Am I Green Enough?
I’ve been pinged for a ‘green meme’ in a blog post entitled ‘The Greenscam Part II’. I’m supposed to “write about the ways in which [I'm] consciously “green”, and also the things [I] know [I] should do in a more ecologically friendly way but don’t.”
First, what I find interesting is how being green has become fashionable. Bruce Sterling’s ‘Viridian Manifesto‘, which when I read it was one of of those ‘wow!’ moments, was the first time I ever heard anyone say that being ‘green’ required the wealthy to find it a desirable way to live. He suggested that energy meters needed to be seen as ‘luxurious’, solar and wind power should be sold at a premium to only those who can afford it and that ‘fouling the air’ when we turn on a light “should be considered the stigma of the crass proletarian”. (When I met Bruce Sterling at LIFT a couple years ago, I told him how important the Viridian Manifesto was to me. A year after that, he and I talked about nuclear power for which he is a supporter, albeit a reluctant one.)
I’m not new to the whole environmental thing, which is why when I’ve been attacked and talked to like an idiot by people when talking about green issues it really makes me angry. It also makes me angry when people who hardly know me, and certainly don’t listen to me, claim that I have ‘entrenched beliefs’ because I support nuclear power. Actually, I’ve been told that when you look in the dictionary for ‘un-entrenched beliefs’ there’s just a picture of me there. I’ve not seen that myself, but it sounds right. I am ALL ABOUT questioning ‘beliefs’ which means that my views change. I allow them to change based on facts and information I learn. What I don’t do is blindly follow something I heard 30 years ago, continue to believe it without question and only look to other believers for information which validates my belief. That’s “religion”.
OK. The ways in which I’m consciously “green” (from this post):
“I started recycling before it was fashionable. I used to walk carrying bags filled with glass, paper and cans to the nearest recycling containers. Then I used to ride my bike with all the recycling. I did this for well over 10 years before my council started home collections [about 10 years ago]. I used washable nappies with my [now 11 year old] son. I’ve not used disposable menstrual products for 10 years now. I’ve used cloth shopping bags one out of two times I go shopping for over 10 years now. I filled my toilet cisterns with bottles of water eons ago. I have never left the tap running when I brush my teeth and go INSANE when Brian does it. I have a water meter [cos I use much less water than 'the average']. Half of the lightbulbs in my house are those horrible fluorescent things. I’m obsessive about turning off lights in rooms I’m not using and regularly go around turning off all the lights Brian and my son have left on (and shouting at them about it). I wash my clothes at 30 degrees (C). I’ve never owned a clothes drier. I’ve owned three different cars - two were Fiat 500s [they are smaller than a classic Mini], one is Brian’s old Ford Focus- all of them were bought when I was working daily in a place which took 1.5 hours each way to get to via public transport. When my son was in nursery school I would ride 20 miles a day on my bike taking him to and from school. When he was in primary school, we’d take the bus. Whereas before I got rid of my other cars fairly soon after finishing my job, I’ve kept this car for 3 years because I need it. Either I drive him to school in 15 minutes or it takes up to 45 minutes on the bus - each way, there, back, there, back. I don’t have the time for an extra 2 hours of travelling a day to take public transport. I could go on…”
…I only buy recycled paper products, I shop every 1-2 days so that I don’t have wasted food, I use rechargeable batteries in pretty much everything, I buy trees instead of flowers for gifts, I’ve mainly worked from home or only a few days per week outside my home for over 15 years so have hardly had any daily travel, I have not had a bathtub for over 10 years (showers use about 1/3 of the water that baths do), I was vegetarian up until 3 years ago, now I eat meat or fish only a couple times a week…. I just do this stuff kinda naturally without any fuss and without piously going on about it to all and sundry… (er, well, except for just now)
Why?
Cos it makes me feel good. In the same way that tidying up your home or garden makes you feel good. Doing things that I know will help to make the air just a *tiny* bit less polluted and won’t add as much to landfill sites, makes me happy. I do it purely for emotional reasons. Intellectually, I KNOW what I do doesn’t actually help the environment much at all.
What?! Heresy!! Denier!! That’s what you’re apparently supposed to shout at someone who doesn’t go on about how we need to do ‘more’ to protect the environment or how we’re all going to die in a horrible globally warmed-up hellfire death or who says anything that goes slightly against the environmental lobby’s idea of what we should do and how we should think. I’m *not* a “Global Warming Denier” at all, but as far as I can tell from the behaviour of environmental extremists, one cannot even question anything nor can one try and think differently about anything without being attacked. It’s happened time and time again.
The UK emits 2.2% of the total human produced CO2 in the atmosphere, which, incidentally, is just less than the total CO2 emitted by every single plane flying from every single airport in the whole entire world. My “green” efforts probably have as much environmental impact as one first class seat on one plane (which has LESS of an environmental impact than an economy seat as first class passengers’ seats take up the space of three economy seats and therefore don’t add as much weight to the plane… but I digress)…
If we in the UK continue to beat ourselves up and really make our lives absolutely crap with self-denial and miserableness and amazingly find a way of cutting our CO2 output by 20% (pffffft!), we’ll only be lowering the worldwide human produced CO2 emissions by .44%. Is that puny amount really worth all the hassle, cost, inconvenience and effort? Is it?!
Assuming that CO2 emissions are divided equally across the entire UK population of 60 million people, I am personally responsible for… well… I think .000000003% of the human produced CO2. Each American on the other hand is responsible for .00000007% - that’s about 25 TIMES more than me. So, according to UK environmentalists, I need to make things even more difficult for myself (and let me tell you, *not* using disposable menstrual products takes some fucking commitment) so that the average American can continue to produce a ridiculously high amount of CO2? Really?
I refuse to feel ‘guilty’ about my lifestyle. It is not excessive nor is it wasteful nor is it actually destroying the planet. For a ‘middle class’ person, living in a wealthy Western country, the way I live is pretty low impact.
OK… maybe I should answer the ‘what things should I do in a more eco-friendly way, but don’t’ question…
Bah. Fuck it. I do loads more than most people already… I’m going to do what Alan says at the end of his post: “I am changing my green strategy from all that hard self denial stuff to badgering our American readers to go Green For Me.”
Along with trying to encourage Americans to take up the baton for a while, I will continue talking to people about nuclear power in order to try and make up for the misinformation and lies about it coming from the extremist environmentalists for the past few decades. I will also continue to talk about the need for VASTLY more energy use worldwide in order to bring the developing world clean water, electricity and sanitation for a start.
This is why the environmental whackies bug me so much. So, I sometimes fly in planes. And? So I own a car, which I drive less than 4,000 miles per year. And? Stop bugging me and stop deluding yourself that we just need to stick up a few windmills and solar panels. What about the billion people in the world who don’t have access to safe water? What about the 2.6 billion who live without basic sanitation? What about the quarter of the world’s population who don’t have access to electricity? What about the 2.5 billion people who rely on biomass for their cooking which results in indoor air pollution killing 4000 people a day (more than those who die of malaria)? And you think we’re going to help billions of people whilst LOWERING the world’s energy usage?!
Solar panels my arse.
I also would invite you to look into the total per capita *energy* use in the UK, the US, France and Belgium. Then look at their per capita CO2 emissions. Then look at the percentage of their electricity that is provided by nuclear power. (If you can’t be bothered: A) the order of per capita energy usage from highest to lowest: 1.US 2.Belgium 3. France 4. UK B) the order of their per capita CO2 emissions highest to lowest: 1. United States 2. UK 3. Belgium 4. France C) Percentage of nuclear power highest to lowest: 1. France 2. Belgium 3. UK 4.US… Work it out.)
So, there you have my take on it: being green is good and desirable because we want clean air and don’t want our landfills to be filled up unnecessarily. Worldwide CO2 reduction is a good thing because we don’t want runaway global warming. The UK contributes a tiny amount of the CO2. We should encourage our American friends to do more to lower their CO2 emissions. We should support nuclear power because we MUST use VASTLY more energy worldwide in order to provide a decent standard of living to everyone in the world. One in two children in the world are living in abject poverty. We need to help them.
Now who should I ping? How about Sizemore, Fiz and Seth? I always enjoy hearing what Sizemore has to say. Fiz is “phab” and as an Australian, I’m sure, will have a load of interesting things to add to the conversation. And Seth cos I love his mind AND he’s in the US and it’d be nice to get an American perspective.
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8 Comments, Comment or Ping
mitchell porter
Bruce’s Viridian movement was when I got on board… why, back when there was still a Viridian Ranking System I think I got as high as an eight-chevron ranking… Of course, that was in the wake of the 1998 temperature spike; we didn’t know then that there’d be no further movement upwards for at least ten years…
Now I find myself wondering a lot about how the collision between peak oil and climate politics is going to play out. Climate change gets a lot of lip service, especially in the developed world, and it looks like emissions trading markets are going to spread slowly over the next few years (Europe was the pioneer, Australia is doing it now, the USA will probably do it next), but it’s still pretty disconnected from the core economics of energy. The price rises in oil and other basic goods have everyone’s attention, however.
I have pretty much concluded that the doubling in the oil price over the past 12-18 months is mostly due to the US economic bust - the really steep climb in prices began in August 2007, at the time of the financial crisis; all the investment money that was seeking returns from corporate debt bonds and rising property values has fled into commodities, and with all that extra money seeking to buy, sellers can ask for more and more. I have no idea if prices will stay where they are or even keep climbing, or whether there’ll be a little collapse in demand brought on by world recession, but clearly everyone is now looking for alternatives to oil even more than before. The key green issue is likely to be coal; the earlier rise in oil prices already led to an increase in coal-burning in Asia, we’re a very long way from peak coal, and coal-to-oil liquefaction means it’s even relevant as a vehicular fuel. I see less and less resistance to nuclear; people worry more about the military/terrorist uses than the environmental implications now, I think; though greens will always say ‘if we just committed completely to renewables, none of these problems would even exist’.
Anyway, my real point is that energy scarcity now is going to loom ten times larger in politics than climatic disaster fifty years from now. In all likelihood climate considerations will be reduced to just one factor in the economics of dealing with the new scarcity - a powerful one, but not an all-determining one. This intriguing new grouping of the eleven big energy consumers - G8 plus China, India, and South Korea - is probably where the middle-range energy future is going to be decided; these are the high-tech countries who have the capacity to invent, industrialize, and market new energy sources and channels of distribution.
What were we talking about? Oh yes, being green. Well, the truth probably is that most people are irrelevant to what happens from here. I played no part in W3C’s HTML specification process, except the very distant role of being one of the webby end-users, and yet here I am using browsers and reading webpages meant to comply with their standards. The same thing is going to happen with environmental policy; it’ll be just like economic policy. Brainstormed by academic theorists, optimized by technocratic brain trusts, run through the political sausage factory, and constantly revised in the face of unanticipated real-world developments.
So i think green is going to be a bit ubiquitous and ho-hum (indeed, I think it’s there already). But dealing with a rocketing life expectancy brought on by biotechnology - now that would be a destabilizing development to look forward to, eh? :-)
Jun 8th, 2008
giagia
Oh my god. Don’t even *start* on the Ageing Population- not only in the West, but what the hell happens when we start ending poverty and life expectancy, as you say, skyrockets in the currently developing world? I’m not very positive about Ageing generally having worked on a project looking at ageing recently.
Logan’s Run?
Jun 8th, 2008
vinnie
water butt…. is great. I was shocked of how much it grabbed. I bought a slim water butt, 100 liters or so. It had mostly my test water from next door’s garage, that is ~ 3.5 meters wide and I have one new gutter on it that goes to the water butt.
With one night of rain I checked it and it filled the 100 liter water butt. So I should get the 250. It fill cans faster to water the garden. Also when I was a child my Italian gran mother always had a trash can down the hill for her tomato garden It collected the snow and rain in the spring and then she used that to water the garden. If it got low she topped it up with the hose. Much better than using a hose.
Call me a surprised water butt gardener now.
Jun 9th, 2008
giagia
Or just do what I did: deck your whole garden (it was bricked before) and fill it with plants that don’t really need looking after like bamboo, climbing roses, hops and various things that just kinda grow without me doing anything to them. :)
Jun 9th, 2008
Maksim Gill
I don’t know how many of you have seen Larry Page and Sergei Brin at TED (I think). Larry effectively explained that cutting world consumption of resources and energy will stagnate the economy from developing. He’s absolutley right because the only way an economy can “grow” is by increasing consumption, and the most viable way is to use nuclear energy and hopefully make recycalable products.
I’m originally from Russia, now living in Los Angeles, and was very surprised that none of your statistics included Russia as a major CO2 emitter. Mostly in the MidWest US states there are crappy cars that emit more than they should, but Russia has some ral pieces of shit.
-Max
Jun 11th, 2008
giagia
Maksim, Russia is a pretty big emitter as a nation, but isn’t quite as bad per capita (which, for me is the more important figure). Still, it’s 3rd highest CO2 emitter per capita of the G8 countries, so there’s work to be done. :)
Jun 11th, 2008
Kevin
Living in America as I am, I have to agree that Americans are excessive although I think that things are changing. It seems that a momentum is building of late as a direct result of things like water shortages due to droughts and the price of oil which is rising without an end in sight. I would never claim to be green since I am probably doing about 10% of what you are doing in the name of the environment, but small things add up for those of us who are still aspiring to be better. Not leaving the tap running while brushing my teeth is now a given, turning lights off is now a given. Leaving the air conditioning higher with the shades down when at work. Getting used to being comfortable @ 73 degrees fahrenheit rather than 65 which is what I used to do. Driving slower in terms of acceleration although it doesn’t make much difference when I get 18 miles to the gallon in a sports car :o)
Could I do more..sure! Do I think about doing more…all the time. Am I alone here in America in terms of thinking about being more conservative and frugal in my use of resources..no, of course not.
My gut instinct tells me that we are on the cusp of great changes in the next 10 years. Being American yourself, I am sure that you understand what this country can do once it puts its mind to accomplishing something. The progressive.com sponsorship of the x-prize for a production car that does 100 mpg is just an example. GM closing 5 truck plants in the US is a direct response to the current american focus on smaller vehicles so there is definitely a dramatic response to the increase in the cost of gas. I saw a Ford advertisement on tv today about its trucks now being offered to the public at employee prices. No-one wants them!
Personally, I find it very difficult wading through the information and disinformation about nuclear power. My one fear of a reliance on a move to Nuclear is that a direct result will be a lack of focus placed on other alternatives. Nuclear is the only source of power that “today” will allow us to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint AND still meet current and future consumption demands. And I HATE that fact simply because the impact of a nuclear accident is so dramatic and long lasting in terms of fallout. However, as a realist I have to face the facts that there is no other economic alternative today. And this all comes down to economics at the end of the day.
I saw your comment about the Tropical Rainforest Coalition..are they the real deal?
Kevin
Jun 15th, 2008
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