Using Me!

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.