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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

On Sunday 24th February 2008 the world changed... or did it? Certainly there was a 'first'; a jet plane made a short trip with one of it's four engines running on biofuel. A Virgin Boeing 747 flew from Heathrow to Schiphol in Amsterdam using a mixture of coconut and babassu nut oil. Sir Richard Branson hailed this as the dawn of a new era but I don't think we're there yet. This 'new era' isn't going to be easy either.

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.

Much as though the so-called 'mile high club' might be attractive to some people, joining it does involve getting on an aeroplane, which some of us do not want to do.... So I have joined the No Miles High Club, a pioneering initiative to reward people for not flying.

Last Wednesday (14th November 07) was the first World Responsible Tourism Day, not that most people would have noticed.

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...........

by Adam McCulloch

Like an adrenaline rush before 9am? Fancy cheating death on a daily basis? Try the environmentally friendly way of getting to work.

I've heard it suggested that if the UK were to convert all of it's cars to run on vegetable oil or bio-diesel, we'd have to plant the entire area of our agricultural land to growing crops like rape, linseed (flax) and hemp... but even then, that wouldn't provide enough for our needs.

Today I cycled into York to collect my regular compostable materials pick-up (never call it 'waste' as it's a resource for recycling into a valuable soil improver!) which I do three times a week, whatever the weather. At the first set of traffic lights, a cyclist in front of me cycled straight through the red light, and this riles me for a number of reasons. Every cyclist is someone's child and someone loves them, and would be gutted if they were injured or killed. If there was a collision, their actions could ruin someone elses life as 'innocent' drivers suffer shock if they injure or kill someone. A severe accident would put an extra drain on the NHS and other services. Finally, of course, the minority of thoughtless cyclists give us all a bad name.

Blog readers will probably know that my favourite mode of transport is the bicycle, which in my case is nearly always followed by a trailer which enables me to easily carry tens of kilos of luggage. I also enjoy riding tricycles, tandems, recumbents and my unicycle. I learned unicycling shortly after discovering devilsticks and other circus skills in my mid-20's, which soon led to 15 years of being children's entertainer 'Professor Fiddlesticks', my alter-ego which I continue to enjoy to this day.