DNA quote
A letter from Lola Jones in this morning’s Age has this quote:
We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.
– Douglas Adams, May 2001 (Video)
I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about this, but this is a view I’ve had for a long time.
It comes down to this: the good news is nothing we can do will destroy the planet. It’s just a big rock. It will survive. The bad news is we can do plenty to make it bloody miserable, or even impossible, for us humans to survive.
Passive cooling
I wouldn’t pretend to know a great deal about house design. But obviously it’s more energy efficient to design a building so that as far as possible, in summer it is kept cool by shade (rather than by air-conditioning) and in winter kept warm by the sun (rather than by heating). Apparently this is called passive solar building design.
A friend of a friend lives in a highrise (built late-1990s, I think) where there’s no shade on the north-facing windows, and the air-conditioning needs to be run even on cool days. I can’t imagine what it was like during last week’s heatwave.
In contrast, my house (circa 1930) has eaves over the windows. I can’t quantify how much it helps keep the house cooler (or at least less hot), but this photo of one of the north-facing windows, taken at 3pm on Friday, shows clearly how the eaves keep the sun away.
Recycled tissues are back
I wrote in December that recycled tissues had disappeared from the supermarket shelves.
I did find an email contact for ABC Tissues (who make the Naturale brand) — they told me to expect their recycled tissues back into Woolworths/Safeway stores soon, in a new packaging.
Last week Flerdle commented that they’d been spotted in Brunswick. I still haven’t seen them in my local though.
But yesterday I happened to explore the new Carnegie Central shopping centre, which has a shiny new Woolworths supermarket. (Yes, the changeover from Safeway has officially started. It’s odd though, having a new store so close to the existing Carnegie Safeway, which is still open.)
And they had the tissues in stock.
Mind you in the mean time I’d made an effort to use hankies more than tissues, to help my depleted stocks last a bit longer. I hope/suspect the energy involved in keeping the hankies clean is less than it takes to produce the recycled tissues.
Still, it’s good to have the tissues available again, as I just can’t see the sense in chopping down trees to put my snot on.
Five percent?!
Letter of note in yesterday’s Age:
IT IS interesting to note the objections and opposition to the Government’s climate plan, particularly from more affluent groups and individuals. They see it as up to industry, particularly the power industry, to lower consumption of energy and reduce emissions.
What effort are these people prepared to make to reduce their use of energy and to lower carbon emissions? In fact, what sacrifices are they prepared to make, other than changing light bulbs or installing a more efficient shower head?
It is highly improbable that many would consider markedly reducing their reliance on climate control devices (such as air-conditioning), or even buying a smaller or more efficient car. Have you noticed how many four-wheel-drives there are on the road? Would they be prepared to walk to shops, rather than drive? Of course not! Any and all fault lies solely with others. Certainly not with the mass over-consumption lifestyle and expectations that have become, to a large degree, the entitlements of suburban culture.
Unless and until people are prepared to alter this unsustainable culture, it would appear we are headed towards a dangerous climate, with continual depletion of resources.
Philip Brown, Ormond
Firstly, it’s not just about what I do as an individual. It’s about lots of individuals — as many as possible — the vast majority of the population — doing the right thing, and making sure that the government enables those people to do the right thing. And, significantly, it’s about making sure that profit-driven companies do the right thing too.
I walk and use PT a lot and drive less half the distance than the, um, average Australian. But I’m lucky enough to have easy access to PT for some of my trips. What about all the people who have nothing but an hourly bus service? What about those in suburbs where there are no shops within walking distance? Are these people expected to resign from the human race?
I buy green power and have solar hot water. So do lots of other people. But some people can’t afford it. I can’t figure out why the subsidies which will go to our filthy brown coal power stations don’t just go to buy everybody green power and solar panels.
Secondly, until the government forces the power generators to switch, they’ll keep churning out the emissions, as long as it’s profitable to do so. As The Australia Institute pointed out:
The problem for households keen to ‘do their bit’ to reduce climate change is that if they have shorter showers or put solar panels on their roofs, all they will do is reduce their personal demand for electricity. If less coal is burned to provide households with electricity, the coal-fired power stations won’t need as many permits and they can then sell their ’spare’ permits to the aluminium or steel industries so that these polluters can INCREASE their emissions.
And that really gets at the problem with Mr Brown’s argument.
Sure, he makes a good point about over-consumption (something to remember, especially around this time of year). But you can’t expect everyone (people and companies) to change their behaviour if the right carrots and sticks aren’t applied.
That’s why Rudd’s 5% reduction target is so disappointing. It appears the compensation scheme will be so generous that it won’t actually encourage a move to low-carbon alternatives.
I’m not the first one to draw the analogy between GHG emissions and smoking, but I reckon if a 20-a-day smoker said they would cut down to 19, it would be rightly viewed as having little effect. In that context, cutting back by 5% would make no difference to that person’s health, nor in influencing others to quit.
I suppose I was hoping for more from Kevin ‘07. Shame.
155 litres a day
There’s a bit of fuss about the new water target of 155 litres per person per day.
(It seems particularly fussing were people on talkback radio with big families who couldn’t quite grasp that it’s per person not per household.)
I have an efficient shower head, and generally have sub-4-minute showers, and have a garden that doesn’t need watering — except the shower warmup-time grey-water which goes on the lawn. I don’t know how the nature strip and front lawn stay so green.
The car, naturally, never gets washed, though I occasionally use a little water to remove bird poo. The toilets are both dual-flush, though not particularly new/super-efficient.
Each week the washing machine runs perhaps 5 times; the dishwasher 2-3 times, hand washing the other stuff 2-3 times (though I confess recently I managed to go a full week without handwashing anything).
The result?
According to my last water bill, our household sits at 207 litres per day. Domestic arrangements mean there are 13 “person nights” spent in the house per week, so unless my maths is askew, that’s 111.5 litres per person per day. And that’s almost without even trying.
So a target of 155 per person per day? No big issue… at least, not for me. Though I’m sure it’s harder for households with thirsty gardens and where lots of people are at home all day.
CO2 isn’t so bad
A full-page advert for the coal industry in The Age caught my eye the other day. I just love this bit (quoted here from their web site):
Carbon dioxide in our daily lives
Carbon dioxide itself is not a danger in our everyday lives. In fact, all life on the planet depends on carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also used in many everyday activities. For example, carbon dioxide is used:
- for the bubbles in your beer or soft drink
- to decaffeinate coffee
- in fire extinguishers
- to make ‘dry ice’
- to create the ‘fog’ effect in concerts, theatres and on movie sets
- in welding, sandblasting and construction
- to make flavour additives for food
- as a propellant in aerosol cans
Next time you drink a beer or soft drink, remember that the bubbles came from a natural underground source of carbon dioxide. Geosequestration is the same process, just in reverse.
See? CO2 isn’t so bad. More CO2 for everybody!
Of course they don’t literally claim CO2 is good, or that climate change doesn’t exist. No no, that would flag them as skeptics. But they are trying to flag themselves as good guys. They’re trying to flag themselves as 21st century (”New Gen Coal“) rather than a polluting dinosaur industry from the 19th.
And they’re trying to claim that clean coal is the answer… Of course clean coal, when it all comes down to it, isn’t actually developed enough yet to be viable — and may never be.
Next thing you know they’ll be making TV adverts like this:
(Yeah, I’ve posted that video before. It’s still great.)
Own your own wind turbine
I’ve been wondering about this for a while: if the government won’t fund wind power, is it possible to invest in it privately? I may not be able to buy my own personal windfarm, but could I buy a share in one?
Yes I can. Thanks to a story on AM this morning, I found this: Hepburn Wind, who have issued a prospectus for shares (minimum $1000) in a ~$10 million windfarm project that will power 2000 homes.
Excellent. I’ll seriously consider investing.
Cap and trade
Here’s how I’d work carbon trading if I were appointed Grand Emperor of the World, based on my ten minute assessment of the situation.
I’d set an emissions cap on the world, starting in say 2010, based on the total emissions output of the world as of 2009. Each country gets a share of this, not based on their current emissions, but based on how many people they have.
The countries can trade. So the rich and polluting but under-populated countries (like Australia, 9th per capita) would have to pay to buy the right to pollute up to the levels they’re actually doing. The poor countries with a lower per-capita output would get an income stream, and can continue to industrialise if they want, up to their cap, but they’d have to stop things like deforestation (which is what’s pushing PNG and Zambia and other poor countries into the big league at the moment). Countries like China are painted as the bad boys, but per capita they’re currently well below the average. India is way below.
Polluting industries would be forced to adapt or die. For a little while they could buy their right to pollute…
Measurable, confirmed offsets could be used, but they won’t help for long, because most of them aren’t very scalable, and…
Every year, the cap would reduce by 2%. So get a move on reducing your emissions. The faster you do it, the more you can trade to someone else for moula.
So by 2060 the world would be carbon neutral.
That’s my plan. Go ahead, poke holes in it. I don’t care — I’ll never actually be Grand Emperor of the World.
