Wednesday 12 October 2011

Landfill

Landfill - possibly the biggest example of sweeping a problem under the carpet.....

Monday 10 October 2011

To fly or not to fly?

I have a very good friend who is a committed environmentalist. She goes on marches, doesn’t shop in supermarkets, has done a degree in environmental protection – and is intelligent and informed. I recently spoke to her and she mentioned that she would be out of contact for a while as she was going on holiday – to Dubai.

I know her well enough to ask the question which I don’t usually dare ask – which was – ‘how do you justify that, from an environmental point of view?’ To which she replied – ‘I don’t’. She added that she allows herself the quota of one flight a year, and that if everyone did that, then flying would not be the major issue in global warming which it is. Furthermore, she does not see that she needs to try to make up for other people’s contribution to global warming – it’s all about personal responsibility rather than one small group trying to save the world.

This is my attempt to work my way through the emotional issue that is air travel, and the contradiction that so many people have picked up before me, namely, that environmentalists seem for the most part to stop short at denying themselves the option of flying.

As a family, our personal dilemmas are these: first, we love love love to travel – a child of parents who both worked for airlines, I grew up using ‘planes as international buses; hop on, hop off. Secondly, we have made innumerable changes to our lives because of our views on climate change, but not to fly seems an enormous sacrifice. Thirdly, we have 2 kids who want to explore their world. What decisions should we make on their behalf? Fourthly, do we need to try to compensate for all the people who do fly by completely cutting it out of our lives? Fifthly, will we, if we end up rationing ourselves to, say one flight every 2 years, be considered as hypocrites, either by ourselves or others?

In the following paragraphs, I am looking at personal, rather than business travel. However, let me briefly say that whilst business travel has reduced somewhat in the UK, it still seems to be broadly justified by employees on the basis that it is part of the job and it is a reasonable request by the employer that cannot be refused; for businesses, that it is part of the wealth creation process and an economic reality. Indeed, this is a stumbling block for governments too – the argument is that aviation generates 8% of global GDP. These accepted excuses should be questioned, just as much as individual flying.

In the interests of openness, I should declare that whilst we haven’t travelled by ‘plane as a family for almost 3 years, Hugh makes occasional business trips. He has stopped flying outside Europe and takes trains to Paris and Brussels, but nevertheless, he feels obliged to fly in some cases. And in 2009 I jumped on a ‘plane faster than you can say environmental pollution when a friend of my father’s died unexpectedly abroad and I went, with my Dad, to the funeral.

I am going to look at the following issues:
1.The environmental impact of flying – we’re all told that flying is bad for the environment – but what’s the small print?
2.What are the options for reducing this impact?
3.What are the options for people who want to travel?

The environmental impact of flying
1.Air travel is not only just about the worst form of transport in terms of greenhouse emissions per passenger mile, it also enables people to travel so much further – so they emit a huge amount in a very short time. For instance – a round trip for 2 from London to San Fran emits the equivalent of about 5 tonnes of CO2. Or –10 months of domestic gas and electricity use for one home or driving 20,000 miles in an average car.

So even if, for argument’s sake, emissions per passenger mile in a 'plane were the same as in a car (which they’re not) – we tend to fly so much further than we would ever drive. The mean distance we drive in a year is 9,200 miles. We can easily fly that in a day.

2.Secondly - in 2009, civil aviation accounted for about 2% of global CO2 emissions, so do we really have to get into a stew about it? Well yes – because -

a)The vast majority of flights are taken by people in richer countries – so if you look at emissions per country, rather than the average, then you see that in some countries it contributes disproportionately to global emissions. For instance, in the UK in 2005, the figure was 6.3%. So already that 2% has grown into a somewhat more significant figure.

To put this into a somewhat more visual context, every single day more than 2.5m people fly through the airspace directly over metropolitan Paris - equivalent to about a quarter of its population. Can you imagine?

b)But even the figure of 6.3 could be severely underestimating the UK’s real impact. Since international flights take off from one country and land in another, 50% of emissions are allocated to the country where the ‘plane takes off and 50% where the ‘plane lands. So if I fly to Bangladesh, Morocco or Mozambique, only the equivalent of my outward journey, rather than my round trip, is included in the total of UK emissions. This skews the figures as UK residents take up 2/3rds of the seats on an average 'plane landing or taking off from a British airport; seats are not allocated equally; you never hear the Captain over the intercom apologising for a delay which is caused because we haven’t got 50% of seats taken up by Bangladeshis, Moroccans or Mozambicans...yet these countries are still hit with 50% of the emissions on their national totals.

c)Not included in these stats are emissions from the aviation industry from causes other than flying – for instance, manufacture and transportation of kerosene which is aviation fuel, manufacture and maintenance of 'planes, airport buildings and support vehicles .

The Rough Guide to Green Living estimates that aviation’s true impact in the UK amounts to between 13 and 15% of our total greenhouse gas emissions. And most flying is done by a small proportion of the total population.

d)More bad news – the height at which ‘planes fly increases the environmental impact of their emissions. They emit loads of bad things – but let’s just look at one aspect: emissions of soot and water vapour. The hot, wet water vapour, carrying soot in suspension, belches out of the aeroplanes and mixes, at high altitude, with the cold air in the atmosphere. This forms the vapour trails that you can see from the ground which are called ‘contrails’. Contrails then give rise to Cirrus clouds. These increase the impact of the greenhouse effect because they trap heat which would otherwise escape from the earth. During the day they also have the positive, counteractive effect of reflecting incoming sunlight, but at night their impact is all one way. Even during the day, the net effect is negative.

Whilst the science in this area is not totally solid, scientists in this field apply a multiplier of around two – ie the total environmental impact of a ‘plane ‘is approximately twice as high as its CO2 emissions’ . George Monbiot quotes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change applying a multiplier of 2.7 .

e)Even more bad news: Aviation emissions have been growing faster than any other source of greenhouse gases. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of people using airports in the UK rose by 120%, and the energy the planes consumed increased by 79%. In the European Union, greenhouse gas emissions from aviation increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006. India has been spending more than $12bn on airport building. In 2006, its airlines had 330 new aircraft on order, to increase its fleet from 200 to 530. India's minister for aviation predicts that by 2020 up to 2,000 planes could be operating. China said in 2006 that it planned to buy 100 new planes every year over the next five years .

So this is an industry that is taking little notice of global warming, answering the demand of a growing proportion of the population which does not connect their flying with climate change. Or maybe people feel that they switch their lights off and recycle their cardboard and therefore they can fly to the Maldives on holiday with a clear conscience that they have done their ‘little bit’.

But before I give over to rant mode – let’s consider – are there options for reducing the impact of flying on the environment?

Technological possibilities
There have been advances in technology – the aeronautical industry claims that it has already made its fleet more efficient, by lowering weight, improving aerodynamics, fine-tuning engines and a range of other measures. But this doesn’t stop the trend of more and more people getting on planes and flying, so improvements in efficiency seem to me to be at best marginal.
Is it likely that a new engine will be developed and used which is massively more efficient, or uses a sustainable fuel? Well, as far as aircraft engines are concerned there don’t seems to be any new designs out there that make fundamental changes to the basic gas turbine that was designed in 1947. Secondly, and maybe more crucially, since planes bought today have a service life of up to 60 years, the current technology is embedded in the industry for a long time.

What about a different fuel?
Various have been considered but all are impractical. You can accept this statement and skip the next paragraph or if you’re really interested, read it.

The choice of low carbon fuels for aeroplanes is similar to the choice of low carbon fuels for cars. It is technically possible to fly planes whose normal fuel is mixed with about 5% biodiesel. Small difference, and anyway, biodiesel has already been shown not to be the answer to all our problems.
Ethanol is another fuel that has been suggested. However, it is a poor performer.Hydrogen is totally impractical. (According to George Monbiot, aircraft ‘could use hydrogen today, if instead of carrying passengers and freight they carried nothing but fuel – it contains four times less energy by volume than kerosene. But if this problem could be overcome, the researchers suggest, the total climate impacts of planes fuelled by the gas “would be much lower than from kerosene”. Unfortunately, when hydrogen burns, it creates water. A hydrogen plane will produce 2.6 times as much water vapour as a plane running on kerosene. This, they admit, would be a major problem if hydrogen planes flew as high as ordinary craft. But if the aircraft flew below 10,000 metres (33,000ft), where contrails are less likely to form, the impact would be negligible. However, because hydrogen requires a far bigger fuel tank than kerosene, the structure of the plane would need to be much larger. This means it would be subject to more drag.The only real alternative is “synthetic” kerosene made not from oil but natural gas, biogas or coal. It has the major advantage of working within current aircraft and therefore does not need new costly infrastructure. In fact, there are already ‘planes flying in South Africa fuelled on this technology – but made from coal and therefore not offering any significant emissions advantage over kerosene.

Taxation

Is taxation a viable method to reduce demand and therefore emissions from aviation?
There are two possible targets to tax, passengers or the airline companies. Passengers already pay Air Passenger Duty, so if this is the chosen method to reduce demand, then this could be tweaked, controversial as it would be.
The easiest way to tax airlines, so that you could catch both national and international carriers, is to tax aviation fuel. Currently, there is no tax on aviation fuel. So tax on petrol, tax on wine, beer, cigarettes, income and death – but no tax on aviation fuel.That in itself is an interesting idea - why this exception? Why does this industry effectively have this subsidy?

Anyway, enough of the tangent. Could the UK take unilateral action on this front and introduce an aviation fuel tax? Well, it wouldn’t work too well, and would potentially damage the economy as airlines would try to fuel abroad and avoid the UK hubs.

The common feeling is that, for such a tax to succeed, it would have to be introduced worldwide, rather than piecemeal – in other words, by international treaty. An international treaty means international agreement which history has shown is hard to achieve. And we’ve all seen from Kyoto how toothless a treaty is without all key global players signing up.

However, there seems to be a chink of light at the end of the taxation tunnel...the global airline industry may be forced to join the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on 1 January 2012. This legislation imposes a carbon trading system that already includes most other polluting industries.

Connie Hedegaard, the Commissioner for Climate Action at the European Union (EU) says, "It seems high time that this polluter-pays principle is finally also applied to aviation's greenhouse gas emissions”.

However, and predictably, the highly competitive airline industry is in an uproar over the proposed tax policy with some media predicting a "global trade war" in the future.

Guess which states oppose this the most? The non-EU governments most opposed to the plan are the United States, China, India and Russia.

Carriers in the United States have taken the EU to the European Court of Justice for including airlines in the emissions trading scheme. The results of the case will be known on October 6 and will set a precedent for all other airlines.

Solutions

As ever, there are personal, national and global solutions to this issue.

Global solutions are unlikely to happen. An international treaty is nowhere on the horizon, and few governments are prepared to priotritise global warming to the extent of taking unilateral action.

Nationally, there are more alternatives, although again, no government is going to want to put its economy in a less competitive position if that is the outcome of adopting such polices.

So, a government can legislate for a system that assigns every person a number of allowed air miles per year, and allow them to buy or sell these, (emission trading), or it can bring in a system of taxation.

So that leaves the somewhat uncomfortable personal.

As individuals, we can take the decision to stop flying. So many places in the UK and Europe are very beautiful and accessible by car or train. We can have fabulous holidays without going anywhere near a ‘plane.

Alternatively, we can personally ration the amount of flying we do – ie one flight a year, one flight every 3 years, whatever. We can also take action to set off our emissions.

Conclusion

This is a tough issue, and one where personal circumstances have a place, eg if family and close friends live abroad then obviously it is impractical to say that flying is a thing of the past. For me, I will probably go for the rationing option and fly once every 2 to three years. I am deeply uncomfortable with that, however, because even though it is not up to me and me alone to save the world, (and I can’t do it anyway without most other people engaging in this fight) there is no getting around the environmental damage that flying wreaks on the planet, and do I want to be a part of that?


References:
The Rough Guide to Green Living
Leo Hickman – Is it ok to fly? Guardian, 20 May 2006
The Rough Guide to green Living
The Rough Guide to green Living
George Monbiot – On the Flight Path to global meltdown – Guardian, 21 September 2006
Leo Hickman – Is it ok to fly? Guardian, 20 May 2006
CNN GO 6 September 2011
http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/escape/pay-us8-carbon-footprint-trip-europe-2012-512086

Monday 19 September 2011

A weekend with Oxfam

I have spent this last weekend training as a school speaker with Oxfam. It is a huge sacrifice for me to spend a precious Saturday and Sunday away from Hugh and the kids, but it seems a constructive step to take and Joe even said to me on Saturday 'I think it's a really good thing to do, Mummy', whereas Zara just said 'I don't like you leaving us' so there you have it - the difference between an 8 and a 10 year old.

I feel enormously moved by one of the film clips which we were shown and it is one of those moments which changes your life a little and how you do things - and it was this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtCDO29waIk

I can't get this to be a 'live' link so please cut and paste it into your browser.

Erica

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Now we're halfway through 2011, how did 10:10 go?

In January 2010, I wrote a piece here about 10:10 and what steps we agreed, as a family, to take to reduce our carbon emissions over the year. Since January 2011 I have been intending to write an update of action which we actually took and whether we hit our targets.

Well, some we hit and some we missed. Just to remind you so that you will know what I am talking about, here is my list from 26 January 2010.

1. Monday is now a telly-free day. In fact it is a screen-free day so that people don’t just migrate from the telly to the computer.
2. We will turn off the computer earlier.
3. We will now drive to supermarkets a maximum of half as often as we used to, and use them primarily to stock up on store cupboard items. We will source fruit and veg from local shops and meat and sustainable fish directly from farms, producers and farmers markets.
4. Following on from this, we will spend more of our income in the village and buy less consumables elsewhere.
5. We will use our shopping trolley to carry stuff home from the local shops and hold our heads up high even when people laugh…..
6. We will drive at a maximum of 70 mph on motorways and try to chill out more when travelling and not to zip from A to B as fast as possible. We will drive slower on minor roads.
7. We will carry on turning down heating, turning off lights and making sure that electrical items aren’t left on standby.


So how did we do?
1. Screen free Mondays have been partly successful. The telly typically doesn't come on, Hugh and I have an earlier night as a result, and the kids grumble but don't really mind too much. I, however, completely fail when it comes to the computer. Generally I do some sort of work on a Monday so I need to access the internet, but then I am very undisciplined and look at Facebook and browse the news and yukkety yuk. I have also started giving the kids 20 minutes each on the computer and if I don't helicopter them, then this time extends till I do something about it.

On the plus side though, I also imposed a rule of no telly during holidays till 6pm. Great! Positive, active kids and family life for the most part and a respite when everyone's gasping for it.

2. We don't turn the computer off noticeably earlier. Oops, forgot about that. Will do better.

3. We use supermarkets much, much less. Not only do we avoid shopping there, we have almost stopped having them deliver, since a call from a driver who told me that he was over 30 miles away in Oxford, and I was so outraged that my shopping had taken a late night tour of much of South East England that I decided to try not to use the service again. I would guess that I mostly use supermarkets for store cupboard stuff now, which I buy about every 3 weeks, instead of doing a weekly shop. How much has that enriched my life! Even on holidays we have started shopping locally rather than getting one big load from Sainsbury's.

So, I source meat and fish from farmers' markets and Abel and Cole (not just for rich gits - if we shop carefully, we can get free range meat for less than £2 a kilo) I get a lot of fruit and veg from Abel and Cole too, although that is, in my opinion, expensive. I grow quite a lot of that stuff in the summer anyway. My hens poop out eggs generously and with abandon so that keeps us going too.

Shampoo, washing up liquid and all that sort of stuff I buy in bulk online. Cheaper, with less wasted packaging. Toilet paper I get from my local fairtrade rep. Kitchen paper is banned, except as a treat at Christmas.

I also worry less about running out of stuff. It seems to me to be a good lesson for everyone that our household stocks are limited and that sometimes we have to make do rather than always be able to have exactly what we want instantly.

4. Hmm, do we spend more income in the village? Yes, probably. We use the greengrocers more and we buy birthday presents for kids' parties here - we never go further afield to do that sort of thing. We also use the charity shops a great deal to get second hand stuff.

5. Yes, I use my little shopping trolley to bring stuff home. I'm a bag lady and proud of it.

6. We have relaxed on driving and getting everywhere as though starring in Wacky Races. We can't be bothered to get in a steamed up rush these days and we are aware that to do so will use petrol faster. I have to add here that I feel slightly ashamed whenever I go to fill up the tank.

I drive as little as possible during the week.

7. Yup, we are still switch-off-obsessives.

So, that was what we planned to do. However, we also started to do loads of other things that weren't on our list. I stopped buying clothes. I don't want to dress in fabrics made from petro chemicals and I don't want to wear non-organic cotton since it a very environmentally damaging crop to produce. I also wanted to see if for a year, I could do it. And pretty much, yes, I could.

Whilst I hate shopping with a passion, I still have the impulse to consume (in more brutal language, I like new things) and I am concerned about my appearance. So it was very easy at first, and then I started feeling a little wistful. Anyway, my break with non-organic cotton is permanent. Since it is now 2011, I have bought a couple of organic cotton items, but mostly I indulge myself in Charity Shop chic and have bought waterproof trousers on ebay. I hardly buy shoes, but when I do, I pay the extra and get some which have been ethically produced.

In face, the kids get second hand stuff for presents now. They understand that in the West we have loads and elsewhere others have very little and our excessive life style is supported by ripping off poorer people in a big way. Very, very occasionally, they get new stuff but generally we try to apply what economic muscle we have in as ethical way as possible.

Last year we didn't fly at all (with the exception of business travel - don't know quite what to do about that, and why businesses aren't getting the message that they need to scale back flying too). This year for our holidays we have taken the train around Europe and will continue to do so over the summer.

We are getting PV panels as soon as we can persuade the builder to turn up, and we have installed a wood burning stove. My fire starting skills are being shown up to be very poor, but it'll get better. We also need to buy an axe to chop up wood before the winter comes.

We try very, very hard to avoid products containing palm oil and our consumption of soya is going the same way. This really, really limits food shopping. And by the way -if the ingredients include 'vegetable oil' - that's palm oil in hiding!

We recycle almost everything. Our garage is full of stuff that we need to take when we pass the relevant recycling centre since we don't want to make a special journey.

So all in all, we are progressing along this road, and we have made an effort.

However, we are still of this society and we therefore make constant compromises and collaborate in the current system of excessive use, disproportionate sharing of the world's assets and waste. So it seems to me that there is an inherent failure in what we have done and in our life styles. I worry about this a lot.

Sunday 5 June 2011

Nick Clegg's latest love-in

Nick Clegg says that he's had around 30 sexual relationships. Bet he hasn't found any as memorable as the shagging he's getting from the Tories.

Friday 4 February 2011

A sceptical conversation

So I was out having a drink last night and talking en passant about an organisation which I help to run, which aims to raise awareness of climate change and fossil fuel depletion, and organises local events like film nights and planting a community apple orchard. I was, as is my wont, a little disparaging about it – a bad habit I know, but I am so desperate not to appear intense (I think I fail) or evangelical that I end up saying stuff with a self-deprecating smile like ‘this little organisation that I help run that’s trying to save the planet’ when all of a sudden my interlocutor said ‘I have to say that I don’t think that global warming is happening’.

He went on to explain that he didn’t really understand the issues but was parroting (his word, not mine) the views of his family. Now, had this been me, I would have recognised that this was shaky ground upon which to argue, but in his case, the flood gates flew open and out it all came. People ‘on high’ apparently want us to believe the myth of global warming; the leaked emails from UEA prove that the truth about climate change – ie that it’s all a big bowl of spaghetti bolognaise – is being suppressed; those who buy into this myth are enormously vain – how can we have the audacity to think that little old us, the frail and humble Human Race, have the power to affect something as big as the global climate? Furthermore, we were all growing grapes in mediaeval times anyway; everyone always talks about hot summers, but really nothing seems that different from when we were children; if we run out of coal, we’ll find something else to burn; climate sceptics aren't allowed equal air time anymore and so on and on it went, each utterance more thought-through, evidenced and convincing than the last. Or not.

This is what I said in reply, though with a sinking heart (it’s kind of boring to engage with the same old arguments that don’t even start to bear scrutiny) which also started beating too fast in the face of conflict in a social situation.

First – and presuming that people ‘on high’ are those who lead us rather than those who have left us – to deal with the proposition that there is conspiracy amongst world leaders to mislead the global population. Let’s not even get into why all these powerful beings can shake on this when they cannot find common ground on pretty much anything else (‘World peace, Mr Ahmadinejad? Come on, come on, you’ve got my agreement on screwing everyone over climate change. Huh? Huh? Be happy with that! Now, let’s pick up Michelle and Mr Netanyahu and go out clubbing. I wanna show you DC....’) and cut to the question that I asked – namely, to what end? My query was met with an enigmatic smile. After all, if it’s a conspiracy the whole point is that the little man or woman in the street doesn’t know, so this just goes to prove that it’s a conspiracy. A brilliant, watertight, circular argument if ever there was one.

Second the leaked emails. On this, there is so much to say, and I only said a very small part of it. The most important point, from a public information point of view, however, is this. Should the fact that some academics mishandle a situation, to almost universal condemnation, be accepted as a convincing counterbalance to all the peer-reviewed and verified research out there? Is it enough to do away entirely with the fact that 98% of all climate scientists have an informed belief that climate change is happening, much of it is manmade and if we don’t take action, then the impact on the world, on us and most other species will be dire? If your answer to these questions is yes, then you are looking for a reason to refute the existence of climate change, and sadly this one has fallen into your lap. But if it hadn’t, you would, just as gleefully, have found something else. Since however UEA is the slender hook by which you hang your disbelief and it is therefore critical to understand it, have you researched it? Do you know what was actually said and done?

What I could also have said was – does this mean that every climate scientist or any scientist with any access to research data has not only signed a version of the Official Secrets Act but actually kept completely schtum? And let me see, have there been no leaks at all? Oh, yes, there has been the UEA fandango, but over the last 30 or so years, only one little leak means that someone somewhere is running a pretty tight-lipped campaign which you must admit deserves recognition. Imagine the scene -

‘An MBE for propagating a myth about climate change? Are you sure, Mr Cameron?’

‘Well, he has done enormously well, Your Majesty. Lots of mad greens running about out all over the place, not only hugging trees but having full sex with them.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean, Mr Cameron. Come on corgis, chop chop. Time for a snack with your favourite class A drug mixed in’.

Nobody out there wanting to sell such a jaw dropping story to the press or are all journalists part of this establishment silence as well? Nobody with a conscience, gagging to be a whistleblower? Everyone so convinced or so threatened that the great unwashed need to be kept in stifling ignorance that they just won’t break ranks? No pillow talk?

It’s as if the story of Harry Potter is all true. It’s known at the highest levels, of course, as Dumbledore has a hotline to the prime minister of the day. The difference here is that the population of the Wizarding world are all scientists with a big secret that none of us Muggles should ever know. Not only is there a Ministry for the Suppression of the Truth about Global Warming, but the civil servants in the department have the power to blank out Muggles’ memories when a scientist carelessly lets something slip. Beware the Dark Lord Juniper. Shiver as Draco Attenborough apparates all over the world to show us melting ice caps and warming oceans.

But let’s cut to the bone of this. Fundamentally, I really don’t care if someone disagrees with me about global warming. Despite the passion with which I have argued above, and my fury at the ridiculousness of most of the sceptics’ arguments, I honestly do not. Whilst I can point to evidence that the climate is changing faster than ever before and that it is likely that human activity is contributing to this increased rate of change, I can no more prove to them that it is happening than they can prove to me that it is not. What I am far more interested in is a strategy to manage the risk that it might be happening.

So, finally, these were the questions that I asked. First, are you absolutely sure that climate change is either not happening, or if it is, that we’re not contributing to it? Of course, the answer has to be no.

Secondly, have you ever taken out car insurance? You have. How sensible. Is this because you are definitely going to have an accident or is it because you have taken the rational decision that the future is unpredictable? Why do you take out insurance? Is it so that, if you are unlucky enough to crash, the insurance will minimise the impact of the accident in terms of impact on your time, finances and convenience? It is, of course.

So. We can all waste a lot of time arguing about whether climate change is or isn’t happening. But this is the wrong debate to be having. There is a lot more common ground if we focus on what might happen and build a model to cover as many of the possible effects as we can anticipate. It takes an enormously confident person, or an incredible risk taker not to insure against the possibility of the negative impacts of climate change. Would you trust such a person if your life, or other people’s lives depended on it?