Swimming with crocodiles

A few weeks ago I dropped in on a friend who works at the local university. Among other things, he's developing a course on sustainable business and I have to admit that while discussing this I was vaguely angling for a bit of work. When a similar course had been run in the past the emphasis largely seemed to be on the promotional advantages of being seen to be green and the scientific content was minimal. As a matter of principle I'd like people to be able to make their own decisions based on sound, if limited, science and not have to rely on being told what to do by others, or at least be able to tell if the advice makes sense. So what I'd like to be asked to do is provide the basic science bit.

During the conversation my friend remarked that he and a colleague had been talking about me and I discovered that they referred to me, I presume in jest, as "Mad Andy". Now there are all sorts of ways of being mad and I suspect that part of being mad often lies in not recognising that you are. So, putting aside the aspects of my own behaviour that may be mad but which I don't recognise, I can only assume that they are referring to my persistent environmentalism.

Everyone who saw the King in his new clothes knew that he was naked. The people I speak to "know" that we're building up to a major ecological and environmental crisis. They've seen the pictures of Earth from space and know that the planet has finite resources. They've seen David Attenborough on the telly and know that we're in the middle of a period of mass extinctions. They know that the weather is becoming more extreme and know that its more than likely that this is down to us, but for some reason, or reasons, they resist the consequences of this knowledge. The best thing about Al Gore's film was its title, it really is "an inconvenient truth" and just as it was inconvenient, or perhaps even personally fatal, to point out that the King wasn't actually wearing any clothes so it is inconvenient to keep pointing out that we cannot go on as we are. 

So, I end up playing the role of the little boy and fail to spot, or take heed of, the social signals that say "Enough already, we're just trying to get on with our lives and, for the time being at least, the most important thing is having enough money. All this environmental stuff makes us uncomfortable so please leave it out". But, in the fine tradition of the fool (who was the one person licensed to speak truth to power) I keep on keeping on.

So, I may not be mad but I probably am a fool to go so consistently against the vast majority who are out there swimming with crocodiles (i.e in denial)

Spend it wisely

An energy efficiency advice shop is about to open in Scarborough, and about time. 

In an earlier post (Market Failure) I mentioned Amory Lovins and his efforts to promote energy efficiency. As part of this he drew our attention to the simple fact that when we turn on an appliance we don't do it to watch the meter go round but, for example, to get light, warmth or clean clothes. He termed this "the end-use philosophy" and in doing so shifted attention away from the production of energy, its supply, towards the efficiency with which it gets used and hence, the demand. 

But, one of the paradoxes of increasing energy efficiency is that by saving money it leaves us with more to spend and, since the things we spend it on have usually involved the use of energy, we don't save quite as much as we might have imagined. 

Thinking about this, and about the social and political realities of the situation we find ourselves in, I came up with the following bit of advice for the shop's customers.

You won't stop the sea level rising, reduce extreme storms, floods and droughts or prevent food shortages, starvation and millions becoming refugees, but you will save some money. 

Spend it wisely.

Locked in

Before the Credit Crunch of 2008 I produced a slightly silly little book called "50 ways to Stuff the Planet". The 43rd way was all about debt and economic growth

Forty three Get into debt.

Money is wonderful stuff. If a nation starts running out, it just prints some more. Only trouble is, if you’ve got more money chasing the same amount of stuff then prices go up and you get inflation. But, if the overall size of the economy grows, then you can avoid inflation by having more stuff for the extra money to chase. Indeed, if you can make more stuff more cheaply then prices can even start to fall, just as they have for computers and other electronic gizmos.

When you get into debt, you’re effectively paying for stuff today out of what you anticipate you’ll earn tomorrow. The debt can be paid off in two ways. Either you accept that you’ll make do with less stuff in the future or you get yourself a wage increase so you can pay off the debt and still keep on consuming at the same rate.

Inflation really is a bit of an arse and most countries will do what they can to avoid it. So, one of the best ways of making sure that we keep on going for economic growth, keep on making more and more stuff, keep on emitting even more greenhouse gases, is to get yourself, and your country, into debt.

What’s the damage?

Put six economists in the room and they’ll give you a dozen different answers, because they can’t even agree even with themselves. Safe to say, they’ll all agree that if the economy isn’t growing then it’s actually going backwards.

Even if you don’t pay your bills and go bankrupt, the economy as a whole still has to. If a bank writes off your debt you can rest assured they’ll screw the money out of someone else.

Can I be arsed?

Again, it’s more a case of can I be arsed not to. Just think of all the junk mail inviting you to get another credit card, of all the store cards stuffed in your wallet, think of Carol Vorderman’s warm words on daytime telly.

Wind-up-ability

To be honest, absolute pants. But you’ll know you’re doing your bit to keep the runaway train on its track just that little bit longer.

Two more recent pieces of work reminded me of these observations. Just as escaping from debt locks us into future economic growth, and hence very likely into increased emissions, so too does our investment in machines powered by fossil fuels and investment in fossil fuel reserves themselves.

Firstly, when something gets made that's going to convert energy from one form to another, like a car, a heating system or a power station, then its likely that that's what it will do and likely that it'll do it for the rest of its expected life. A report by the International Energy Agency in 2012 pointed out that  If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions [to keep warming below 2C]  would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time. So, unless we rapidly change our investment strategies we will find out what happens when the planet warms by at least 2C.

Secondly, a recent study by the think tank Carbon Tracker points out that, despite the fact that its well known that to keep global warming below 2C we've got to leave at least 60% of our known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, there are still huge institutional and private investments being made into the discovery of resources which, if we really are taking Climate Change seriously, can never actually be exploited. The big oil companies are effectively gambling on us not taking serious action and locking us into a financial showdown. 

With these forces at play, and the current price of CO2 on the European Emissions Trading Scheme at less then 3 euros per tonne (where the Stern Review suggested that the social cost was at least 10 times this), it really does seem that the greatest experiment we've ever played with our eco-system will be carried through to the bitter end.

Insulation and bicycles

From what I can remember George W Bush wasn't exactly a climate change sceptic, though I doubt he could stay sitting on this fence in the modern Republican Party, but he did hold that we were being unduly pessimistic about our ability to come up with technological solutions. Don't worry, someone's bound to come up with something. 

Whilst not wishing to put the dampers on human ingenuity it often seemed to be forgotten that solutions don't just have to be socially acceptable but also scientifically plausible. There's only so much solar energy available for plants to turn into bio-mass and if brewing ethanol from your entire production of corn will only meet a fraction of the demand then it really isn't a sensible solution.

There are 4 main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings, agriculture, industrial production and transport. Of course these aren't entirely separate. For example, it's been estimated that over the full life cycle of the average building, from its construction through its use and onto its final demolition, over half the emissions come from the journeys we make to get to it. So, even though you've built ever such a good building you still need to put it in the right place. But, equip your building with energy efficient appliances and, above all, make sure that its properly insulated and you'll not only cut emissions but also make it more comfortable. 

Take food, the meat rich western diet might be becoming more popular but it's not making us healthier. So, as well as cutting emissions, there are also good health reasons to shift our diet back down food chain. The prospect of eating better quality meat, but less often, hardly feels like a major sacrifice.  

In a culture where we're encouraged to demonstrate our status by showing off our possessions its not easy to see how we might get weaned off crude consumerism without a fundamental change in values. But even so, it's possible to imagine a situation where the most valued products are the most long lasting and where our status depends more on the quality of our relationships than our ability to consume. Of course, whether such a change is possible under contemporary consumer capitalism, with its seemingly endless creation of ultimately unsatisfiable wants, is moot.

Reducing emissions from transport is perhaps a bigger problem. At its heart lies a simple fact of physics. You can't speed things up or, if there's friction, keep them moving without expending energy and, by and large, the heavier the things you shift, the faster and further you shift them the more energy it takes. So, a transport system based on moving heavy objects long distances at relatively high speeds is going to be one that uses lots of energy. The alternative is to build our towns and cities in such a way that we simply don't need to travel as much. This means putting the places we live much closer to the places we work, shop and play and, instead of making trips out into the countryside, bringing the countryside into the town. In short, it means creating living spaces, towns and neighbourhoods, where most journeys can be made on foot or by bicycle. 

As a teacher I would sometimes bring into class a "solar powered clothes dryer"; a washing line and a couple of pegs. It was to make the point that technology is more than stuff that doesn't quite work yet. For example, a key moment in the history of Information Technology was the invention of the pencil which, because of the ability it gave to produce good quality sketches in the field, revolutionised the study of Natural History.

Thinking back to George W. My reply to him, had there been the slightest chance that he was listening, would have been that the key technologies already exist. Insulation and bicycles.