John's Weird World

This week, 16th to 22nd September, is European Mobility Week and on Monday 22nd, many areas will have a Car Free Day, aka 'In Town Without My Car' which is co-ordinated by the Department for Transport, funnily enough. But why do I think that's odd?  Thinking about it, this Government department is as aware as anyone is that we have too many cars on the road, emitting far too much pollution, killing and injuring too many people, and that these issues add up to a big problem.  So they are right to be in the forefront of trying to encourage us to use a different mode of transport. Car Free Day is not just about using a different mode of transport, it's asking the question, what we actually want to use our streets for?  Are they all just for the fastest throughput of traffic, or should at least some of them be spaces where we can socialise, enjoy art or street performance, shop or have some peace and quiet? Want to find your local Car Free Day? Try this funky website from the European Mobility Week.

You may remember seeing the Climate Camp in the media this year, where protestors and campaigners gathered near Kingsnorth Coal-Fired Power Station in Kent during the first week of August. One of the aims of the camp was to draw attention to the situation that faces humanity if we continue to burn coal unabated.. like E ON would like to do, by building another power station at the site to replace the old one.  The proposed new electricity generator would emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, with no 'carbon capture and storage' technology installed.  To many of us, behaviour like this is just criminal and exceedingly foolish.

A greener life is not just about recycling, using public transport, buying fair-trade and having a pot of basil on the windowsill.  I place quite a lot of importance on creativity, health and a well-stimulated mind. Therefore I have a lot of time for art... I especially like looking at (and touching!) sculpture, and there are certain photographers I like too.

Last Sunday was the second York Green Festival, and I am pleased to say that all our hard work paid off and it went really well.  I may now have more time to get back to my regular weekly blog which has suffered slightly over the summer...  Now, one of the most popular  places at YGF08 was the clothes swapping tent.  One of the volunteer organisers, Sarah, had got some of her friends to donate some outfits, tops, blouses, leggings, hats, unidentifiable garments etc and create a 'bank' of clothes.  Festival goers brought their own unwanted but re-usable garments and added them to the ones hanging up... and took away something which appealed, something new to them..... all completely for free!  What a good idea!  If I was more into clothes, I'd say it was brilliant, but I'm a bloke so it remains just a good idea.

Books per se are not that green.  They use lots of resources in their manufacture, are printed in one place and have to be carted all over the place and are heavy.  Most are only read once and then sit in a bookshelf... OK, bookshelves are a way of sequestering carbon, but really we should share our books and use libraries more... but I am going to suggest you go and buy a good book. (And when you've read it, lend it to friends!)

I am very fond of Kate Lock, whom I first came accross as a columnist in the York Press, and soon met as she was having some problems with her compost and she asked a volunteer York Rotter to come and sort it out.  It turned out that she was on some kind of mission to be greener and that my assisting her meant that I would appear in the book she was crafting.  That book is now on sale and I have spent a good few hours of my holiday immersed in it..   'Confessions of an Eco-Shopper, the true story of one woman's mission to go green' (ISBN 978 0340 954676, Hodder & Stoughton 2008) is an excellent read, with everyday challenges such as having a veggie-box delivery and wondering what to do with unknown veg,  growing her own herbs and salads, ethical fish suppers, dispensing with the bleach and using vinegar instead, experimenting with 'green and reusable' sanitary protection, finding out if fair-trade tastes as good as 'ordinary' teas and coffees.  Kate put a lot of effort into researching the book, trialling all-sorts of products and lifestyle changes.  Of course my favourite 'Isle' (its arranged like a supermarket!) is the one on rubbish and recycling, where we follow her path from non-composter to happy and successful rotter, even trying out a wormery and 'Bokashi' to recycle her cooked and meaty foodstuff wastes.

I read the book cover to cover, and learned a lot.  It is really good to read a female approach to living a greener life... so many commentators are male, and they tend not to write about clothes, cosmetics or sanitary-wear.  So I am going to shamelessly plunder some of these topics for future blog posts.  Although Kate thanks me for helping her with her composting, I'm sure she will see this as a 'fair swap'!

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.

What this planet and its supportive ecosystems need is for people in developed countries to change their current consumerist fossil-fuel-hungry ways and move swiftly towards a low carbon economy. But many people need a trigger to initiate that change and take action.  People also easily find arguments to not take any action or just small easy ones.

One of the arguments I hear most often against the West cutting their own carbon emissions is the growth of emissions in China and other developing countries.  But about a third of China's emissions are directly attributable to exports... so these should really be counted as the importer's emissions.  To see the size of these exports and where they are going to, I suggest using the services of Worldmapper, who produce distorted and morphed world maps based on many different variables.  For example, look at World toy exports, and you'll see that China and the Far East are by far the biggest producers.  Then flick to toy imports, and Noth America and Europe are the biggest consumers.  If we consumers want to help cut global carbon emissions, we need to buy less stuff overall, and especially imported stuff which has it's own shipping and airfreight footprints.

I find these maps fascinating, as it gives us a whole new perspective on the world.  One of my early triggers which changed my life for the greener was travelling around Zimbabwe in 1990. I saw the inequalities first hand; the poverty, pollution, misgovenance, differing values about human life, and other hugely positive differences such as generosity, the importance of celebration and music, creativity and much more.  Travelling to a developing country might be one way of understanding some of the problems the World has, but it has it's downside too, mainly air travel, so my second best bet is to watch documentaries, read books and magazines and visit websites. 

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.

There's a lot of subjects I could be writing about this week... the upward spiral of fuel prices (don't expect them to ever come down again), the latest famine in Ethiopia partly caused by high food prices... but I want to alert you to something very positive.  I have discovered that a new 'Facebook for the Mental Health Community' has just been launched, and I have interviewed the developer, Richard Alan Cowling.  He's from Scarborough, North Yorkshire, which is where MESOMOCO CIC is based.

NET.MESOMOCO CIC stands for Network Mental Health Social Enterprise Mobile Computing Community Interest Company. It is a free web-based social network for individuals involved in mental health, including service users, carers of mental distress sufferers and those who have experience of mental health issues.  Users of the network are able to connect with others with similar experiences, find resources and support, use fora, blogs, community groups and the mental health wiki and keep track of upcoming events such as conferences.  The MESOMOCO CIC is a 'gated community' to reduce the chance of spam or abuse, and moderated to strengthen users privacy.  To join, send an email to the team  who will reply with instructions.

The Community Interest Company plans to raise funds a number of ways, including the development of a comic-book type game suitable for mobile phone users, and hopes to help a small group of mental health service users and ex-users by enabling them to develop computer skills (based on 'Jamie Oliver's 15' apparently!) and add to their CV's and help their employability.  All in all this is a very interesting concept, with potentially beneficial results for those wishing to network and communicate about their mental health issues.  I wish Richard the best of luck and hope that the scheme is successful.

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.

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.

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?

When the Co-op shop round the corner put up a 'Mosquito' device a while ago, I was quite pleased. Firstly, I could not hear it... being over 40, I'm well past the age of being able to hear the high-pitched siren, and secondly, it meant that I wasn't being asked by teenagers to get them some cider, which had happened on several previous occasions. However, the device has been deemed to be unfair to children and young people by Children's Commissioner Al Aynsley-Green, and he has called for it to be banned. I don't agree with him that it breaches their human rights, but I do believe it should be used with care.

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.

In December I invited everybody who'd been involved in helping to set up York Credit Union to come for a drink to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first public meeting in 1997. Not many people turned up, but it was a good evening and I was pleased to meet one of the original volunteers, John Hume, a local businessman and philanthropist. Over several drinks we had a jovial conversation... and he proudly told me about his daughter's latest screenwriting success.

Next week sees the run up to the annual Remembrance Sunday commemorations, and many people are already wearing their red poppies.

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 was wondering what to write for this week's blog and then I watched Panorama (BBC1, 24/9/07) which was about the possibility of a National DNA Database.

I may have an unusual lifestyle trying to be ultra-green and low carbon, but I do enjoy many of the norms of modern life. Specifically, I do watch quite a bit of television, for entertainment, education, information, relaxation. So I'd like to comment on 3 items I've seen recently or am watching currently.

Today I did some voluntary work for York Rotters, standing behind a stall at an event in Rowntree Park, promoting home-composting and recycling. The event was my first 'Pride', organised by the local Gay and Lesbian groups. Although I consider myself 'LBGT friendly', I've never been to a Pride event. It was a small gathering, probably just a hundred or so, but it was joyous and fun, and I met several of my friends. The Rotters stall was well received and we had lots of enquiries and questions about composting, and perhaps a couple of new volunteer Rotters.

The Beijing Olympics are less than a year away and the media spotlight is focussing on China, and I've been reading some shocking things about Human Rights abuses under Jiang Zemin's Communist Party Government. Some commentators suggest boycotting the Olympics as the abuses are incompatible with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Olympic Charter. However it may be that with the Olympics happening, and the World's media there, the situation might be improved.

I've done quite a lot of mainstream media work recently. Following my filming with BBC Newsnight's 'Ethical Man' Justin Rowlatt, and appearing with him on Panorama, and being featured in the Yorkshire Post, I've had BBC Leeds 'Inside Out' recording my composting activities, and last week, ITV Leeds filming for a late night show due to be broadcast in the Autumn called 'Wood You Believe It?' with Duncan Wood, again about my recycling habits.