Tuesday, October 31, 2006

It isn't easy being green (part 143)

Sending food thousands of miles round the world is bad for the environment and we should stop doing it, right? Not according to New Zealand's Green Party which is asking British greens not to support a campaign against NZ lamb and dairy exports.

'We have written to British Green parties and other organisations campaigning on food miles to point out that the evidence shows that New Zealand dairy and lamb actually has lower emissions than that commercially produced in Britain,' says NZ Green co-leader Russel Norman in a press release. 'The total greenhouse emissions released in the production and transport of dairy and lamb shipped to Britain from New Zealand are lower than the emissions generated by the production of dairy and lamb in Britain. A Lincoln University study led by Professor Caroline Saunders provides good evidence for this case,' he added.

Norman may or may not be right - but once choosing what you eat becomes an exercise in balancing a myriad of ethical issues from animal welfare, to fair trade, to greenhouse emissions, the result can only be to tie yourself up in knots. Or go hungry. Many of these concerns are misplaced, but even where there is natural desire to make the world a better place, the solutions offered always seem to come down to greater regulation or individual consumption. If global warming were the problem everyone makes it out to be, avoiding New Zealand lamb would hardly be a solution, and buying fair trade coffee won't end poverty.

Still, watching 'ethical consumers' paralysed with indecision in the fresh food department makes for good sport.

NZ Greens write to British Greens on food miles, Scoop, 31 October 2006

Monday, October 30, 2006

Tee-total transport

The UK government is considering a ban on drinking on public transport. It looks like a solution in search of a problem.

The idea was put forward in a meeting at Blair's country residence, Chequers, in September. In future, drinking alcohol on buses and trains - but not planes - would be illegal. Defence minister John Reid told BBC News, 'It is right that people should be able to have a civilised drink at whatever time they want, but it is right also that people should be responsible about not being abusive on buses and other places'. Fair enough - anyone who has had the pleasure of taking the night bus home, especially when sober, may not have been terribly impressed by the drunken rowdiness of others. But since most local bus and train journeys are fairly short, any serious disorder must be the product of alcohol consumed before, not during, the journey.

In fact, if you really wanted to ensure trouble on public transport, turning away inebriated people because they have bottles or cans seems the perfect recipe. It would unnecessarily deprive long-distance travellers of the opportunity to enjoy a relaxing drink - for little apparent gain.

What lies behind this new idea is the assumption that the government should criminalise anti-social behaviour. They want to make it an offence not only to assault or rob someone, but to irritate them too. Since when was it the government's job to enforce good manners? Interviews with Reid and deputy prime minister John Prescott suggest the idea has not been enthusiastically embraced by ministers. This illustrates very well the nature of government policymaking today. Unable to offer any fundamental improvement to society, ideas are created, floated and dropped with alarming speed as the government desperately attempts to look like it is doing something useful. If the government really wanted to reduce levels of annoyance, perhaps it should stop this constant churning of half-baked ideas.

Public transport drink ban plan, BBC News, 30 October 2005

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

London's costly parklife

Richmond upon Thames council in London has proposed changing the way it charges for parking permits so that cars with bigger engines cost more. It's the latest illustration of how we will all pay dearly for not fitting in with the green agenda.

The council wants to vary the charges for the permits, which simply allow someone to park in their own street, so that electric cars would be exempt but the permit for the biggest 'gas guzzlers' would be up to £300. Households with two cars would have to pay 50 per cent extra for the second car, so that a two-car household could pay £750 per year for the privilege of parking near their own front door. 'Climate change is the single greatest challenge facing the world today,' said the Liberal Democrat council leader Serge Lourie. 'We can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it is not happening, or that dealing with it is up to somebody else. (1)'

Whacking yet more taxes on bigger cars is unlikely to make much difference, though. It's already extremely expensive to run a Jag or a Merc – or even a large-engined Ford Mondeo. Apart from the cost of purchasing and maintaining the vehicle, petrol is already punitively taxed – around 63 per cent of the price is taken in fuel duty and value-added tax (2). In fact, the tax is so high that the hike in crude oil prices over the last year or two has made relatively little difference to the price at the pumps, currently around 85 pence per litre.

On top of the petrol taxes, big car owners pay much higher insurance premiums and higher road tax (£210 per year against zero for the most fuel efficient cars). And London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has plans to introduce a differential congestion charge by 2010, with big cars paying £25 per day to drive in central London. Those who own big cars are probably immune to the cost of motoring by now.

From fining those who don't recycle, to proposing increased taxes on cheap flights, the great green revolution – unable to convince us through rational argument that we should change our ways – resorts at every turn to beating us over the head, or stuffing its hand in our pockets, to punish us for our bad behaviour.

(1) 'Gas guzzlers' face parking hike, BBC News, 25 October 2006

(2) UK petrol prices, The Oil Drum, 3 May 2006

Thursday, October 19, 2006

A world without people

There are an increasing number of commentators who believe that the planet would be better off without the presence of human beings on it. The current issue of New Scientist goes one step further to speculate what it might look like.

The premise of the article is that human beings disappear overnight. 'The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,' says a conservation biologist from California. Nature would be able to reclaim the fields and pastures, and make new habitats in deserted buildings. 'Light pollution' would disappear from the skies. Forests would return to their natural state. Nuclear reactors might catch fire or explode, but even there ecosystems would thrive. Strangely, it's not all good news for nature. Some ecosystems have thrived in the presence of human activity and might fail if we were to disappear.

In terms of leaving a legacy, however, the mark of mankind will be pretty shortlived in the great scheme of things. As the article concludes: 'The humbling - and perversely comforting - reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.' What would be more accurate is that without the presence of an intelligent lifeform, the Earth would be a pointless rock flying through space.

What is remarkable is that the producers of Britain's most widely read science magazine, who should be celebrating the increasing capacity of human beings to understand and shape the world, have so little regard for humanity's interests. Instead, they seem to dismiss the great progress we have made in conquering the problems that nature confronts us with, prefering to fantasise about our demise. While environmentalists speculate about humanity destroying itself through 'ecocide', it is the increasingly fashionable desire to dismiss our existence as pointless which is more likely to herald disaster.

Imagine Earth without people, New Scientist, 12 October 2006

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Death in Iraq

A new study published in the Lancet today suggests that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 than would be expected given previous estimates of mortality. Of these, 601,000 are estimated to be from violent causes.

The reaction to the figures has been one of either shock (amongst those against the war) or incredulity (amongst those that support it). There is certainly plenty of grounds for scepticism about the figures. Even the best known attempt to keep a track on deaths, Iraq Body Count, suggests a figure under 50,000 while the official administration figure is around 30,000. The Lancet figures are based on a random sample of 1,849 households spread across the country and extrapolate from the mortality figures in these households to the country as a whole. The researchers argue that the death rate has more than doubled, from 5.5 deaths per 1000 people, to 13.3 per 1000 people in the 40 months post-invasion.

Taking relatively small samples and extrapolating them in this manner has the potential to create substantial errors. However, the debate about methods and accuracy somewhat misses the point. In truth, no-one knows exactly how many have died but it is clearly a very large number. No matter which set of figures one uses, it is quite clear that Iraq has not experienced the quick and relatively painless transition to a peaceful democracy that was promised by Bush and Blair. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Western intervention in Iraq has been a disaster.

The real point is that in the absence of a proper political debate about the war, much of the discussion has centred on claim and counter-claim about death tolls. As Brendan O'Neill pointed out on spiked in October 2005, elevating body count into the primary measure of success or failure has had deadly consequences for Iraqis.

'The politicisation of the dead by both camps in the West - the transformation of Iraqi civilians into effectively a bargaining chip in debates about the war - acts as an invitation to the insurgents to kill even more. When carnage in Iraq is presented automatically and internationally as a sign of American failure, when Western journalists call for more "blood and guts" to wake up the viewing public, then the insurgents are more than happy to provide it.

'This helps to explain why this particular insurgency seems hellbent on killing as many civilians as possible; why it executes "spectaculars" such as the killing of 26 children taking sweets from a US soldier or the grotesque incineration of 60 worshippers standing next to a petrol tanker outside a mosque. It was the coalition and its opponents that made civilian injuries and fatalities into a political issue, the defining issue of the war, in fact - and the insurgents exploit that in their dramatic attacks on civilian targets. Western handwringing effectively gives a green light to these murderous insurgents.

'The people of Iraq are paying a heavy price indeed for the degraded and morbid politics being imposed on their country.'

When body-counts kill, by Brendan O'Neill

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The recycling ritual

The push to get us all to recycle has got very little to do with whether it will save precious resources, reduce waste or protect the environment. Recycling is really about being a responsible person.

This was brought home to me when I was interviewed for BBC Radio Newcastle earlier today. After listening to a vox pop of various listeners chiding the breakfast show presenter for not recycling enough, I was asked for my comments. I pointed out that, while for a few specific types of waste, recycling could be an efficient way of producing new goods, for the most part it was a waste of time. My own local council collects two types of waste for recycling and composting - paper and garden waste - both of which, literally, grow on trees. Generally, recycling doesn't make much sense by the traditional measure of productivity ie, whether it saves labour. But even on the 'green' measure of saving resources, the process of separation, collection and processing may be wasteful, too.

The reaction was that I was being irresponsible and we all had to 'do our bit' for the planet. There was no justification in terms of whether 'doing our bit' made any sense. Recycling, it seems, is a ritual by which we can offer penance for the sin of consumption: 'bless me Father, for I have binned' as it were. If such a view were to become truly ingrained, it would suggest that we give up on the possibility of increasing wealth and ending poverty, and accept stagnation instead. That really would be a sin.

Bin these authoritarian policies, by Rob Lyons

Monday, October 02, 2006

Tosser and Wosser

The government may all think that working class parents are trash but they'd never say it. Luckily for them, they've had Jamie Oliver to say it for them. Now Jonathan Ross seems keen to join in the fun.

When Oliver made a guest appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, his lisping host was soon having fun at the expense of the Rotherham mothers who have been supplying takeaway food to kids at their local school. Ross asked Oliver, 'Do you think we should put something in the water supply to stop some people having children in the future?' Oliver replied, 'What, you mean like lead?' before Ross added, 'You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Council estates.' There was an immediate shout of 'Oi!' from the audience, and the BBC received 60 complaints about Ross's comments.

Ross's humour is generally in bad taste so it's no surprise for him to have a cheap pop at the working class. Moreover, he's such a brown-nosing toadie that he'll say pretty much anything to ingratiate himself with a guest. On that basis, maybe Ross should be forgiven. Given that Oliver has recently been slagging off parents who feed their kids junk food as 'tossers' and 'idiots', Ross was only pandering to his guest's - and the obesity-obsessed government's - prejudices.

Wossy talks out of his Rs, Sun, 2 October 2006

Jamie Oliver: what a tosser, by Rob Lyons