John's Weird World

This week sees a mass action at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent, where the old power station is due to be replaced by a new coal-fired power station.  There had been talk of putting experimental 'Carbon Capture and Storage' technology into this development, but not enough money has been invested to know whether it works, so it looks likely that a new dirty electricity generator may be built.

I am very pleased to see Community Care magazine discussing the increasing costs for social workers of driving their car, and advocating alternatives (Running on Empty, p. 14, 10th July) and using my column ('Walk this Way', p. 34) on walking and cycling the same week.  Transport is a big part of our carbon footprint and if we can reduce car use and replace with public transport, bike or even occasionally work from home and teleconference that all helps reduce the fossil fuels used and the pollution we are responsible for.

However, there is sometimes a need to carry items which wouldn't initially seem to be easily taken by bike, but these days there are many ways to shift bulky stuff by bike.  I have a pair of Ortlieb panniers called 'Back-Roller Plus' which are waterproof and hold my laptop or childrens' rucsacks with ease.  These attach to my rear rack, which can also be used to strap things onto... I use elastic 'bungees' which can be sourced at motoring or cycling shops.  On my travels I often find bungees which have not been adequately fixed onto the vehicle and they've fallen off.... I pick them up and reuse them.  My tip for not losing them is to put them on carefully and when you've cycled for 10 minutes or so, just check them.  Sometimes things settle once you've got going and the bungees need to be re-fixed more tightly so they don't fall off... to be found by another re-user!

For bigger bulkier items including small people and pets, there are trailers. There are so many makes and styles of trailer... and mine was built specially for me to enable me to carry my circus equipment around, so as 'Professor Fiddlesticks'  I can travel around by bike with full circus party stuff in tow... But a good make is a BOB Yak as it only has one wheel and is quite narrow to get down the lines of traffic jams!   But Google 'bike trailers' and be amazed by the different sorts, or visit your local retailer and ask them what they have available.

Most people think that there are too many cars on the road, including many drivers, who, as drivers, are part of the problem.  So are there any solutions?  Well public transport, road tolls, home working and supermarket deliveries may all be part of a solution, but there is another way in which the number of cars could be (slightly) reduced.  This is the car-club/car sharing concept.

What will you do when there's less oil?  How will you or your children live?  How will your community cope?  Life won't just stop when the price of oil reaches a certain point, and that figure, that 'line in the sand' won't be the most expensive this raw material will be.  Expect oil to keep getting more expensive, and everything which uses it or the energy it provides.  Factor in climate change, and the uncertainties in these scenarios, and the future is looking somewhat tough, for some: bleak.

But for some people, it looks like a challenge, a series of opportunities for humanity to evolve and progress.  A grassroots movement is underway called Transition Towns, and as many of these aren't actually towns, they're districts, cities, islands and even forests, the label may be better known as 'Transition Initiatives'.  These communities are preparing for the double whammy of post-peak oil and climate chaos by going local, 'powering down', generating renewable energy and strengthening community links.

There are already many activities, groups and initiatives which are in their own way working towards a transition towards a post-oil world.  Groups as diverse as cycling campaigns, allotment societies, 'breast is best' groups, ban plastic bag activists and those brave     climate camp people all know that we cannot go on with 'business as usual'.  We have to prepare, to start building resiliance to cope with what's coming. 

York has just started developing a 'York in Transition' process.  I couldn't get to the first meeting as I was talking to members of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health about the same issues of too much carbon dioxide being emitted and some of the solutions, but I attended the second meeting this week.  I am one of the optomists who sees the opportunities and challenges we have to rise to, I'm not the 'it's too big to deal with, I'll be dead soon, let's go down the pub to seek oblivion' type!

More often we are hearing various terms bandied around in the media and some of them are not self-explanitory... one of these is 'Peak Oil'.  So last week I attended a York Greenspeak meeting which was all about this fascinating and very current subject.  I knew a bit about the theory that oil reserves are about half finished, but less about how this will affect us economically and socially.

Peak oil was suggested by Shell geologist Dr Marion King Hubbert in 1956 as he had worked out that the discovery and extraction of oil would follow a 'bell curve' distribution.  He accurately predicted peak US oil production (1970) and that world oil production would be somewhere about now, ie that we may be about to start the long period of reduced oil extraction.  Peak world oil discovery was 1964, which means that although there is probably more oil to be discovered, it isn't the 'easy to get' stuff and it will be smaller quantities, and more expensive to get out.  Meanwhile, world oil use continues to rise, as developing countries continue to develop and human populations continue to grow.  Published world oil reserves suggest that peak oil will be about 2030, but recently Shell has drastically reduced their reserve figures, suggesting that oil companies may have overstated their reserves (to boost confidence and share prices?).

So, we are heading for a situation with less available mineral oil, and this will affect us in a number of ways.  Firstly, scarcity drives prices up.  We are already experiencing this.  When the price of a barrel of oil goes up, it becomes more economically viable to extract oil out of 'unconventional' sources such as tar sands and oil shales, but these require more energy to get the oil out, so the price won't go down again.  Higher prices also mean that investment into alternatives such as hydrogen, biofuels, coal liquifaction and nuclear will go up.  But all of these alternatives have problems and knock-on issues... biofuels for instance are competing for finite arable land for food and biodiversity, the hydrogen economy depends on either electricity to split water or fossil gas to provide the hydrogen, and coal and gas both add carbon dioxide to the overloaded atmosphere.  The two greenest solutions to the coming energy crisis are energy efficiency and renewables from wind, sun, tides and hydro.

So how do we 'ordinary people' deal with this knowledge?  Well it would be responsible and prudent to reduce our energy use, by driving less and in smaller more efficient vehicles, by reducing energy use in the home by insulating, having more efficient appliances and switching them off when not in use, by reducing meat and dairy in our diets, by buying less and recycling more, by buying locally and in season... you know the score by now!  Unfortunately, we all know what we SHOULD do but are finding it very difficult to change.

From October 2008 all public buildings over a certain size will be required to display an Energy Performance Certificate, which will be in the form of an A-G rating similar to a new fridge or car.  Buildings use about 50% of our energy in this country and therefore if they are made to be more efficient, we are going to get big savings of carbon emissions AND money from our fuel and energy bills.  EPCs are also part of the Home Information Pack which house sellers have to provide, but only public buildings over 1000m2 have to display the Certificate, although smaller buildings can voluntarily do so.

This regulation has been brought in because of the EC's Energy Performance Directive, responding to the needs of climate change and reducing our carbon footprint.  The assessment of your building has to be by an accredited assessor, who will look at the fabric of the building, the ventilation, lighting, heating, cooling, hot water and fuel/s used, plus any other mechanical or electrical systems, to see if they are running efficiently.  These details will be inputted into a software programme and the energy efficiency rating will be calculated.  The person in control of the building will be provided with reccommendations and advice, especially for the air conditioning and boiler systems.  Displaying the certificate shows visitors to your building how energy efficient it is, and if you have an efficient building or work towards making it more efficient, you will be showing 'corporate social responsibility' AND saving money!  You can download the pdf guide to this here, and learn more about EPCs generally here.

Ways in which you can make your building more energy efficient are many, but start with how they are used by the people within them, such as turning off monitors and printers at night, and turning off lights when the room's not being used, only heating the required amount of water in a kettle etc etc... the same type of energy-saving behaviour we should be doing at home.  At work, though, we may have motion sensors which switch lights on when we come into a room (and off when there's been no movement for a few minutes), and time switches which turn computers off after the office has shut.  These measures are good investments as we cannot rely on individuals to always do the right thing!  However the fabric of the building is very important too, external wall insulation, cavity wall insulation, internal wall insulation, roof-space insulation, double or triple glazing, draughtproofing... these all help conserve heat and reduce waste.  Replacing old lightbulbs with compact fluorescents or LEDs also reduces your bills, although like many measures may have a high initial cost which is recouped over several years.  Old, inefficient heating systems can be replaced...and these days, there are some interesting low-carbon options including heat pumps (more on these in a future blog) and biomass boilers, as well as 'traditional' gas or oil heating, but more efficient than older models.  With energy prices going relentlessly up (and there is no hope of them going down folks), these technologies are looking increasingly viable and cost effective.

This week in Community Care magazine I have a column about Britain's favourite hobby, gardening. An essential part of any garden is making compost, and this is my favourite pastime, so much so that my wife says I have 'OCD', Obsessive Composting Disorder'.  I've been obsessed by it and related subjects since childhood... I used to put food items in glass jars and watch the various bacteria and moulds develop over days and weeks, and I've always liked mushrooms and creepy crawlies.  Since coming out as a 'green' in my early 20's I've known that home composting is the best way to recycle all of the stuff which goes smelly in your dustbin, to save energy with reduced bin-lorry weight, to reduce landfill space, to reduce pollution from landfills, to help biodiversity by creating habitat and food, to help trap carbon in soils, to help fertilise soils to grow healthier plants, to reduce the need for peat which should stay in peat bogs, to reduce the need for fertilisers which use fossil fuels in their manufacture, to help reduce rainwater evapotation from soils and not need irrigation.... I could go on and frequently do.  I even did my dissertation on composting!

So, armed with all those reasons to have a home compost heap or wormery, here's my 'short guide'.  Good compost needs three things, the right mix of materials, the right amount of air and the right amount of moisture.  That's all.  Get those right and biodegredation WILL happen!  Biodegradable materials are any which have come from living things recently, any plant materials or animal materials and their products.  There are a few exceptions, including rubber which has been vulcanised with sulphur (tyres and inner tubes don't rot, although natural latex rubber like balloons and marigold gloves do, eventually) and some plastics made from oil now have an additive which allows them to 'oxo-biodegrade'.  Rotting is the natural breakdown of complex materials into simpler ones (water, carbon dioxide, humus) by the action of bacteria, fungi, and other organisms such as worms.  I find the whole process almost magical!

As home composting is so beneficial and saves the local authority lots of money in landfill charges, most councils are subsidising compost bins, many with WRAP as their partner, and this website also has a good section on composting, one of many guides available.  So get a cheap compost bin, or make an enclosure using pallets, or just have an untidy pile in one corner of your garden.  Throw on a mixture of green/sappy/moist/'nitrogen rich' materials and brown/dry/'carbon rich' materials and wait.  Rainwater will help keep it moist, the browns will help it keep aerated, and turning it over and mixing it will help speed the process.  Your compost is finished when the materials look nothing like what you put in... it ia a brown, crumbly soil-like material.  This can be 'top-dressed' on soil to suppress weeds and conserve moisture as a mulch, or riddled and used to add to potting composts; I mix it with leafmold and loam to grow my tomatoes and cucumbers.

Many websites and books advise on not composting cooked food, meat etc, but this is just because rodents find these foods even more delicious and may find their way into heaps containing them.  It is possible though to make your heap rodent proof, or to process these materials using Bokashi or a wormery so they can be recycled too. Search the web for many suppliers of composting products, or for designs for home-made versions.

Last week, researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that Carbon Dioxide levels had hit a new record high, of 387 parts per million (ppm), as measured by their research outpost in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.  This may not mean a lot to people less obsessed by CO2 levels than me, but it is significant, since the NOAA people say that the rate of accumulation is increasing, and is over 2ppm greater each year.  This is the highest CO2 concentration for 650,000 years, a level that humans have never experienced before.  This means that in just 6 or 7 years, the level will rise to 400ppm, a theoretical 'line in the sand' over which many scientists think that our climate will descend into chaos and become much more unpredictable and violent.

A good way to eat at least your 'five a day' portions of fruit and vegetables is to have some of them dried... it's also an excellent way to preserve certain vegetables and fruit if you have a glut or manage to get a job-lot of cheap items or 'buy one get one free' deals. Dried food doesn't have as much 'goodness' as fresh, as some vitamins are lost, so I am not suggesting substituting dried fruit for fresh, but having some can be an enjoyable change or an addition. I mainly eat my dried fruit in my home-made muesli, but my children, who haven't graduated to muesli, have dried fruit instead of sweets (they have some sweeties too!)

Many people now understand the concept of embodied energy, ie the amout of fuel resources it has taken to make or grow something and to get it to the consumer. However, the concept of embodied water is just becoming known. This may be called 'virtual' or 'embedded' water and it is the amount of fresh water used to grow or manufacture something. Water is just as important to us as fuel and energy, if not more so, and to understand our true use of this much under-rated resource can help us behave more ethically.

On Saturday 29th March an event which started in Sydney, Austraila in 2007 became an international movement. It was called Earth Hour and the idea was to switch off any unnecessary electrical items for just one hour... to help spread the message about conserving energy to reduce the effects of climate change.

Regular readers will know that I won a competition by Oxfam to find three supporters who had a small carbon footprint.. the prize being a trip to Westminster (John's Weird World 9/3/08). I have now had time to digest my visit and wonder if it would have had any positive outcome.

On Saturday I spoke at a Carbon Reduction Action Group meeting in York about carbon offsetting. We'd tried to engage a carbon offsetter to speak... and failed.... so we drew lots and I got the short straw and had to present the pro-offsetting perspective. This also meant I had to explain what carbon offsetting actually is.

A few weeks ago I was on the Carbon Rationing Action Groups website and up popped a message saying "use your tiny carbon footprint to get into the corridors of power". Curious, I clicked on the link, and arrived at the Oxfam website. They had a competition to find three people with small carbon footprints, and these people would be invited to meet Hilary Benn and his shadow counterparts Peter Ainsworth and Steve Webb at Westminster. To enter the competition, I had to do the Government's Carbon Calculator 'Act On CO2'. I had filled in a few other carbon calculators before but not the 'official government CO2 calculator' so I was pleased to give it a go. It was easy and fun, and came up with a household footprint of 1.8 tonnes, and then I realised I had to submit an individual footprint so I re-did it and it came to 0.46 tonnes/year. This only covers home energy, heating and transport, so the average UK citizen's score would be about 6 tonnes.

I was reminded by the Community Editor of Community Care that the most popular blogs are those which refer to the working practices and concerns of social workers, and this seemed to fit in well with an email I got from one of York's Green Councillors about 'e-democracy' and online participation. I wondered if this subject would resonate with social workers employed by local authorities?

I do not celebrate or do anything special for St. Valentine's Day. I do remember sending and receiving Valentine's cards when a teenager but since I've been married, and have been aiming to consume as little as possible, it just looks like another way for big business to make money, often at the expense of the environment. However this year I have been approached by a friend doing a media studies degree who wants to interview me about my views or experiences of the day, so as it approaches, I have been unusually aware of all the advertising and activity connected with it, confirming my cynical view.

Recently we've been bombarded with messages about obesity, how any processed meat can increase our cancer risk, food miles and carbon footprints, and there's so many cookery programmes on the box.

So, we can deduce that food, especially your 'five-a-day fruit and veg' is important! Now is the time of year when we can invest a little bit of time and money on getting some really good, fresh, local vegetables later in the year. It's time to plant some seeds and fruit trees or bushes, if you have space.

Well, 2007 turned out to be an interesting year for me, as the world really seemed to be catching up with what I've been going on about for 20 or more years. This was reflected in my getting this blog and column... even social workers are being urged to 'go green' now!

Some of us are aiming to have a green and cruelty-free Christmas and will not be cooking a turkey or any other bird to eat on the big day. Others may be happy to follow tradition but may have guests or family members who are vegetarian or vegan.

The weather's getting colder as we descend into winter. The central heating's being turned on, the electric blanket is being installed in the bed, or hot-water-bottles dug out of the airing cupboard. Some people are lucky enough to have a flue and hearth, and are lighting their open fires. Nice though the effect of an open fire is, they are incredibly inefficient.

According to The Energy Saving Trust, we take more notice of our peers than of 'experts'. Now I am considered an expert, so you may not take much notice of me, but if YOU start a conversation about climate change, for instance, your work colleagues, family and neighbours are likely to be influenced. You are a powerful person. A report by Wildfire called 'The Power Of One says so, so it must be true, as they're experts...........

I took part in Live Earth on Saturday. I helped raise funds and awareness with my circus show, all in the name of global and local sustainable development. Yes really!!!

If we look at the long list of 'green' improvements we are being told we should make to our lives, there is really only one which has an immediate cost and environmental benefit. This is energy saving, or not wasting expensive fuel. It makes no sense to heat your home and to have lots of that warmth leave through your roof, walls and windows. So it makes sound economic sense to insulate your loft, fill wall cavities (if you have them, there are grants available) and replace old windows with double or triple glazed units. Oh, and draughtproof that door too! This will reduce your bills and carbon footprint, as you'll be able to put your thermostat down by that magic one degree....