The Sun sticks up for low energy light bulbs

It's always good to see the tabloids fighting against each other. Earlier this week the Daily Mail led, on the day 40 kids were killed in a UN school in Gaza, with "The Great Light bulb revolt". With my normal searing intellect and endless patience I conducted a lengthy forensic deconstruction of the Mail piece. "Bollocks". For a proper deconstruction of the piece go to someone with real brains and patience like James Graham, who did an excellent job at it.

Now the Sun has entered the fray on the side of us dewy-eyed idealists who want to see a mass conversion to low energy light bulbs. In a subtle riposte to the Mail's idiocy, the Sun have a very large splash on their front page saying "Free Low energy light bulb". You can claim yours at Asda apparently, if you are a Sun reader, today, at least, presumably.

I never thought I'd say this, but "Hurrah!" for the Sun!

Don't panic!

Recent doom-laden reports of the stock market crisis in the media have reminded me of a couple of “Dad’s Army” catch phrases. One is tempted to repeat Private Fraser’s “We’re all doomed!”, or to run round like Corporal Jones shouting “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!”.

Many of the journalists covering the recent stock market crisis weren’t adults during the last serious recession. A long period of growth has perhaps allowed us to lose our sense of perspective.

To take an extreme example, I have heard last week being compared with the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

This really is a wild exaggeration. In a 30 day period over October/November in 1929 ("The Wall Street Crash") the Dow Jones Index went down by 42% from 345 to 200. Moneymen were seen throwing themselves off the skyscrapers in Wall Street and there were resultant soup kitchens, cardboard cities, lines of people begging and "Brother, can you spare a dime".

Even if you take the whole of the 30 days up to 24th September and take the highest and the lowest point, the Dow Jones Industrial Average only went down by 9% from 11600 to 10600. Today it is at 10825, down 5.8% from the 1st September when it was 11,500. Compare that to 2003 it went under 8,000.

While not wishing to minimise the hardship and worry caused to people in the current economic situation, we really need to put things into perspective.

Inflation is at 5%. In 1975 it was 24%. Obviously, things like petrol and food are going up faster than the headline rate. But still, in an historical context, inflation is nothing like as high as it has been at times.

Unemployment is at 5.5%. In 1982 is was 12.5%.

Many talk of an energy crisis. Yes, we should be concerned about energy supply and use. But some of us remember the three day week in the early 1970s when we had scheduled power cuts, industry closed for two days a week other than weekends and all television broadcasting stopped at 10.30pm. Now that’s what I call a “crisis”.

I certainly don't wish to under-estimate the need for action to stem the credit crunch - the market will certainly go down further if there is no "end game" in sight. And of course, there are bound to be knock-on effects further down the road. Having been unemployed myself, albeit for a short period, I don't discount the hardship and worry caused to just one unemployed person and their family.

But we are in danger of talking ourselves into an unnecessary tizzy.

In particular, one thing which I found was missing from current discussions is putting a positive perspective on how we lead our lives in a recession in connection with preserving the planet.

By far the greatest threat facing our planet is global warming. If the glaciers continue melting and there are wars breaking out over water supply, worries about the stock market will seem silly.

We should be focussing on the "win win" which we can derive from certain domestic measures in a potential recession.

Improving the energy efficiency of our homes, being more fuel efficient with our travel and growing more of our own food will save money so that we are better able to get through any economic turbulence, while doing our bit to help minimise the effects of global warming. This is a great, positive message. We should be turning the fears of a recession to positive effect. We have all, as a human race in the western world, wasted a lot of resources in recent years. The need to save money can have the big positive knock-on effect of help to save the planet as well.

I find it quite disturbing that this link is not being made more widely.

Thar's plastic in them thar hills!

This all seems a bit bonkers at first. Mining old rubbish dumps for plastic. But, listening on Radio Two to a fellow from one of the companies pioneering this business, it all made sense. Good luck to them.

We need a separate Department of Energy

Full marks to Alexis Rowell on the Belsize LibDem blog, who deserves a pat on the back for his excellent post entitled: The rising cost of food and energy. It has set me thinking quite deeply.

But one thing the article has jolted me to ponder on is the need for a separate Department of Energy in government, with its own Secretary of State. Wikipedia tells the history of the Department of Energy here. It was set up during the 1970s oil crisis and then wound down in the 90s with its energy efficiency brief going to what is now DEFRA and energy policy going to BERR, where it has its own page on its web site.

The US has it own Department of Energy with its Cabinet secretary. It is blindingly obvious that, with the huge, multi-generational challenge to wean ourselves off oil and onto renewables with reduced use of energy, we need a government, cabinet level ministry to decide the strategy and drive it.

I note that Nick Clegg's new policy document Vision and Values, includes plans, or at least suggestions, to scrap the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. I hope that energy policy is retrieved from this "scarpping" and recycled with energy efficiency into its own department.

Global Warming: Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring !

Reading the Observer's article last week entitled Glaciers melt 'at fastest rate in past 5,000 years' sent me scurrying to re-read my copy of How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take To Change a Christian? - a Pocket Guide to Shrinking Your ecological Footprint and re-check my carbon footprint on the Act on CO2 calculator.

There was an interview in the Guardian with James Lovelock on March 1st which was also extremely depressing. When asked for his advice on what to personally do about global warming, Lovelock replied:

Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.

The Observer Glacier article was also very disturbing but at least had an encouraging concluding note, quoting Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):

It's not a reason to sit back and say "it's all too late"

My thinking on this was also galvanised by a visit to the British Museum recently. They very sensibly had a lady curator on hand showing children five artefacts from different ages. The children were allowed to handle them (although I noticed that the lady put her hands underneath the childrens' hands when they held a small Egyptian pot, which must have been particularly fragile). It's funny, but those five artefacts were more enlightening that millions of pounds worth of audio visual displays.

The lady kindly told us how old each one was. 50 AD, 200 BC etc. We gasped when she told us a piece of pottery was four thousand years old.

But I almost collapsed when she told us that a Birtish flint fashioned into a cutting edge was 350 thousand years old. Shurely shome mishtake ?!

So, homo sapiens have been around for 350,000 years, fashioning tools to catch animals and eat them. But we have virtually trashed the planet in about 50 years. A blinking of the eyelid.

Ariel's delighted Polar Bear: Cause for applause or nausea ?

I must have been desperate for reading material while I ate my muesli (but not a beard or sandal in sight) earlier this week. My brother always used to amuse us at home by reading the text on the side of the cornflakes packet while he ate his breakfast. I reach for the Riverford Organic vegetables box list. On one side it tells you what's in your box ("Sweet mama squash" is this week's special attraction). On the other side there is a little homily from Guy Watson, head and chief of the Riverford empire.

Normally this little newsletter tells you about some local event of their like the commissioning of their field kitchen or news of this season's purple sprouting broccoli.

This week, I found myself reading an interesting treatise on commercialism, spin and the green agenda.

Guy Watson is not a fan of "spin" in green matters:

There is a huge dichotomy between the motivations that business leaders profess to the public (beliefs and values) and those revealed to investors. Behind the closed doors of the business world growth, shareholder value and dividends are King with ethics tolerated as a means of driving sales an d building brand. These individuals may have more altruistic inclinations but within the predominantly macho world of business it is not yet acceptable to admit to them.

Watson quotes the "furore over biofuels" as a case in point. Citing his own research, which quickly showed biofuels to be fairly pointless, he writes:

Why is it that biofuels have formed a central plank in so many companies' corporate responsibility claims (Tesco, Virgin and indeed our Government)? Either they could not be bothered to do the most rudimentary research or are more consumed with winning short term approval than achieving true responsibility.

So, there is a picture emerging of companies transparently adopting the "green agenda" in order to boost profits. Sometimes what they are doing is not necessarily "green".

Nowhere is this transparency more remarkably demonstrated than in Ariel's "Turn to 30" campaign.

When the green agenda extends to washing powder, one of the most cut-throat, low margin businesses, then you know it's time for a reality check. Procter and Gamble are not known for advertising campaigns unconnected to their "bottom line". So it was with an outburst of incredulity and nausea that I greeted this TV advert the other night:

That seems to be the moment that green issues got sexy. If you turn your washing down to 30 degrees, the glaciers will suddenly recover and polar bears will let out a little murmur of satisfaction. It is that murmur of satisfaction which got me.

You have to hand it to the advertising wallahs. What a superb, populist advert! All shiny and nice! It's great to see a large commercial giant like Procter and Gamble embracing the fight against global warming.

But on the other hand....Pass the sickbag, Alice.

After experiencing that advert, I was groping around for reasons to be cynical about it. Fortunately, help was at hand in last week's Observer magazine. Lucy Steigle wrote an article entitled: "Does my washing at 30C clean up my act?" The short answer is yes, but buying less clothes and extending their wear time in between washes would do just as much, if not more, good:

It began last year with Ariel (the market leader) and you can see what inspired them. We wash hotter in the UK than they do on the Continent, thus wasting 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year (but how much of this is the legacy of the industry emphasis on whiter than white whites?)

It almost adds up. Studies on jeans, a polyester blouse and a T-shirt show that laundering accounts for 60-80 per cent of the garment's total environmental impact. But there's no denying it's extremely clever marketing, too, allowing detergent manufacturers to up their planet-saving credentials without particularly changing a product's ingredients (phosphates and optical brighteners are especially unfriendly to watercourses).

...what lurks in our obese wardrobes are 2.4 billion unwanted items, each of which took huge amounts of resources to be made, shipped and brought to point of sale.

Meanwhile Dr Kate Fletcher quotes Dutch research in her book Sustainable Fashion and Textiles which shows that the average garment stays on the body for 44 days and is worn for between 2.4 and 3.1 days between washing. As we buy more these times are decreased and wash days increase. So a sustainable laundry manoeuvre might also include learning to love stains; a little dried egg or butter grease never killed anybody.

Which brings me finally to a little book for which I have great affection. It's called "Keep it simple" by Nick Page. Page argues that we all tend to make our lives ridiculously complex. By reducing complexity, he says, we will lead more contented lives. One of the key ways he demonstrates this point is in the area of wardrobe management. If we recycle or donate anything we haven't worn for a year and concentrate on a few well-loved articles of clothing, rather than a wide eccletic mix (half of which we hardly ever wear), we will actually make our lives far simpler and easier. He uses a quote from Charles Kettering of General Motors which sums up our cultivated desire to buy more and more clothes and, indeed, things:

The key to economic prosperity is the organised creation of dissatisfaction.

So, yes, we'll all click our washing down to 30C. But it will do that polar bear a lot more good if we stop buying things we wear once and then leave in the wardrobe for five years.

Excellent Huhne plan to phase out petrol

Well done to Chris Huhne for highlighting a sensible plan to phase-out petrol as a fuel by 2040.

I was tempted to call this plan "ambitious" and "radical" but it would be wrong to describe it in either of those ways.

It is simply right and realistic.

"Locally produced champagne" - very restrictive celebration proposed by Guardian

Saturday's Guardian had an excellent pull-out by Mark Lynas: "Eight years and 32 actions to save the planet".

The radical plan culminated in 2015 with the instruction: "We did it! Global emission dip for the first time as countries rush to go low-carbon. Enjoy a glass of locally produced organic champagne."

Unless we all move to Reims, this is a rather restrictive celebatory entreaty.

PS. Noone likes a Smartalec do they? I know. Sorry.

Ken recycles an old idea - but is it Green?

One of the pleasures of going up to London in the 1980s was to see the London unemployment counter which festooned what was County Hall, opposite Parliament. It was a constant sign of reproach by Ken Livingstone's GLC to Maggie Thatcher across the Thames. I suspect she regarded it as a badge of honour.

Well, it seems that old Ken has recycled his old idea. A Greater London Authority press release declares:

The DIY Planet Repairs Campaign kicked off with Kim Wilde starting London’s carbon counter. The counter calculates the amount of carbon pumped out every second of every day in the capital and the Mayor challenged Londoners to take action to reduce their C02 emissions and slow down the ticking carbon clock.

However, Anyone but Ken asks the question: "how much CO2 is being produced to power this counter?".

Norfolk Blogger sets fine motoring example

There appears to have been a rampant discussion of the new cars of Iain Dale and the Norfolk Blogger, without mention of their relative carbon emission levels. A bit of an omission. Here is a comparison:

Norfolk Blogger:
Age 36
New car: Skoda Fabia
Emissions:120 g/km






Iain Dale:
Age 44
New car: Audi A5 Coupe
Emissions:191 g/km


I treated you to the comparative ages because Iain Dale published a posting about the NB's new car under the title: "You know you're middle aged when..."

Some of us would argue that you know you are middle aged when you have to purchase a sort of automotive Viagra.

It is also fascinating that Iain Dale announced the order of his new car, writing: "And before anyone says anything, it is 34 g/km greener than my current car!"

Oh well, that's alright then.

Business opening for Rag and Bone men

The Guardian has recently been having one of its "35mm film cannister" letter writing chains about rag and bone men.

I did a google for "rag and bone man" and it comes up with all sorts of dictionary-type explanations of what they were. It had me thinking that, in fact, there are plenty of rag and bone men still in operation and more large-scale enterprises doing the same job of recycling metal etc. There does seem a big opportunity for someone to call themselves a "Rag and bone man" on the internet and get a whole host of Google traffic.

The Sherlock Award #789: Climate change "not a business priority"

This week's Sherlock award ("No s*** sherlock", that is - I'm sorry I have to be careful - at least two fully frocked Reverends regularly read this blog) goes to this morning's Financial Times:

Climate change is bottom of the priority list for Britain’s largest companies, a survey of business leaders has found – and their biggest shareholders are not much more exercised by the issue, according to a report.

Surprise? Of course not.

Instead they regard climate change effects as slow and cumulative and the issue as outside the remit of typical fund managers who “are not looking at 2012, let alone 2050.” Long term for the investment community was about three years, they said.

Three years? In my experience most business managers think about this quarter's figures, and that's it. Thirteen weeks is 'long term' in most businesses.

The two surveys identified a degree of cynicism about climate change issues among businesses. A third of the senior corporate executives saw policy initiatives as more about managing company reputation than making a difference to global warming.

To be fair, there are many companies who do take climate change seriously and are doing something about it. But the findings of these reports should not surprise anyone. They reinforce what the Liberal Democrats have been saying for decades. The only way you will get real changes in behaviour is through economic measures. Companies will only sit up and take notice of climate change if their bottom line is impacted.

Brazil's Lula is saying what our PM should be saying about Bush

Thank goodness for President Lula of Brazil and his clear rejection of George Bush's proposal of a parallel climate change initiative. While it is a step forward for the USA to be talking about agreeing to carbon reduction targets, Bush's proposals are cynical and oafish. He is obviously trying to head off getting rail-roaded at the G8 conference. To invent a process outside of the UN is just bizarre. Lula makes this clear:

If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision ... then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution.

Lula is saying what our Prime Minister (who he, ed?) should be saying but hasn't got the guts to say. Bush's ratings in the USA are among the lowest ever recorded for a President. The man hardly commands respect especially when he comes up with such a ludicrous pronouncement.

Lights out London

One of the oddities of going to the gym is that I get to listen Capital Radio in the middle of Berkshire. I couldn't help noticing - mainly because they mentioned it 1,966 times every ten minutes when I was at the gym - that they are running a "Lights out London" event which will involve getting people to turn off their lights and other non-essential domestic appliances between 9pm and 10pm on June 21st.

Hello? It's still light while I type this - without the light on - and on June 21st it will be even more light at 9pm.

Anyway, full marks to Capital. I do wonder how much energy the event will save (I am told some lights and appliances use more electricity if you turn them off and on again, than if you just leave them on). But it gets people thinking in the right direction.

Questioning recycling

Tim Worstall has a challenge to all advocates of recycling in this morning's Times:

Recycling is based on the near-religious belief that everything has value, everything is worth saving, except your time.

He quotes a study in Seattle which showed a household spending an average of 44 minutes a week to sort rubbish. He then projects this to estimate the cost for the UK:

The Worstall Calculator (envelope, 1, pencil, 1) tells us that our time spent in sorting our rubbish by these new rules has a cost of between £1.7 and £4.5 billion.

The solution being proposed is thus that we should spend more money than the cost of the entire waste disposal process in sorting the rubbish, before we spend still more collecting it, recycling or incinerating it and then tipping the remainder into the same holes in the ground that we’ve always used. The system will cost more in total than the old one in the name of saving money.

There is a legitimate concern about methane emissions from food rotting in landfills. Fortunately, as Elliot Morley (at that time a Defra minister) told the Commons in 2004, this has already been solved: all modern landfills collect this greenhouse gas and use it to create energy.

I can't help thinking that Monsieur Worstall has gone a little OTT here. He doesn't seem to recognise that recycling saves the energy and resources to make new products, that there is a shortage of land for landfill and that 50% of the waste in an average bin could be composted thereby feeding new plant growth.

I am also not entirely sure if the Seattle study gives a fair view of the extra time spent recycling compared to traditional waste disposal. If you are just slinging bits in a few recycling bins that you keep outside your kitchen door, it is not really more time-consuming than putting it in a waste bin and then carrying it to your wheely bin is it?

A far-reaching decision, taken at the eleventh hour - Why?

This seems to be a week for major announcements:

Energy
Planning
HIPs

Is this considered a 'good week to bury bad news' or, at least, major announcements?

It all seems rather strange since Blair will soon be gone. Does Brown want all the clutter out of the way before he starts? Is Blair trying to secure himself a place in history other than as an alleged, potential war criminal?

Blair's message at Prime Minister's Questions today was summarised by the BBC as being, in effect, "not me guv - Blair tells MPs it's now up to someone else to decide things"

In which case, is it really a good thing that this 'headless chicken' government is announcing such a major decision as that on nuclear power? After all, as recently as 2003, the relevant minister told the Commons:

It would have been foolish to announce ... that we would embark on a new generation of nuclear power stations because that would have guaranteed that we would not make the necessary investment and effort in both energy efficiency and in renewables. That is why we are not going to build a new generation of nuclear power stations now.

(Hat-tip John Sauven on Comment is free)

For such a long-term policy area, with consequences for many future generations, is it wise to be making a decision, which reverses the direction of the government announced only four years ago, at the eleventh hour of Blair's premiership? What's to say it won't be reversed by Gordie next year?

Survey on climate change by the University of East Anglia

I have been invading "Norfolk Blogger" country. We enjoyed a day exploring Norwich yesterday. Again, we visited the Forum, which is one of my favourite public spaces in the country.

While in there, we were gently persuaded by students from the University of East Anglia to complete a survey on climate change. It was fascinating. We were given information on polar bears, ice shelves, ocean acidification and the Norfolk Broads. We had to comment on how we felt about each of these "icons".

After reading the bumpf I chose ocean acidification as the item which scares me and motivates me the most. That was interesting in itself, as a picture of sea is not as "sexy" as one of a polar bear or the Broads.

The idea that acidification could mean creatures not forming shells properly is deeply worrying in its implications for the food chain.

Desmond Tutu pricks the conscience

There is a sobering and timely reminder of the impact of climate change on Africa from Desmond Tutu in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' section today.

Reading this article reminded me to order "How many lightbulbs does it take to change a Christian? - A pocket guide to shrinking your ecological footprint". I'd been meaning to do it for a while.

This booklet is what has been called in the press, "The Ten Green Commandments" from the Church of England.

I and my family have made a lot of progress (eg. lowish emitting cars, light bulbs, holiday to discover the joys of western Scotland by car this year, dutifully using the recycling bins, the missus hangs out clothes to dry, taking showers instead of baths, putting a hippo in the cisterns, using both sides of paper etc etc) but I think this booklet will be helpful in niggling away at our conscience to do more.

The booklet seems to have been written in such a way as to encourage people by praising small successes. For example, it says: "Sign up to stop receiving wasteful junk mail." and "Use the toaster rather than the grill when making toast to conserve energy". Well, we signed up to the Mailing Preference Service, which stops a lot of junk mail, ages ago. And, I can't remember the last time I used the grill to toast bread. So that gives me a warm glow and will encourage me to go further with other things.

The Ten Green Commandments

The Church of England has issued The Ten Green Commandments, which include sharing cars, using energy saving bulbs and taking local holidays. I know they have done this, because I heard it on Radio Two's news. That was during the Alan Titchmarsh programme. (Hello? I can't believe I am listening to Alan Titchmarsh). But can I find the story on the web? I cannot.

Anyway, well done CofE, and I am preparing to have a guilty flurry of activity.

Why do we use so much loo roll?

...Just watching a fascinating programme about W.H.Auden. One of the talking heads said, apropos virtually nothing, that he was made to use just one piece of toilet paper per go, when he was a child.

In fact, I have been meaning to make a similar observation for some time. We used to make do with two pieces of paper (not on a roll in those days - it was in a box). In fact it would have never entered our head to use more. Nowadays I seem to use half a roll. Is it me? Or is it the quality of the paper? The old stuff may have had that annoying shiny surface but at least you knew where you stood with it. You knew you would never put your finger through it - no danger of that.

Sorry if you are eating.