Best way to save the planet.

From The Guardian:

Author JB MacKinnon... thinks we should, in reality, restructure society over several years to support a sustained reduction in the amount we consume.

He sees this as an obvious, if difficult, fix to a big problem. Consumption – of fast fashion, flights, Black Friday-discounted gadgets – has become the primary driver of ecological crisis.

We are devouring the planet’s resources at a rate 1.7 times faster than it can regenerate. The US population is 60% larger than it was in 1970, but consumer spending is up 400% (adjusted for inflation) – and other rich nations, including the UK, aren’t much better.

“Many people would like to see the world consume fewer resources, yet we constantly avoid the most obvious means of achieving that,” says MacKinnon. “When people buy less stuff, you get immediate drops in emissions*, resource consumption and pollution, unlike anything we’ve achieved with green technology.”

That’s not to mention the impact materialism has on our mental health, inducing feelings of inadequacy and envy, and encouraging a culture of overworking.

As somebody who is chronically lazy, unambitious and happy with the simple pleasures in life, that's music to my ears. If I never have to get on an aeroplane, buy another car or call in a builder ever again, that will be quite soon enough.

Problem is, if everybody were like me, society would more or less grind to a halt (which is what The Guardian wants, of course). And I am aware that I am coasting on the efforts of others - I can only buy a cheap second hand car today because some mug bought an expensive new car twenty years ago and upgraded a couple of years later.

* CO2 emissions themselves have little impact on anything of course. But for some reason people have become obsessed with this one metric and are ignoring all the really bad stuff we are doing to the environment.

"Twenty fags a day no worse than city living"

From The Metro:

SMOKING a packet of cigarettes a day is no worse for the health than air pollution that city dwellers are exposed to, a shock report warns.

Breathing in fumes from traffic, planes, power plants and industry on a long-term, regular basis is causing growing numbers of urban non-smokers to develop chronic lung disease, experts say.

29 years of puffing on 20 cigarettes daily was found to do no more damage than just a decade of city living...

A government spokesperson said last night: ‘We might have been exaggerating the dangers of smoking a bit recently, which is why we will be easing off on the smokers and meddling elsewhere instead.’

Please sir, may we have some more?

From City AM:

Taxi drivers have slammed plans to close off key locations in the City of London to traffic during the summer, saying they amount to a “PR gimmick”.

Key City hotspots, including St Mary Axe and Chancery Lane, will be closed for days in August and September to allow workers to enjoy traffic-free lunch breaks, the City of London Corporation announced today.

Yes, it is a bit of a gimmick, but let them try it.

People might prefer it or they might hate it. Some businesses will benefit, others will lose out. There's only one way to find out.

Here's the fun bit:

Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said:

“While the taxi trade agrees strongly with the need to tackle London’s toxic air, one off stunts like car-free days won’t do much to cut pollution in the long-term.

“Instead of PR gimmicks, the City of London Corporation should make a real contribution to improving air quality by installing more rapid charge points for the 2000 London cabbies who are out picking up passengers in zero emissions capable taxis.

"There are currently only two rapid charge points available to cabbies within the richest Square Mile in the world. This is totally absurd and we need to see many more installed to encourage more cabbies to make the switch to electric.”

The cabbies much prefer the carrot to the stick, especially if somebody else is paying for the carrot.

"Don’t ban plastics – ban littering"

A very sensible article in City AM.

Another Monumentally Stupid Idea

Here we go again.

Why will these people never learn that in every case all these scrappage subsidy schemes simply pass straight through the hands of the 'consumer' into the hands of whatever producer is at the end of the chain.

In this case a secondary effect is to reduce the supply of used cars hence forcing up prices.  Which would also deal with the possible low resale values of all those cars on PCP schemes landing on the balance sheets of the car companies.

Oh, hang on a minute.  Yes.  Silly me.

(There was another article on the DT website about this today, but I can't find it now).

Doesn't that just cause more pollution somewhere else?

From The Daily Mail:

Oxford Street will be pedestrianised by 2020, the Mayor of London's office has announced.

The plan is part of new mayor Sadiq Khan's commitment to tackle air pollution in the England's capital city.

Cars are already banned on most of Oxford Street between 7am and 7pm on every day apart from Sunday, but it is a major thoroughfare for buses and taxis.

I'm a big fan of pedestrian precincts and it's quicker walking or taking the Tube than taking the 'bus in central London anywyay, but assuming that buses are currently taking the shortest/least slow route from A to B via Oxford St, won't diverting them via a different route just cause more air pollution, not less? So is this just a meaningless political gesture or does it actually make sense?

New-builds blamed for blighting air quality ...

So BBC Scotland reports the findings of an interesting academic study into domestic air pollution:

Specialists at the school's Mackintosh Environmental Research Unit (MEARU) said modern homes were being built to be airtight. 

This causes a build-up of harmful chemicals and moisture if householders do not open windows or vents. 

The unit has made a series of recommendations to reduce pollutants. Prof Tim Sharpe, head of the MEARU, said: "Poor indoor air quality, particularly in bedrooms, is hard for people to detect. 

"There are clear links between poor ventilation and ill-health so people need to be aware of the build up of CO2 and other pollutants in their homes and their potential impact on health." 

The MEARU conducted a survey of 200 homes which were constructed to modern, airtight standards. It found that most householders kept trickle vents closed, and bedroom windows closed at night.

But a cursory glance at the Energy Saving Trust website suggests one man's 'ventilation' is another man's 'draught':

Unless your home is very new, you will lose some heat through draughts around doors and windows, gaps around the floor, or through the chimney. 

Professional draught-proofing of windows, doors and blocking cracks in floors and skirting boards can cost around £200, but can save up to £25 to £35 a year on energy bills. DIY draught proofing can be much cheaper. Installing a chimney draught excluder could save between £20 and £25 a year as well.

With the north winds blowing blizzards well into the back end of April this seemed quite topical.

Lead poisoning

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that global crime levels have continued to fall.

There is a fascinating theory that this has to do with the amount of lead pollution, so crime levels rose markedly between the 1940s and 1970s when more and more people were driving cars with leaded petrol, then most countries started phasing in lead-free petrol, and once the last babies born during the leaded era had passed the prime age for turning to a life of crime (between 15 and 20), crime levels started falling in the 1990s and continue to fall to this day.

It might be complete hokum or coincidence, or it might actually be true, who knows?

Read up at The Telegraph or The Guardian according to political taste.

Rather amusingly, the man who originally suggested putting lead in petrol (strictly speaking, tetraethyl lead) to make the engine run more smoothly was also the man who developed chloro-fluourocarbons (CFC gases), a one Mr Thomas Midgely, Jr.

UPDATE. BobE alerts us to other links between lead and crime: for example Britain's most prolific church lead theft gang jailed or Lithuanian gang who ran Britain's most prolific church lead thefts jailed.

Aaargh! We're all going to die...

... six months earlier than we would have done, thanks to nitrogen pollution. Seeing as life expectancy is steadily increasing, by at least one year for every decade, all I can say is "We fixed that five years ago."

Particularly chucklesome is the notion of nitrogen pollution 'costing the EU £280 billion'. The EU is a few thousand bureaucrats, lobbyists and politicians, so do they seriously mean that it costs each of these people several million pounds?

The whole article continues in the same vein, for example:

"The report says more careful application of fertiliser will benefit farmers by saving money. It will benefit the climate by avoiding the energy used to create the fertiliser."

I'm sure if farmers can save money by using the bare minimum of fertiliser, then they are probably already doing so. And so on and so forth.

"Pollution is the solution: Official"

Well, according to the BBC at least:

Since the 1970s, European temperatures have risen by about half-a-degree Celsius per decade. This warming rate is faster than the global mean change (roughly equal to 0.18C per decade) and the trend averaged over all the Earth's land (roughly equal to 0.27C per decade) during the same period.

The regional climate models used by scientists have failed to simulate the European experience, say Vautard and colleagues; and they point to legislation that has cleaned up Europe's air as the probable cause.

This has limited the presence of the tiny particles, or aerosols, in the atmosphere which help trigger the low-visibility phenomena. With fewer fogs, mists and haze, more of the Sun's energy has been reaching the surface, leading to a rise a rise in temperatures, they tell Nature Geoscience.

The team's analysis suggests the clearer air's contribution to the background warming trend may have been about 10-20% across Europe as a whole; and in Eastern Europe specifically, it may have been as much as 50%.

*sigh*

It seems I shall have to abandon my narrow prejudices that cleaner air, better visibility for drivers and a balmier climate are Good Things.

*/sigh*

"MPs sceptical over car tax rise"

A ray of hope?

Nope.

Rather bizarre to find myself agreeing with ex-Minister Peter Kilfoyle (Lab, Liverpool Walton). There's more logic and commonsense in this single comment than in all the blathering from the politicians: "How can it affect people's choices that they made years ago? Trade in their car for an eco noddy car? How can they afford it as the second hand value of their current car has plummeted? Mark Ovens, Wilts"

And what the f*** is this: "A "car scrappage" scheme to pay drivers of high emission cars to switch to a more environmentally friendly model was also advocated - an idea welcomed by Friends of the Earth"?

Obnoxio points out the fatal flaw in this logic.

"Map shows toll on world's oceans"

From the BBC's science department, another totally fact-free article.

'Impact'? 'Threat? 'Toll'? You have to quantify these things, then try to explain them and then run experiments (or at least find fair comparatives) to see if the explanation is the correct one and so on, that's what science is about!

On an even less serious note, this map suggests to me that land has no effect on the oceans, and as we all live on land, we can't be having any impact, can we? Natch.


Oh yes, and it is quite possibly true that there are less fish in The North Sea than a decade or two ago, that's down to the bloody EU, and is easily fixed.