Using Me!

Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, Reality and Computation – Part III

First let me make it clear that the laws of Quantum Mechanics, as far as science has pushed to date, are agreed upon by those Academics working in the field. Of course papers are published all the time and experiments done to further refine the theories or fill in areas that are still unknown but there are no schisms in the field of QCD. However there are somewhat philosophical disagreements on how one can best interpret the results of experiment that I described in the previous post about the Young’s Double Slit experiment. There is no, known, way to test which of these interpretations is correct which is why they are no more than philosophical in nature and it’s really personal choice between them.

So, to return to Young’s Double Slit Experiment and my closing questions in Part II. What constitutes a sensor that collapses the wave function?

I often wonder, why don’t the atoms and molecules in the air the light passes through constitute a sensor? I think the answer is that atoms are actually so empty that only the tiniest fraction of photons would be absorbed and thereby ‘recorded’. Of this tiny portion only another tiny portion would be re-emitted in the right directions to travel through the two slits and so form a deterministic pattern on the screen, which would barely register compared to those photons that would pass through undetected to form the probabilistic interference pattern.

So what are these interpretations of Quantum Mechanics I have mentioned? From the very birth of Quantum Mechanics Physicists have developed different ways to understand the Wave Function and its Collapse. The disagreements don’t affect how the Physics work but they are most interesting.

One of the best known schools of thought is the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). It maintains that the Wave Function is not real but is purely a tool for computation. In the Double Slit experiment this interpretation would say that light (indeed everything) is neither a particle or a wave but that any given experiment can show either wave-like or particle-like behaviour but never both. In terms of what constitutes an observer anything will do. The role of the observer is simply to register and turn the probabilistic nature of the unknown into certainties.

Among those who subscribe to this interpretation of QM there are plenty of subtle variations on the theme, as determined by the individual’s bent towards positivism or realism. If you haven’t guessed by now I’m the latter. There are some who one might call purists who would say that if something is not being observed then it does not exist. There are even some who claim that it takes a consciousness to collapse the Wave Function but I disregard this as nonsense… is the Moon not there if everyone looks away? And there are those who would say that although something might not be being observed we can still make informed guesses about them. But all of them would agree that the Wave Function is the complete description of a system and that it does collapse on observation.

I would agree with the latter stance but I have often thought that it should be very hard for something not to be observed. Everything has some kind of field – commonly gravitational and/or electromagnetic. It may be tiny but it has to be registered by everything else in the universe at all times! Of course a criticism of my own argument there is that the Double Slit experiment could not produce an interference pattern if everything was always being observed in some way through the interaction of the forces. Even photons are bent by gravity, but perhaps, just perhaps, if a photon is just following the curvature of space time and is not being absorbed by anything we can truly consider it ‘unobserved’ and it can pass through both slits as a wave? The truth must be subtle and I believe we are all far too limited in our ability to comprehend the Quantum world. Entities like the photon or electron are not particles and they are not waves. They behave in ways that resemble these familiar macroscopic  properties at different times but they aren’t either.

Famously Einstein criticised CI by saying “He [God] does not play dice”. He was very opposed to the idea that nature was described by probability and not by deterministic events. This remark is often latched onto by Theists who assume this meant Einstein was therefore a Theist himself but if you read his body of work you’ll find an Agnostic, possibly Atheist, with a way of writing that suggests a Pantheistic liberalism in interchanging the concept of ‘God’ with the concept of the ‘Universe’.

Einstein himself preferred the Ensemble or Statistical Interpretation of QM. Essentially it states that the Wave Function represents the probabilities of different outcomes in an ensemble of like systems and that a single system within that ensemble has only one state. Therefore the Wave Function in a single system never collapses and everything is Deterministic in a single system, regardless of whether it is known or not. So the Wave Function only means anything if we repeat an experiment many times. As far as I can determine though this interpretation is incapable of rationalising the Double Slit experiment with a single photon interfering with itself.

Flying in the face of CI are the Many Worlds models. The many variations on this theme all have one thing in common, which they share with the Ensemble model, that there is no Wave Function collapse. Instead they state that every possible outcome of every event exists in its own world or history. In popular literature these are often called Parallel Universes but one must remember that one has to exist for every possible quantum state of every possible quantum event since, and including the Big Bang. The number of such universes is uncountable, although not infinite.

There are many variations on this theory too but the important theme of them all is that we never collapse a Wave Function. On observation we merely discover which possible Universe we are in. Something called Quantum Decoherence. Most importantly this completely removes the need for an observer which causes so many paradoxes in CI. The classic example is Schroedinger’s Cat in which a cat in a box may be dead or may be alive based on an unknown radioactive event. In CI the cat is in some super-state of being both dead and alive until we observe and find out. In Many Worlds models the cat is definitely dead or alive, one Universe or History exists in which each is true. We may not know until we open the box which we are in but we are in one or the other.

Some of the variations on this theme attempt to explain the single-photon interference by stating that the many universes interfere with each other. Those that are closest in their overall quantum state interfere with each other more strongly than those which differ wildly. So the universe with the photon traveling through slot one interferes strongly with the one in which it travels through slot two but where everything else is identical, but interferes very weakly with a completely dissimilar universe.

This Wiki page has a good overview of the many other interpretations of QM, some of which are gaining traction in the Physics community.

A very good read for understanding what these different views are more deeply about is David Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality. He explains positivsm, realism and so on in great depth. I would highly recommend it but please bear in mind that whilst his arguments are compelling he is an ardent advocate of a Many World’s interpretation of QM and so his own personal bias comes to bear.

More soon!

Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, Reality and Computation – Part II

In Young’s Double Slit experiement a beam of light is projected towards two slits in a partition. Due to the wave-like properties of Electromagnetic radiation the light passes through both slits and disperses there just as a water wave disperses after passing through a narrow gap. These dispersed waves interfere with each other –  the peaks and troughs in the wave form interfere with each other to form bright and dark bands on the screen behind the partition.

This only makes sense in the context of wave-like light. However we can also describe other properties of light as being particle-like. For example in the way that light is absorbed and re-emitted by electrons. In fact from a given light source we can determine how many particle-like photons are being produced every second. We can engineer a source for Young’s double slit experiment of such low intensity that we can say with absolute certainty that only one photon is passing between the source and the screen at any time. Logically you would think that in such a case the photon can only possibly go through one slot or the other. So there should be no interference pattern. But if we use photographic paper to record where the photons hit the screen we still get an interference pattern, built up one tiny dot at a time. So despite there being just one photon in the experiment at a time it still behaves like a wave that passes through both slits. Incredibly if you still think of the photon as particle-like it has somehow interfered with itself. Yet since the interference pattern is built up from individual dots we can say that as far as the screen is concerned the light is particle like, not wave-like.

A momentary recap. The wave nature of light (electromagnetic radiation) has peaks and troughs just as waves on water do. When a wave at a peak combines with a wave at a trough they cancel each other out. So at each place on the screen we can work out what the magnitude of the wave is for the two paths, through the two slits. In some places the two waves will be at maximum amplitude and form a bright area. In others one will be at a positive amplitude and the other at a negative amplitude causing them to cancel each other out and we see a dark band. And at most places the two amplitudes will add to something between this maximum and minimum. And so our complete pattern on the screen shows bands of light varying from maximum to minimum brightness and back again.

How are we to make sense of this? In Quantum Mechanics we express everything as a wave function that describes the probability of finding our subject (in this case a photon) over a region of space. This is a probabilistic Wave Function completely unrelated to the wave-like way in which electromagnetic radiation propagates. This Wave Function represents the fact that we don’t really know where the photon is. Somehow the photon’s existence is smeared out such that there is a probability that it goes through one slit and a probability that it goes through the other. As confusing as this is it allows the single photon to interfere with itself.

Moreover in Quantum Mechanics we talk about ‘collapsing the wavefunction’. This is what happens when we measure our subject. We force the photon to decide where it is (not in any conscious manner on the photon’s part of course!). Our screen forces the wave function to collapse since the photon must hit it somewhere. Actually there’s always a probability that the photon will simply pass on through the screen and remain just a smeared out probability continuing along it’s way, but the ones doing that aren’t relevant to our experiment nor do they break anything discussed here.

Likewise if we place a sensor in one of the slits we force the Wave Function to collapse and the question of which slit the photon travels through becomes deterministic and no longer probabilistic. If we do this to our experiment the bright and dark bands disappear from the screen and are replaced by just two bright bands representing where the photon has travelled through each slit in a ‘particle-like’ manner. Remove the sensor and suddenly the interference pattern from the ‘wave-like’ nature of light returns!

What are we to make of this? And the obvious question… What constitutes a sensor? What collapses the wave function and what doesn’t? More to follow!

AFK!

I’m moving house this weekend so I’m unlikely to put in appearance to post or moderate until Monday.

Why just faith is not enough

This is in many ways just a summary of recent thoughts which are posited in recent posts.

If there is a God and a single correct religion then why…?

• Is there sin? God is all-knowing right?
• Is there suffering? God is all-forgiving right?
• Are there multiple religions? God is all-forgiving right?
• Did God change his message (Judaism->Christianity)? God is all-forgiving right?
• Did God recede from the universe? God isn’t shy right?
• Are there a billion galaxies with a billion stars each? God isn’t limited by Physics right and this is a special place right?
• Are there probably more universes than we can even conceive of? God created Quantum Physics for a reason right?

And how?

• Do you explain what happens to those with no religious experience, or the children? God loves them too right even though the church doesn’t?
• Does Joseph’s descendency from the house of David have anything to do with anything? And why do the Gospels disgaree on it anyway? God’s word is infallible right?
• Do you explain the fact that religion has caused more persecution and death than any other single cause in human history? God is always righteous right?

Short post to sum up a night of intenisive thought. I hope tomorrow I can find enough time to write part two of my Quantum Mechanics thread which is long overdue but which is of great importance to me becuase it will, in time, lead to a debate about really fundamental things like free will and multiverses, inflationary theory and quantum computing, the Standard Model, the Higgs Boson, CERN, the LHC, String Theory, the Theory of Everything and… well pretty much from there the entire future of science and humanity in one way or another. It just takes a lot longer to write about things I know and want to be certain about writing correctly than it does to write about things I simply feel to be correct.

Which reminds me. If you want to hear from someone who talks about the same kinds of things as I do but is very strict in his research and quotes and links to everyone and everywhere please read Jumile’s Blog, Hurtling Through Space. He’s a personal friend and he’s very good at writing properly whereas I tend to write or even rant about what I feel. I came to my critical thinking position through thinking critically and I do not believe I need to qualify myself by quoting numerous others. I will do so where I think it is important but in general I will simply ’say what I see’.

Wishing you all a good night.

The contradictory nature of heaven

I mentioned this earlier but I thought that it would bear expanding upon into a whole article.

Is the nature of heaven not just self-contradictory?

Just a really simple example to get you thinking. Jim marries Alice and they love each other dearly. Very sadly Alice dies aged 25 and Jim after overcoming his grief marries Jane, when they are both 28. Jim dies ages 94 and a little later Jane dies aged 96.

Who is together in Heaven? Alice and Jim? Jim and Jane? All three? What kind of age are they as ’spirits’? How do they relate to one another? What happens with ‘rejoining your loved ones’ in heaven? Wouldn’t Alice and Jane be jealous of each other? Perhaps there are two Jims? What if they had a dog that made them much happier than just being together? But dog’s do not have souls so can’t be reincarnated? So if not then wouldn’t God be hurting them by not giving them the dog back? What if JIm lost an arm between losing Alice and marrying Jane? Would he have two arms, or one, or a variable number?

 I challenge any religious person to answer the above adequately to satisfy the wonderings, not of me, but of the merely dubious. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about children who die in childbirth? Do they grow up in heaven or remain as babies? What about infants? Do they learn to walk? What about children with an inquisitive mind? Do they learn cosmology? What about blastocenes? Or Zygotes on their way to fertilisation? Where is the line drawn? Where does life begin and when does ‘being saved’  begin.

• How does the person who never encountered Christianity explain themself to God?
• If the Jews are right how does the Christian escape Hell for Idolatry?
• Never forget that you tell me that God is all-forgiving (except when he condemns me to hell of course).

What will I do if I die and find myself abased before a God? I won’t do anything because he or she will obviously know my heart and he or she will know that I have for the most part acted in good faith for the benefit of the species. But I do not trouble myself with such thoughts. I was dead for many billions of years before I was born and I will be dead for many billions of years afterwards. The universe doesn’t care and it doesn’t bother me that it doesn’t care.

The contradictory nature of God

Christianity is not unique in preaching that Jehovah, or the sky fairy, is all knowing, all present and all powerful – omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent - but I do not know the tenets of the other major faiths as well as I do those of Christianity so I will talk to those ‘powers’ for the content of this blog post.

This may seem utterly trivial but let’s assume that there is a Christian God and that ‘He’ is indeed all of the above. ‘He’ knows everything, ‘He’ can be everywhere and ‘He’ is without bounds in his power. If that is indeed the case then tell me this… why did Judaism need correcting by the invention of Christianity? Surely it required God to make a mistake? Else why create the laws of Judaism in the first place? You can’t argue that the easiest route to a point was via something that was not on a straight line. If God wanted to end up with Christianity then surely ‘He’ would have pointed Adam and Eve on that line? If God really created Adam and Eve with an intention in mind and some thousands of years later changed ‘His’ mind then ‘He’ royally fucked up!

And don’t even go down the route of the serpent in the garden of eden… God KNEW that would happen. Therefore he KNEW he would have to throw them out of the garden. Therefore he KNEW he had created something imperfect!

But because he is omniscient he even knows what his imperfect creation would do. So regardless he could have given a religion to man that would serve him for eternity. He would not need to create Christianity to fix Judaism. He would not need the Christian Church to split into Mormons or Quakers or Billy Grahams or Methodists or Baptists to with slight changes of his original message to satisfy the ‘belief market’. If you can satisfy the belief you can make money from it!

If God was indeed infallible, as we are told, then there would only be one religion. It would be perfect. Everyone would understand that it was perfect and therefore anyone who rejected it would be absolutely righteously delivered into damnation. But the word is not perfect. The bible is not the infallible word of God. It even contradicts itself – just compare the descendancy of Joseph from David in the first verses of the Gospels if you want an example (it’s specifically written in the first verses of two of them although you will have to forgive me for forgetting which two right now). Even consider what the relevance of that is, considering that Joseph was not Jesus’s father!

But today we have a huge number of religions with different messages. None of which can be verified in any way. If you were an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present God… would you make DAMN sure your creations knew who you were and what you wanted? Isn’t it strange that in the supremely unverifiable Old Testamant that God is really interactive; but in the New Testament he’s hands-off and working through an agent; and since AD32 he’s only been seen in pieces of toast and tea bag stains? Isn’t it strange that  God’s appearances lessened as the human condition improved to understand the Universe ? Kind of like a poor magician who’s outdated by high resolution TV’s and high speed cameras!

I could go on all day about this, but let me summarise what I would do differently if I were an all-powerful, all-knowing God:

• I’d make sure everyone knew I existed.
• I’d make sure there was an INFALLIBLE word of God.
• I’d make sure that I didn’t make mistakes, such as the Apple, the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Tower of Babel, the enslavement of my chosen people, the need to revise my laws, though Jesus etc etc.

Actually, let me just sum that up with one thing…

Since I’m omnipotent, I already know the result of everything I can and will ever do – so there’s no point doing it since I can do it as a thought-experiment and derive just as much satisfaction from it. There’d be no universe.

One thing I would most definitely not do?

I would not allow man to sin in oder that I could incarnate [myself]/[my own son] so that I could sacrifice [myself]/[my son] to forgive you for doing things that I let you do in the first place.

HOW FUCKING NUTS WOULD I HAVE TO BE TO DO THAT!?

The Religion 'Club'

It struck me just a minute ago how religion is like a club. Only more so. I was thinking about the vested interest that a congregation member has in their ‘club’. When you as an atheist debate with a religious person you have to be aware that they bring more psychological baggage to the table than you do.

Someone who is a member of a church who hasn’t already begun along the path of enlightenment (oh someone remind me to talk about Gnostic Christianity in the first centuries AD soon!) genuinely believes that they will burn in hell for eternity if they do not believe in God. First and foremost does anyone remember the carrot and the stick? Religion is mostly stick.. BURN, HELL, BURN, DEVIL, BURN! And then there’s this golden carrot… eternal life in heaven.

Except Heaven itself is a very weird idea. Say I lost a leg when I was 10, would I get it back when I entered heaven? Say I was born a quadraplegic, would I get all my limbs back? Say I married and my wife died early so I remarried, would both my wives be waiting for me? Wouldn’t I then be guilty of polygamy in heaven? What if my wives didn’t get on with each other? What if my life was only meaningful and complete with A.N Other but they weren’t a Christian? How could God deny me their presence in heaven?

There is so much I could talk about on the theme that ‘Heaven makes no sense’ but I’ll leave it there to continue with the ‘Church Club’.

The Church is very good at reinforcing identity with a group of people who also attend the same club. At the Methodist club centre I attended we had singing groups, prayer groups, coffee mornings, jumble sales, bring-and-buy sales, creches, childcare, pantomimes (cross-dressing for christians!), coffee groups for each week’s service, choirs, bible study groups, services, Sunday school, church footbal teams, fetes, fairs and on and on…

Every one of these events took place with those others who also attended the church. Your social circle was circled with christian wagons to keep away the Philistine others. No seriously I do not think that at the local level your vicar or minister or priest thinks “Oh one church member wants to make Jam – we better chivy some people into making a Jam club to keep them isolated.” I’m sure that at the local level the majority of the clergy are genuine and just want to help but at the top? I’m absolutely sure that the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury are desperate to keep the contributions to their coffers as high as possible. Just as L. Ron Hubbard was… and let’s quote him here (although not verbatim – you can google him if you want) “I wish I could create a religion – that’s where the real money’s at”. Oh yeah, he’s the creator of Scientology.

So the average member of a congregation that you might meet has so much to lose in listening to Atheist rationalisation… not just their faith, their place in the Universe and eternal life… but perhaps the most important thing to them at all… their social circle and all their friends. So no, it’s no wonder that your average Christian or Jew or Muslim or Scientologist is extremely resistant to your arguments. They are pre-programmed to not believe you and they have everything to lose.

One has to offer them patience…

Morals and Ethics.

Here is one thing that I feel everyoneshould know but very very few people do.

• A Moral choice is a gut instinct.
• An Ethical choice is one that you reason and consider.

Some of the comments I have received on the Blog talk about Morality when in fact they mean Ethics. Your morality is the way you feel instinctively about a situation. Your ethics are the way you feel when you stop and think about a situation. The former can change, but only slowly. It is mostly formed through upbringing and for many people it is a blocker in changing their minds on something they have been ‘brainwashed’ into feeling. The latter can change rapidly and fluidly as a situation evolves if the mind is open to such change.

As a simple example one may think that morally it is wrong to hurt someone but ethically one may decide to hurt another in order to prevent a greater evil.

Religion in general, in the way it is practiced, through constant reinforcement of ideas with scriptural reading and prayer and sermon, attempts to get at our basest instincts and reprogram them to behave in the way that is acceptable to the ‘church’. Secondarily it tries to make us think in ways that makes our Ethical processes respond in the same way. But at ALL times it requires unthinking obedience. In fact it tries very hard to devolve us to creatures of morality and not creatures of ethics.

One of the most joyous things about being a human (let’s ignore for a moment that I do not believe in free-will as most people would consider it) is that you can THINK. You can make your own mind up about something. Religion would actually like to take that away from you. It wants to program you to respond in the accepted way to every stimulus you ever receive. It wants your gut instinct to override your faculties of reason and rationale. But just in case it’ll also blackmail you into preventing any non-accepted rationalisation being acceptable to yourself! After all, you’ll burn in hell forever.

So let’s get this straight once and for all. If you want to talk about instinctive reactions then talk of morality. If you want to talk about rational decision making then talk of ethics. Do NOT confuse the two. Humanism is at its root a morality. Utilitarianism, as I will discuss shortly, can be both. Atheism is a choice born of rationalisation and therefore is an Ethical choice. Once a person reaches a point of Ethical Atheism then they can acheive Moral Atheism but anyone programmed to Moral Atheism cannot be an Ethical Atheist because they have not considered the arguments and made a choice.

I am Ethically an Atheist because I came to this view over many years of considerate thought. I am slowly becoming a Moral Atheist because by living this way by instincts gradually become reprogrammed by my Ethics.

Shall we all be green?

New Scientist published a special edition last month all about the environment but specifically about ‘Sustainability’. It’s all very well adopting things that are ‘Green’ but that is not the same thing as ‘Sustainable’. For example using (corn based) bio-diesel is very green but it is absolutely not sustainable because it takes away crops from other markets pushing up the prices of flour, bread, meat and so on.

There were some interesting articles in it and if you are at all concerned about the environment I would recommend you buy it. I would tell you what the name of the edition is but it’s buried somewhere in the house right now as I’m in a spring-cleaning / about-to-move-out frenzy.

One of the most interesting articles to me personally was about how increased Sustainability is not always dependent upon new technology. One area that currently attracts massive research and investment is in battery capacities. The electric cars that everyone would love to have or at least would love to clam they owned are limited by the range of their batteries. Most can do 100 miles at a stretch. If you can’t get where you need to be and back home again in that distance then your electric car must stay at home while you burn petrol/diesel instead.

Of course there are hybrids but I’ve heard allegations that the batteries in a Toyota Prius create as much pollution in manufacture and disposal as running a purely petrol car would during the same lifetime. I’m sure many of you have heard similar stories. As an aside of course if you run an electric car but your power grid generates most of its electricity from fossil fuels then you have had very little overall impact on the environment anyway before even considering the manufacturing implications.

So back to my point… (I love to get sidelined!) this one chap in the US has come up with a great idea. Rather than spend millions workng out how to make batteries that last 200 miles or 1000 miles or 100,000 miles he is investing in setting up battery-exchange stations at garages all over the US. You can pull up and swap out your discharged battery for a fully charged one for some (hopefully reasonable) fee and the station recharges yours ready for another customer. With a good enough network of these stations and with standard batteries on all electric cars there’s no need to worry about the range on a single battery. With one simple stroke of common sense, one man eliminates the actual need for years and billions of dollars worth of research and makes the electric car genuinely useful. Getting garages and 7-11’s to sign up to it of course is the hard part but at its heart the idea is pure genius.

None of this overcomes the need to stop burning fossil fuels of course if we aim to be sustainable but it is one step along the road. If the central energy grids can switch to wind, solar, nuclear, tidal and geothermal sources and we can all switch to using electricity instead of gas/coal/oil then all CAN be well.

And let’s be clear on one thing… the fossil fuels are NOT running out. There are billions of gallons of it left. There are fields untapped that rival everything that has been drilled or sucked or whatever until now. But we can’t just burn them all and hope to have a sustainable future. We won’t run out of oil to make plastics and lubricants. We won’t run out of gas for our hot-air balloons but we will run out of an environment in which 6 billion people can live if we don’t stop. Actually it’s estimated that the population will exceed 9 billion by 2050. That is an extraordinary growth. Isn’t it about time people stopped having more than 2 kids? I almost feel like China’s 1-child per family policy is actually a good thing!

And here I hit a problem…. I wanted to write a list of things that each of us could do to help sustainability. But, you know what? There’s almost nothing you can do. I’m not kidding either.

• Stopped using plastic bags from the supermarket? No impact. Whether the carbon is in the ground as oil or in the bag as plastic it’s still trapped and a couple more landfills here and there has no affect on sustainability.
• Recycling paper? No effect. All that paper came from renewable sources. Whether you recycle it or not it’s carbon neutral. In fact by recycling it you are creating pollution.
• Bought an electric or hybrid car? No effect. The electricity came from the national grid which is 98% fossil fuel driven.
• Set up a wormery in your back garden? No effect. It’s just landfill you’re saving.

Want to actuallly do something that works? I think you might if you consider all of the above…

• Walk or cycle to work – or at least car-share!
• Take fewer flights.
• Turn off your appliances instead of leaving them in standby modes. Cheaper appliances in particular are very very bad for draining lots of power in standby mode. Cellphone chargers are also notoriously bad for this.
• Petition your MP to support the growth of sustainable energy sources for the power suppliers in your country. Nuclear is the only one which is reliable and you have to realise that if you oppose nuclear power then you shouldn’t even pretend to care. The other sources – wind, solar, tide, geothermal – are fabulous but they’re unreliable and can only complement nuclear.

And these things are marginal but if enough people did them then maybe we’d have a chance…

• Leave the excess packaging on your food IN the supermarket.
• Write to your supermarket and ask them to replace all the plastic packaging with cardboard.

But even if you did do all these things the impact on the environment would be minimal. Whilst collectively throughout our entire lives we do contribute a lot the majority of Carbon Dioxide release comes from industry. And with China stating that they will be increasing the coal consumption by 30% over the next few years nothing you and I can personally do will even balance that out let alone cause a net negative effect.

if you really want to have an impact… petition your MP to tax the heckout of the industries that cause the carbon pollution. Chances are a billion to one against you getting anywhere because the Oil industry owns the governments, but perhaps if 6 billion voices were heard then the few decent politicians might do us all a favour.

Oh here’s a few falllacies to avoid before I get some sleep:

• Double glazing saves money. No. It takes on average 25 years to pay for itself and has an average life of 20 years.
• Solar Panels save money. No. It takes on average (in southern UK) 50 years to pay for itself with an average life of 20 years.
• Insulating your loft to the recommended 27cm depth is expensive. Actually for an average house the cost is only about £500 and it’ll pay for itself in 7-8 years.

I personally think that the way forward requires us as an entire race to rethink our place. The earth is an ecosystem not a resource. We are breaking the balance of that ecosystem. And if we don’t vote in Politicians with the guts to actually do something about it and if we ourselves don’t have the guts to embrace what doing something about it means then we’re all doomed. Well no… the rich will be fine. The race as a whole however will reach a tipping point and billions will die.

So before you have that child, before you buy that excessively wrapped handbag, before you choose one potato over another, before you vote, before you switch off the TV, before you drive to work, before you turn on the air-conditioning… think about sustainability.