Fairtrade-certified suppliers of Cocoa for their Dairy Milk and Kitkat bars, which would tend to suggest that these big multinational companies see sufficient consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate to start promoting their most popular products as Fairtrade-certified. So....where are all the Fairtrade-certified Easter eggs?
Ok, fair enough, there are some. Green & Black’s Maya Gold Easter eggs are Fairtrade- certified, and incidentally the most devilishly delicious I-could-eat-this-forever-and-not-get-bored chocolate ever to exist in the known universe. Divine chocolate also usually come out with a whole range of egg-shaped fairtradiness. But your average supermarket shelf is still dominated by Smarties and Creme eggs, neither of which is Fairtrade-certified, even though apparently consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate is increasing. This is especially galling when you remember that Easter is still a very Christian festival, yet apparently Christian principles of charity and fairness are still missing from the Easter tradition of giving out chocolate eggs to each and every acquaintance. However, if you look to major Christian establishments such as the respective Churches of England and Scotland, as well as the Catholic Church, it soon becomes clear how concerned they are about issues such as the environment and Fairtrade. As difficult as it is to get a straight answer out of your average bible basher, if you do a bit of pressing you find that most religious folk agree, at least in principle, that Fairtrade is better than rob-them-blind trade. Both Christian Aid and Cafod have close ties to Anglican and Catholic churches in the UK, and these two organisations are right up there with Oxfam in terms of how much work they put into overseas aid and development, so it is not as if the Christian faith happily turns its back on the poverty caused by biased trade agreements and wildly fluctuating market commodity prices.
So all these colourful boxes in the confectionary aisle, have they actually got anything to do with the real meaning of Easter? Apart from the fact their contents are egg-shaped, probably not. So, why do we always buy so many each year? Because Nestle, Cadbury’s, and Kraft amongst others, have got us hooked on their rich, sweet chocolatey goodness. This year, however, I’m defiantly going to be thinking about where my Easter eggs came from. I’ll give you a clue – I’m pretty sure it’s not the Easter bunny. Buy as many Creme eggs as you want – just don’t pretend you’re buying them “because it’s Easter”.
xx
Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate as much as the next red-blooded female, but I seriously wonder about the effect the consumer culture has had on Easter. One thing in particular has, especially in recent years, made me think twice about why we buy each other Easter eggs. We’ve all come across Fairtrade products on our weekly shop; goodness knows I’ve banged on about them on here enough in the past. Lots of us now opt for Fairtrade-certified tea, coffee, bananas, pineapples, sugar, and chocolate. Recently, both Cadbury’s and Nestle have switched to Fairtrade-certified suppliers of Cocoa for their Dairy Milk and Kitkat bars, which would tend to suggest that these big multinational companies see sufficient consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate to start promoting their most popular products as Fairtrade-certified. So....where are all the Fairtrade-certified Easter eggs?
Ok, fair enough, there are some. Green & Black’s Maya Gold Easter eggs are Fairtrade- certified, and incidentally the most devilishly delicious I-could-eat-this-forever-and-not-get-bored chocolate ever to exist in the known universe. Divine chocolate also usually come out with a whole range of egg-shaped fairtradiness. But your average supermarket shelf is still dominated by Smarties and Creme eggs, neither of which is Fairtrade-certified, even though apparently consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate is increasing. This is especially galling when you remember that Easter is still a very Christian festival, yet apparently Christian principles of charity and fairness are still missing from the Easter tradition of giving out chocolate eggs to each and every acquaintance. However, if you look to major Christian establishments such as the respective Churches of England and Scotland, as well as the Catholic Church, it soon becomes clear how concerned they are about issues such as the environment and Fairtrade. As difficult as it is to get a straight answer out of your average bible basher, if you do a bit of pressing you find that most religious folk agree, at least in principle, that Fairtrade is better than rob-them-blind trade. Both Christian Aid and Cafod have close ties to Anglican and Catholic churches in the UK, and these two organisations are right up there with Oxfam in terms of how much work they put into overseas aid and development, so it is not as if the Christian faith happily turns its back on the poverty caused by biased trade agreements and wildly fluctuating market commodity prices.
So all these colourful boxes in the confectionary aisle, have they actually got anything to do with the real meaning of Easter? Apart from the fact their contents are egg-shaped, probably not. So, why do we always buy so many each year? Because Nestle, Cadbury’s, and Kraft amongst others, have got us hooked on their rich, sweet chocolatey goodness. This year, however, I’m defiantly going to be thinking about where my Easter eggs came from. I’ll give you a clue – I’m pretty sure it’s not the Easter bunny. Buy as many Creme eggs as you want – just don’t pretend you’re buying them “because it’s Easter”.
xx
Friday, 12 March 2010
If someone said to you, “I know how to get $400 billion to help tackle poverty, climate change and national budget deficits”, you would say....?
So, banks. How evil are they? Considering the only reason such institutions exist in the first place is to look after people’s money, they’ve been really forgetting their place in the world of late. In case anyone had forgotten, banks effectively caused the current recession. The whys and the wherefores of this are complicated; but a lot of it has to do with stuff that goes on behind the scenes, behind deliberately closed doors. Hands up if you actually think you have a well-informed understanding of the so-called credit crunch and banking crisis, aside from the astronomical amounts of public money that was spent to bail them out? Yeah, my hand’s down...
What I do know is that a lot of what went on was actually the result of deals and transactions that took place between banks and other financial institutions. In business circles, it is common belief that half the reason the Royal Bank of Scotland got into trouble was because it paid way too much money for the ownership of the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. This was a business decision; a decision by one bank to buy another, smaller bank, in order to expand its operations. A decision taken by a bunch of suits in a boardroom, whose only motivation for this decision was to increase profit and market share. It went wrong. We, us ordinary, hard working, tax-paying citizens, have been left with the bill.
Recently, Greece has found itself in a lot of financial hot water. At the end of January, it was reported by the Guardian that Greece’s economy is €300 billion in the red. Greece’s Prime Minister, George Papandreou, has highlighted, to Mr Obama no less, the role that speculative trading has had in making Greece’s bad debt problems a whole lot worse. Speculative trading, as I come to understand it, is basically more suits sitting in offices trading bets with each other about what will happen tomorrow, or next week, in the financial markets. This sounds harmless enough, until you realise that it’s the future of the Euro, or the Pound, that they are speculating on. So, if enough traders speculate that the Pound or Euro will depreciate against the Dollar tomorrow, what effect would this speculation have on whether the Pound or Euro actually does depreciate against the Dollar? Might this depreciation actually happen just because enough suits in offices speculated that it would happen? Would there then be an actual, tangible financial reason for this depreciation, if it occurred or would this depreciation be triggered by what a bunch of suits speculated yesterday? If there was an actual financial reason for this depreciation, might the depreciation itself be made worse than it might otherwise have been, simply because the suits speculated that it would occur in the first place? Sorry f I’m making you dizzy, but as you might have gathered, speculative markets are very shady, little understood by Mr & Mrs Average Joe, and highly morally dubious. More to the point, this speculation is exactly what is exacerbating Greece’s debt problems. Mr Papandreou told an audience in Washington that "Unprincipled speculators are making billions every day by betting on a Greek default" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/09/greek-pm-meet-barack-obama), which in turn makes it harder for Greece to secure loans, and also has a negative impact on the value of the Euro. Well, the Euro zone is officially out of recession, so they should be able to cope, right? Er, nah. Spain, Portugal and Ireland are all still in recession, quite severely so. Meanwhile, the German government is suffering from a severe superiority complex, with Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank refusing to discuss a bailout package for Greece, German politicians suggesting that Greece sell off some of its islands, artwork and historical artifacts to make up the Greek deficit and the German newspaper Bild suggesting that Greeks “get up early and work all day”. Hmm, did someone have sauerkraut for breakfast, by any chance?
Anyway, let’s save Disunited Europe for another day. My point is that banks have got a heck of a lot to answer for. Not only did they cause the financial crisis, but it seems that they might actually be making it worse, after having raided public finances and looted the coffers of many a treasury around the world. When the financial crisis first hit, and Gordon Brown handed out £37 billion to the RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS, it happened with the promise of change, with control over management, and with Sir Fred Goodwin’s empty boardroom chair. I put it to you that nothing, absolutely nothing fundamental about the way banks conduct business has changed. All that matters, at the end of the day, is profit profit profit. No matter how many bets they place on Greece not being able to afford to pay its doctors and nurses next month, so long as those bets are making a profit it’s all good. It is time the banks realised who it is they really answer to. You may have gathered I’m a little bit miffed about all of this.
Which is why I got interested when I heard about the Robin Hood Tax campaign. (See my shiny new banner? Put it there myself!) This is a campaign to gather support for a Financial Transactions Tax, or FTT, also known as the Tobin Tax. First proposed by the aforementioned Nobel prize-winning Mr Tobin about 30 years ago, this tax would be a tax on all those behind-the-scenes-hush-hush financial transactions that are partly responsible for the state of things today, for example, the previously ranted-about speculative trading, amongst other derivatives. This particular campaign suggests that by taking an average of 0.05% from each financial transaction between financial institutions, we could raise up to $400 billion globally every year. There are a few problems with this idea, of course – for such an amount to be raised, the tax would have to be implemented and regulated thoroughly, not to mention the fact that you’d have to get every single country on Earth to actually completely explicitly agree on something for once, otherwise the banking industry would simply retreat to those enclaves which would not have a financial transactions tax. However, the adoption of such a tax would send a signal to the banking sector that both people and government are no longer willing to prop up an industry which does nothing but cost us money and damage our economies. It would perhaps encourage slightly more responsible behavior amongst bankers, who might think twice about placing a speculative bet on Greece’s supposed future financial failure, if doing so would cost them money. It would remind suits in boardrooms and offices who it is they really serve; whose money it is they look after day after day, and whose money bailed out their greedy mistakes when the debt collector came calling last year.
So, what would we use $400 billion for? I should probably mention that Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, who supports the idea of a financial transactions tax, has said himself that even if implemented globally he doubts such a tax would raise this much money. However, even if we implemented this in the UK alone, we’d have a bit more cash to pour into that big black several-hundred-million-pound hole in the Treasury. The Robin Hood campaign suggest using half of the money raised to support frontline public services, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, hospitals, schools, all of which, whilst not being particularly well funded in the first place, are now staring down the barrel of the prospect of future cuts. The remaining half, the campaign argues, should be split between international aid and fighting climate change. Yep, that’s me sold. So go oooooon, have a read of their website, sign the petition, maybe make a pest of yourself and email your MP from their “Do Something” page.....maybe dress up in some tights after and run around your local wood with a bow and arrow. Or just stick on the DVD and oogle a young Kevin Costner and air guitar to Bryan Adams. Kevin Costner’s still got a bald patch in this one though. Do you think Kevin Costner was born with a bald patch? I mean, seriously, I’ve never seen him without one...
xx
http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/
What I do know is that a lot of what went on was actually the result of deals and transactions that took place between banks and other financial institutions. In business circles, it is common belief that half the reason the Royal Bank of Scotland got into trouble was because it paid way too much money for the ownership of the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. This was a business decision; a decision by one bank to buy another, smaller bank, in order to expand its operations. A decision taken by a bunch of suits in a boardroom, whose only motivation for this decision was to increase profit and market share. It went wrong. We, us ordinary, hard working, tax-paying citizens, have been left with the bill.
Recently, Greece has found itself in a lot of financial hot water. At the end of January, it was reported by the Guardian that Greece’s economy is €300 billion in the red. Greece’s Prime Minister, George Papandreou, has highlighted, to Mr Obama no less, the role that speculative trading has had in making Greece’s bad debt problems a whole lot worse. Speculative trading, as I come to understand it, is basically more suits sitting in offices trading bets with each other about what will happen tomorrow, or next week, in the financial markets. This sounds harmless enough, until you realise that it’s the future of the Euro, or the Pound, that they are speculating on. So, if enough traders speculate that the Pound or Euro will depreciate against the Dollar tomorrow, what effect would this speculation have on whether the Pound or Euro actually does depreciate against the Dollar? Might this depreciation actually happen just because enough suits in offices speculated that it would happen? Would there then be an actual, tangible financial reason for this depreciation, if it occurred or would this depreciation be triggered by what a bunch of suits speculated yesterday? If there was an actual financial reason for this depreciation, might the depreciation itself be made worse than it might otherwise have been, simply because the suits speculated that it would occur in the first place? Sorry f I’m making you dizzy, but as you might have gathered, speculative markets are very shady, little understood by Mr & Mrs Average Joe, and highly morally dubious. More to the point, this speculation is exactly what is exacerbating Greece’s debt problems. Mr Papandreou told an audience in Washington that "Unprincipled speculators are making billions every day by betting on a Greek default" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/09/greek-pm-meet-barack-obama), which in turn makes it harder for Greece to secure loans, and also has a negative impact on the value of the Euro. Well, the Euro zone is officially out of recession, so they should be able to cope, right? Er, nah. Spain, Portugal and Ireland are all still in recession, quite severely so. Meanwhile, the German government is suffering from a severe superiority complex, with Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank refusing to discuss a bailout package for Greece, German politicians suggesting that Greece sell off some of its islands, artwork and historical artifacts to make up the Greek deficit and the German newspaper Bild suggesting that Greeks “get up early and work all day”. Hmm, did someone have sauerkraut for breakfast, by any chance?
Anyway, let’s save Disunited Europe for another day. My point is that banks have got a heck of a lot to answer for. Not only did they cause the financial crisis, but it seems that they might actually be making it worse, after having raided public finances and looted the coffers of many a treasury around the world. When the financial crisis first hit, and Gordon Brown handed out £37 billion to the RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS, it happened with the promise of change, with control over management, and with Sir Fred Goodwin’s empty boardroom chair. I put it to you that nothing, absolutely nothing fundamental about the way banks conduct business has changed. All that matters, at the end of the day, is profit profit profit. No matter how many bets they place on Greece not being able to afford to pay its doctors and nurses next month, so long as those bets are making a profit it’s all good. It is time the banks realised who it is they really answer to. You may have gathered I’m a little bit miffed about all of this.
Which is why I got interested when I heard about the Robin Hood Tax campaign. (See my shiny new banner? Put it there myself!) This is a campaign to gather support for a Financial Transactions Tax, or FTT, also known as the Tobin Tax. First proposed by the aforementioned Nobel prize-winning Mr Tobin about 30 years ago, this tax would be a tax on all those behind-the-scenes-hush-hush financial transactions that are partly responsible for the state of things today, for example, the previously ranted-about speculative trading, amongst other derivatives. This particular campaign suggests that by taking an average of 0.05% from each financial transaction between financial institutions, we could raise up to $400 billion globally every year. There are a few problems with this idea, of course – for such an amount to be raised, the tax would have to be implemented and regulated thoroughly, not to mention the fact that you’d have to get every single country on Earth to actually completely explicitly agree on something for once, otherwise the banking industry would simply retreat to those enclaves which would not have a financial transactions tax. However, the adoption of such a tax would send a signal to the banking sector that both people and government are no longer willing to prop up an industry which does nothing but cost us money and damage our economies. It would perhaps encourage slightly more responsible behavior amongst bankers, who might think twice about placing a speculative bet on Greece’s supposed future financial failure, if doing so would cost them money. It would remind suits in boardrooms and offices who it is they really serve; whose money it is they look after day after day, and whose money bailed out their greedy mistakes when the debt collector came calling last year.
So, what would we use $400 billion for? I should probably mention that Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, who supports the idea of a financial transactions tax, has said himself that even if implemented globally he doubts such a tax would raise this much money. However, even if we implemented this in the UK alone, we’d have a bit more cash to pour into that big black several-hundred-million-pound hole in the Treasury. The Robin Hood campaign suggest using half of the money raised to support frontline public services, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, hospitals, schools, all of which, whilst not being particularly well funded in the first place, are now staring down the barrel of the prospect of future cuts. The remaining half, the campaign argues, should be split between international aid and fighting climate change. Yep, that’s me sold. So go oooooon, have a read of their website, sign the petition, maybe make a pest of yourself and email your MP from their “Do Something” page.....maybe dress up in some tights after and run around your local wood with a bow and arrow. Or just stick on the DVD and oogle a young Kevin Costner and air guitar to Bryan Adams. Kevin Costner’s still got a bald patch in this one though. Do you think Kevin Costner was born with a bald patch? I mean, seriously, I’ve never seen him without one...
xx
http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Spare a thought for the poor hamster...
A proper entry soon, I promise - in the meantime, here's something to keep the old grey matter going -
http://www.impossiblehamster.org/
xx
http://www.impossiblehamster.org/
xx
Sunday, 21 February 2010
I want to ride my biCYCLE...
So, those Victorians. On the one hand they gave us an economy addicted to fossil fuels; lots of gloomy dark architecture and a really bad reputation as brutal, insensitive empire-builders. On the other hand they also gave us the London Underground, the suffragette movement, and bicycles. Yes, as addicted as they were to all things black and hydrocarbon, the Victorians somehow managed to invent something which only needed a human with a good sense of balance for power.
As peculiar as some early bicycles were, and as uncomfortable as some of them must have been to ride (for example, the Penny Farthing, guilty on both counts), two wheels on a frame with a bit of chain, a few cogs and a couple of pedals has turned out to be nothing short of revolutionary. In the late 19th century, the bicycle was championed by feminists and suffragettes, so much so that a demonstration against the awarding of degree titles to female students at Cambridge University in 1897 saw the effigy of a woman riding a bicycle being burned in the Market Square (ironic, considering the city of Cambridge is completely overrun with bicycles these days). In fact, the popularity of bicycles with women is partly credited for various late Victorian wardrobe revolutions. I’ve never tried riding a bike in a corset and floor length skirt but to be honest I have enough trouble keeping my loose jeans out of the gear mechanism. To this day bicycles remain the main form of transport in remote corners of Africa and South East Asia, for farmers taking their produce to market, for people commuting to work, for children going to school. Bicycles allow people to travel long distances quickly and at next to no cost, aside from buying a bicycle and keeping it maintained, which is nowhere near as costly as a yearly MOT, new tyres, oil, petrol, screen wash, and whatever else your four wheeled tin can might need to get off the driveway throughout the course of a year. All over the world, bicycles symbolize freedom.
So why the heck do motorists and other road users in this country treat cyclists who also use the road as if they’re target practise? Most people I know who drive cars don’t act this way. But every time I dare to venture onto a moderately busy road on my shiny red wheels, it’s as if I’ve unwittingly become worth 50 points in a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto or whatever the kids play these days. Even the road outside my flat is like an extreme cyclist’s assault course during rush hour, and it has cycle lanes. I have only the deepest admiration for those brave souls who risk their lives daily cycling to work in central London, and frankly anyone who attempts to cycle up Edinburgh’s Princes Street at the minute must have a death wish. Aside from the fact that the entire street is usually rammed with double decker buses shunting along shoulder to shoulder, recent work to lay down tram lines was finished in a bit of a hurry, so now the tarmac surrounding the tramlines is crumbling away. Meaning that there are now two inch ruts running up and down the length of Princes Street, which have already lead to several serious accidents involving cyclists.
Although I’ve been lucky enough to never have had an argument with the wrong end of a lorry, I owe one broken arm and one scarred elbow to off-road bicycle accidents. Yeah, I guess, as revolutionary as they are, bicycles are pretty dangerous. If you have an accident off-road, it’s usually either your own fault or a complete fluke circumstance that you couldn’t have seen coming. Most of the time, though, if you’re wearing a helmet (and please please do) you’ll get off fairly lightly, unless you’re doing something stupid like going way too fast (partly responsible for the broken arm). However, if you have an accident on a road, firstly most of the time it won’t be your fault, more likely the fault of some idiot driver who wasn’t looking properly and who needs to re-sit their driving test, and secondly, things have the potential to get sticky pretty quickly, depending on how fast other road users realise what’s happened and make evasive manoeuvres. I have lost count of the number of stories I have heard of people being unseated by a car whose driver has either selective eyesight that only sees objects that go brrrrrrrrrrrrrum or who appears to be testing the whole real-life GTA scenario to see if there are actual consequences to knocking down two-wheeled things. I have also lost count of the number of these stories in which a cyclist’s helmet near enough saved their lives, or at least came out of the whole experience with a few interesting dents in it.
If certain people are reading this right now, chances are they are screaming “HIPPOCRIT!!!” at their computer screens. Sorry guys...see I can harp on about the importance of helmets but when it comes down to it I only ever wear a helmet if I’m going on a) a long bike ride or b) a bike ride that will likely involve playing chicken with white van men and taxi drivers. One thing I love about where I live now compared to my hometown is the existence of quiet streets and actual off-road cycle paths. As in, let’s put some tarmac down on this bridleway and give half the path to pedestrians and half to cyclists. Oh and while we’re at it, let’s put up some signs so that people know it’s a cycle path and a foot path. In my hometown I don’t think they have ever heard of the concept of a cycle path. According to the Sustrans website (www.sustrans.org.uk) there is supposed to be a cycle path running through my home village into the centre of the nearby town. The only reason I know where this supposed “cycle path” is is because I spent far too many years running around the woods in my village as a kid and I know where all the footpaths and bridleways are, so I know roughly the paths that are part of this so-called cycle route. Never mind that there is the small matter of the town’s bypass to negotiate en route...oh well, good target practise for all those Eddie Stobart lorries, I guess.
The thing that gets me is that, drivers moan to death about bloody cyclists who don’t obey the rules of the road and cause a nuisance, and yet no-one seems prepared to pile some real investment into our national cycle network to ensure that cyclists have useful, well-maintained off-road routes between major centres of population. Some cyclists do not obey the rules of the road, and some cyclists really are as much of a road hazard as a dead cow in the middle of a motorway, or a white van man on his way to get a takeaway. So if you want to encourage people to cycle more often, surely you would make it safer and easier for them to do so, by giving them more accessible off-road routes between their doorstep and the nearest town centre? Or at least make it safer for cyclists to use the road network? To be honest, we’d probably still be having accidents even after all that. My latest near-miss came on an off-road cycle path, when a fellow two-wheeler played kamikaze and came bowling down a hill and crashed into my front tyre. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t see you there!” he said, after taking out his earphones. Open your eyes, then, you eejit.
xx
As peculiar as some early bicycles were, and as uncomfortable as some of them must have been to ride (for example, the Penny Farthing, guilty on both counts), two wheels on a frame with a bit of chain, a few cogs and a couple of pedals has turned out to be nothing short of revolutionary. In the late 19th century, the bicycle was championed by feminists and suffragettes, so much so that a demonstration against the awarding of degree titles to female students at Cambridge University in 1897 saw the effigy of a woman riding a bicycle being burned in the Market Square (ironic, considering the city of Cambridge is completely overrun with bicycles these days). In fact, the popularity of bicycles with women is partly credited for various late Victorian wardrobe revolutions. I’ve never tried riding a bike in a corset and floor length skirt but to be honest I have enough trouble keeping my loose jeans out of the gear mechanism. To this day bicycles remain the main form of transport in remote corners of Africa and South East Asia, for farmers taking their produce to market, for people commuting to work, for children going to school. Bicycles allow people to travel long distances quickly and at next to no cost, aside from buying a bicycle and keeping it maintained, which is nowhere near as costly as a yearly MOT, new tyres, oil, petrol, screen wash, and whatever else your four wheeled tin can might need to get off the driveway throughout the course of a year. All over the world, bicycles symbolize freedom.
So why the heck do motorists and other road users in this country treat cyclists who also use the road as if they’re target practise? Most people I know who drive cars don’t act this way. But every time I dare to venture onto a moderately busy road on my shiny red wheels, it’s as if I’ve unwittingly become worth 50 points in a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto or whatever the kids play these days. Even the road outside my flat is like an extreme cyclist’s assault course during rush hour, and it has cycle lanes. I have only the deepest admiration for those brave souls who risk their lives daily cycling to work in central London, and frankly anyone who attempts to cycle up Edinburgh’s Princes Street at the minute must have a death wish. Aside from the fact that the entire street is usually rammed with double decker buses shunting along shoulder to shoulder, recent work to lay down tram lines was finished in a bit of a hurry, so now the tarmac surrounding the tramlines is crumbling away. Meaning that there are now two inch ruts running up and down the length of Princes Street, which have already lead to several serious accidents involving cyclists.
Although I’ve been lucky enough to never have had an argument with the wrong end of a lorry, I owe one broken arm and one scarred elbow to off-road bicycle accidents. Yeah, I guess, as revolutionary as they are, bicycles are pretty dangerous. If you have an accident off-road, it’s usually either your own fault or a complete fluke circumstance that you couldn’t have seen coming. Most of the time, though, if you’re wearing a helmet (and please please do) you’ll get off fairly lightly, unless you’re doing something stupid like going way too fast (partly responsible for the broken arm). However, if you have an accident on a road, firstly most of the time it won’t be your fault, more likely the fault of some idiot driver who wasn’t looking properly and who needs to re-sit their driving test, and secondly, things have the potential to get sticky pretty quickly, depending on how fast other road users realise what’s happened and make evasive manoeuvres. I have lost count of the number of stories I have heard of people being unseated by a car whose driver has either selective eyesight that only sees objects that go brrrrrrrrrrrrrum or who appears to be testing the whole real-life GTA scenario to see if there are actual consequences to knocking down two-wheeled things. I have also lost count of the number of these stories in which a cyclist’s helmet near enough saved their lives, or at least came out of the whole experience with a few interesting dents in it.
If certain people are reading this right now, chances are they are screaming “HIPPOCRIT!!!” at their computer screens. Sorry guys...see I can harp on about the importance of helmets but when it comes down to it I only ever wear a helmet if I’m going on a) a long bike ride or b) a bike ride that will likely involve playing chicken with white van men and taxi drivers. One thing I love about where I live now compared to my hometown is the existence of quiet streets and actual off-road cycle paths. As in, let’s put some tarmac down on this bridleway and give half the path to pedestrians and half to cyclists. Oh and while we’re at it, let’s put up some signs so that people know it’s a cycle path and a foot path. In my hometown I don’t think they have ever heard of the concept of a cycle path. According to the Sustrans website (www.sustrans.org.uk) there is supposed to be a cycle path running through my home village into the centre of the nearby town. The only reason I know where this supposed “cycle path” is is because I spent far too many years running around the woods in my village as a kid and I know where all the footpaths and bridleways are, so I know roughly the paths that are part of this so-called cycle route. Never mind that there is the small matter of the town’s bypass to negotiate en route...oh well, good target practise for all those Eddie Stobart lorries, I guess.
The thing that gets me is that, drivers moan to death about bloody cyclists who don’t obey the rules of the road and cause a nuisance, and yet no-one seems prepared to pile some real investment into our national cycle network to ensure that cyclists have useful, well-maintained off-road routes between major centres of population. Some cyclists do not obey the rules of the road, and some cyclists really are as much of a road hazard as a dead cow in the middle of a motorway, or a white van man on his way to get a takeaway. So if you want to encourage people to cycle more often, surely you would make it safer and easier for them to do so, by giving them more accessible off-road routes between their doorstep and the nearest town centre? Or at least make it safer for cyclists to use the road network? To be honest, we’d probably still be having accidents even after all that. My latest near-miss came on an off-road cycle path, when a fellow two-wheeler played kamikaze and came bowling down a hill and crashed into my front tyre. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t see you there!” he said, after taking out his earphones. Open your eyes, then, you eejit.
xx
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Political Hot Air, Episode 3: The Return of the ...Jedi? King? .... Sceptic
So like all epic sagas, the politics surrounding climate change seem to just go on and on and on and on. And so, like all epic sagas, this whinge-a-thon returns for a very much delayed, over-hyped third instalment on this subject matter. I honestly didn’t intend to bang on about politics for so long, but seriously, they are dragging all this out a bit, aren’t they?
Not only have things got a tad epic in the political arena, but they’ve also got a tad sceptical. You may have heard about the “Climategate” scandal that erupted shortly before the Copenhagen summit on climate change (convenient timing, no?). The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit had its email server hacked, resulting in said hackers stealing emails that were sent between some of the world’s leading Climate change scientists. Question 1 for your consideration: what were run-of-the-mill hackers, who are usually more interested in stealing your credit card details in order to go on shopping sprees on Amazon or buy flights from New York to Kathmandu, doing hacking into one of the world’s most renowned climate research institutions to steal emails to cast doubts on the science behind climate change? Why would they bother? It’s not as if they could make money out of publishing these emails on the internet. Their main motivation seems to be to cast a sceptical shadow over the science behind climate change, just before one of the most important and pivotal UN conferences on the subject in recent years. But why? Who were the hackers? This point aside, it is also worth noting the extreme polarity the media has shown in reporting this story. Whilst trying to do some actual research for once, I realised that various media outlets treated this story from either a pro- or con- position. I don’t think I’ve read one article which actually attempts to look at the issue objectively. I certainly haven’t read anything which actually tells me what the emails said. Fair enough, there were over 1,000 of them nicked and published, but you’d think the Guardian could do a bit better than quoting just two of them in this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails. All this article tells me about these emails is that a) someone was having trouble with their statistics and b) someone slightly unpleasant works at the Climate Research Unit. Neither of these are earth-shattering revelations about the science behind climate change. But what about that one about fiddling with statistics?! I hear you cry. Yeah, ok, it looks pretty bad, I’ll admit.
At the risk of being a hypocrite and throwing objectivity to the wind for a moment, I’d say two things need to be considered. Firstly, scientists are absolutely terrible at using the English language. It’s the reason why they’re scientists, and not writers or poets. In fact, in my humble experience, it seems that the cleverer and more genius-like the scientist, the worse their language skills are. Secondly, this particular email is quite clearly informal and taken out of context. Informal by use of “Mike”, and not Sir or Madam or Professor or Doctor etc etc, and taken out of context because, what was Mike’s trick that he used in the highly respected, peer-reviewed academic journal Nature? He might well just have drawn up all his graphs in multicolours or put smiley faces on them. I honestly wouldn’t put it past your average, bonkers, I’ve-spent-a-bit-too-much-time-in-the-lab scientist. Anyway. Climategate is currently being investigated by an independent inquiry, the government’s universal response to uncomfortable, unanswered questions that originate in these sceptred isles.
One reason why Climategate has erupted into such an almighty mud fight is because the CRU at the University of East Anglia is one of the most important climate research institutions in the entire world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are based on peer-reviewed academic papers, have used a lot of research carried out by the CRU in their own work. The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation, and its close ties to the United Nations are the reason why they are given such a prominent platform at conferences such as that shindig that went down in Copenhagen. It is meant to be the world’s leading, most authoritative body on the science behind climate change, and its potential impact on people and the environment. All of a sudden, post-Copenhagen, its authority is being called into question.
I’m not just talking about Climategate here. Recently, the IPCC had to own up to the fact that it had made a mistake in its calculations over the rate of retreat of some Himalayan Glaciers. They probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to embarrass themselves publicly if they’d tried. The mistake itself concerns a statistical error, nothing more, i.e. someone moved a decimal point a bit too far to the right, something along those lines. This mistake does not change the fact that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” (IPCC, 2007). This being a quote from a sciencey report, “very likely” here means a probability of greater than 90%. Lost? Sorry....a few errors in statistics concerning a few glaciers and a couple of dodgy sounding emails is not enough to prove that Climate Change isn’t happening. Considering the monumental amount of research and analysis concerning Climate change that has gone on in the last 60 years or so, really, if this is all the dirt the sceptics can come up with they really aren’t backing a winner. Sorry China, read this and weep.
So what’s with all the scandal and slander in the world of Climate change science at the minute, then? Do not be fooled. The media seem all too keen to reflect a highly sceptical public mood at the minute. The errors the IPCC and the CRU have made are pretty bad, I’ll give you that. However, they are not that damaging because they do not overturn the simple hard truth that Climate change is still occurring. It’s not as if the hackers found an email saying “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA we’ve got them all fooled eh!!!” What has happened is that Climate change is no longer some wishy washy theory that hippies in multicoloured Tye dye shirts bang tambourines and sing protest songs about. It. Is. Real. Political leaders all over the world have finally realised it is not an issue they can ignore. One way or the other, they have to have an opinion on the matter. Climate change has graduated from the league of airy fairy lefty-fringe nonsense to a major political issue. And this is why people are suddenly bothering to dig up dirt on it. The potential consequences of doing something about Climate change are great, especially for newly wealthy countries such as China, whose whole booming beast of an economy is propped up on the relentless consumption of fossil fuels. However, the potential consequences of not doing anything about Climate change are far greater.
I read an article about what happened in Copenhagen recently that asked whether the Copenhagen Accord is this generation’s Munich Agreement. I really, really hope not.
xx
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
Not only have things got a tad epic in the political arena, but they’ve also got a tad sceptical. You may have heard about the “Climategate” scandal that erupted shortly before the Copenhagen summit on climate change (convenient timing, no?). The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit had its email server hacked, resulting in said hackers stealing emails that were sent between some of the world’s leading Climate change scientists. Question 1 for your consideration: what were run-of-the-mill hackers, who are usually more interested in stealing your credit card details in order to go on shopping sprees on Amazon or buy flights from New York to Kathmandu, doing hacking into one of the world’s most renowned climate research institutions to steal emails to cast doubts on the science behind climate change? Why would they bother? It’s not as if they could make money out of publishing these emails on the internet. Their main motivation seems to be to cast a sceptical shadow over the science behind climate change, just before one of the most important and pivotal UN conferences on the subject in recent years. But why? Who were the hackers? This point aside, it is also worth noting the extreme polarity the media has shown in reporting this story. Whilst trying to do some actual research for once, I realised that various media outlets treated this story from either a pro- or con- position. I don’t think I’ve read one article which actually attempts to look at the issue objectively. I certainly haven’t read anything which actually tells me what the emails said. Fair enough, there were over 1,000 of them nicked and published, but you’d think the Guardian could do a bit better than quoting just two of them in this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails. All this article tells me about these emails is that a) someone was having trouble with their statistics and b) someone slightly unpleasant works at the Climate Research Unit. Neither of these are earth-shattering revelations about the science behind climate change. But what about that one about fiddling with statistics?! I hear you cry. Yeah, ok, it looks pretty bad, I’ll admit.
At the risk of being a hypocrite and throwing objectivity to the wind for a moment, I’d say two things need to be considered. Firstly, scientists are absolutely terrible at using the English language. It’s the reason why they’re scientists, and not writers or poets. In fact, in my humble experience, it seems that the cleverer and more genius-like the scientist, the worse their language skills are. Secondly, this particular email is quite clearly informal and taken out of context. Informal by use of “Mike”, and not Sir or Madam or Professor or Doctor etc etc, and taken out of context because, what was Mike’s trick that he used in the highly respected, peer-reviewed academic journal Nature? He might well just have drawn up all his graphs in multicolours or put smiley faces on them. I honestly wouldn’t put it past your average, bonkers, I’ve-spent-a-bit-too-much-time-in-the-lab scientist. Anyway. Climategate is currently being investigated by an independent inquiry, the government’s universal response to uncomfortable, unanswered questions that originate in these sceptred isles.
One reason why Climategate has erupted into such an almighty mud fight is because the CRU at the University of East Anglia is one of the most important climate research institutions in the entire world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are based on peer-reviewed academic papers, have used a lot of research carried out by the CRU in their own work. The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation, and its close ties to the United Nations are the reason why they are given such a prominent platform at conferences such as that shindig that went down in Copenhagen. It is meant to be the world’s leading, most authoritative body on the science behind climate change, and its potential impact on people and the environment. All of a sudden, post-Copenhagen, its authority is being called into question.
I’m not just talking about Climategate here. Recently, the IPCC had to own up to the fact that it had made a mistake in its calculations over the rate of retreat of some Himalayan Glaciers. They probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to embarrass themselves publicly if they’d tried. The mistake itself concerns a statistical error, nothing more, i.e. someone moved a decimal point a bit too far to the right, something along those lines. This mistake does not change the fact that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” (IPCC, 2007). This being a quote from a sciencey report, “very likely” here means a probability of greater than 90%. Lost? Sorry....a few errors in statistics concerning a few glaciers and a couple of dodgy sounding emails is not enough to prove that Climate Change isn’t happening. Considering the monumental amount of research and analysis concerning Climate change that has gone on in the last 60 years or so, really, if this is all the dirt the sceptics can come up with they really aren’t backing a winner. Sorry China, read this and weep.
So what’s with all the scandal and slander in the world of Climate change science at the minute, then? Do not be fooled. The media seem all too keen to reflect a highly sceptical public mood at the minute. The errors the IPCC and the CRU have made are pretty bad, I’ll give you that. However, they are not that damaging because they do not overturn the simple hard truth that Climate change is still occurring. It’s not as if the hackers found an email saying “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA we’ve got them all fooled eh!!!” What has happened is that Climate change is no longer some wishy washy theory that hippies in multicoloured Tye dye shirts bang tambourines and sing protest songs about. It. Is. Real. Political leaders all over the world have finally realised it is not an issue they can ignore. One way or the other, they have to have an opinion on the matter. Climate change has graduated from the league of airy fairy lefty-fringe nonsense to a major political issue. And this is why people are suddenly bothering to dig up dirt on it. The potential consequences of doing something about Climate change are great, especially for newly wealthy countries such as China, whose whole booming beast of an economy is propped up on the relentless consumption of fossil fuels. However, the potential consequences of not doing anything about Climate change are far greater.
I read an article about what happened in Copenhagen recently that asked whether the Copenhagen Accord is this generation’s Munich Agreement. I really, really hope not.
xx
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
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