Energy conservation, Heat magazine and hoodies

So Gordon is serious about being Green, how I hate the expression “green” . I am very happy with government policies that look after the planets assets and heritage but for me, green has become didactic, even dictatorial, free of choice and slavish to a few “do good” messages. Mostly do less and roll back to the stone age messages, stubbornly refusing to accept and enjoy the benefits that technology and understudying have brought to most of us.

What gets to me at the moment is the equally stubborn refusal of the government and its policy wonks to look down the other end of the telescope on power generation. I am delighted that the government has once again pledged its support to a future that will see a reduction in our carbon production figures and is beginning to get it that we do not have forever and need to act soon. I steer all readers to both the One Hundred Months campaign (http://www.onehundredmonths.org) and the Prince of Wales Rainforest Project (http://www.rainforestsos.org). Big Ears’s project includes a wordy action plan with a brief summary plus many fine words from lots of business leaders, a couple a junior Princes and Robin Williams, all posing with a frog.

Record a message, add a voice and feel connected. Then go on and be connected by encourage those who can change thing to buy a new telescope.

Back to the glassware. As an undergraduate, way back when, before the advent of e-mail, facebook and blogging, we were taught about the fallacy of the much peddled “energy gap”, a construct of the power generating industry. This great piece of hype repeatedly put up graphs showing that if we did not build nuclear power stations and drill for oil in hard to reach places, all the lights would be going out and we would be back in the Victorian era, for as long as society held together that is. The clear indication was that without 240 volts and a few amps available on demand, there would be rioting in the streets and the hording of bottled water, tins of beans and copies of Heat magazine, would be punishable by death. Actually I fully sign up to the later. Stand in any newsagent and see the number of different spins there are on Katie Andrea and Peter Price (a former Blue Peter presenter I think), let alone the long suffering father in the Smiths at Southampton Airport last week, who, bewildered by his daughters avarice forked out £47 in cash too buy the whole news stand of magazines called Now, OK, Next, Left, take a bit, a break, be comatose, Cosmo, Company Top Sante, Red, She and anything else with a red top and a six day bikini wonder diet plan.

The energy gap may exist if we keep plugging in more things and leaving them on, if we continue to allow heat to leak out of poor quality housing stock and we make people live all year round in structures designed for holidays only. The solution too much of our energy needs is conservation not production.

In those undergraduate lecture halls we were informed in the measured tones and with the barely comprehensible maths of a very bright physicist that if the technology of the day was harnessed and more efficient electric motors fitted, better light bulbs used and buildings insulted then there was not a gap but a surplus.

The same is true today. Those who know, say that we could reduce our energy consumption by 60% with a bit of loft lagging, window changing and a few more led lights and gadgets that switch of the TV if there is no one in the room for more than 30 minutes. All existing at market, low unit cost, technology. And not a mad haired boffin in sight.

But it costs money, yes and so does building new nuclear power stations or trying to make coal clean. Clean coal is nonsense, a very alliterative strapline but practical nonsense. Carbon capture and storage works in a lab, it might work in a shed or on an allotment but it has yet to be proven to be effective or even viable at industrial scales. It might work in the future to but conservation works now.

If Green Gordon wants to invest in something then invest in a Green new deal that will create jobs, wealth, and better homes, factories and business as well as reducing the amount of CO2 we produce on a timescale that will make a real difference.

Don’t stop with the wind farms, the offshore tidal stuff, the heat pumps etc but get real about large scale production. The secret is to use less, not produce more.

Is this so simple it’s a no brainer, yes. Will it cost more than the subsidy on offer to the coal and nuclear boys? No. Will it be more visible? Yes. Will it win votes? Yes, with those who get the work and with those that get their homes and workplaces improved? Yes, Yes. Do these people have the influence of the energy generators, construction companies, engineering combines and bankers who will finance the projects? No. Is the good option domed as a result, I hope not. Am I getting fed up with the debate being hi-jacked by those with the quite but deep pocketed voice? You bet I am. If big power and concrete want to make a profit then great, just make it out of new business not old business. In the short term its harder and more risky but in the medium term its stronger. It has the added bonus of there still being nice places left to enjoy all this wealth they have created.

A small plea is this, next time you get involved in a debate over the dinner table, in the pub or with the bloke sitting next too you on the bus, train, cycle lane or plane and they ask “would you prefer a wind turbine, coal burning or nuclear power station at the bottom of your garden” please answer by saying that you would prefer not to have any of them as you see the view over the fence through a triple glazed window, in the thermally efficient house with the “lecie” meter going round so slowly it was hard to see it move. The bill hasn’t got any smaller but neither have the icebergs up north and down south.

When the prospective parliamentary candidates start knocking on your door, invite them in, you do not want to loose the heat from your ground source heat pump. Get them to talk not about energy production but about conservation. Tell them that if they spent the same money on increasing the efficiency of our life then we would be able to get the existing power stations to last longer, run less often and trash the planet less quickly. If they talk about green issues, unless they are from the green party, tell them off and get them to talk about sustainable issues and the politics of climate change. If they adopt the stance of the climate sceptic, chuck them out with the flee in their ear that tells them to be better informed on the issues and to stop reading the Daily Fail.

We can do this and only we can do it, they, those who govern have now convinced me that they cannot, will not and do not want to make the real difference. We have to force them too. It will still be them but they have to be incentivised to do so. My vote has a price tag, it requires them to listen to the sensible voices and do the right thing, even if, like the builders and engineers its hard and takes a while.

One last’ish point. In a discussion a few years ago with people who were looking to invest some money in long term savings, I witnessed a whole debate about the folly of putting money on novel instruments, and by that I mean funds that invested in wind, wave and solar technology, rather than construction and energy, not the normal use of novel it finance terms which is wine, cars and lake fly pate.

Those who took the plunge and went for the eco funds have done well, those investing in bricks and boilers have done a lot less well in the last 12 months.

On a final note, I saw a great debate on Question Time last night. The panel where asked to comment on the Chris Greyling’s (Tory Shadow Home Secretary) idea that all young people who do anti social things should have there mobile phones and bikes confiscated by the police on repeat offending. WHAT?

The audience, the panel, including Tory Vice Chairman Margot James, didn’t really know what to say in response to a ridiculous proposal. Greying was slated by all, most effectively by Trisha Goddard, all pointing out that the demonization of “youth” will have a significant impact on all our futures. Do those in authority, and I included myself in that list, ever stop to think that the generation that will be make the key decisions about our quality of life in old age, are the ones whom we are trying to manage with “mosquito” devices, generalising as “hoodies” dismissing and misunderstanding as the “playstation generation”, etc.

We reap what we sow. I would like to see that begin to be recognised and the statements from platforms across the media being more balanced and acknowledging far more often that the current drop of young people work hard, study long hours, use the tools of life effectively, are not risk averse like their parents and will have to hold both a creaking planet and a creaking society together for most of their adult life. Both of these damaged edifices they will have inherited from their rather sanctimonious, short sited, head in the sand parents.

I fully expect my two to tell me I can sit in the mess I have created, literally and metaphorically, be grateful for what little help they can spare whilst they try to get the people and place of earth back together.

Jacko, Glasto, Blez and The Bomb

Michael Jackson is dead. Glasto was great, if populated by the middle classes, hence the popularity of people carriers with top boxes and car seats eastbound on the 303 all day on Monday. Lucy Kellaway is lamenting being fifty, I am in T5 and Paul Blezard has been creating collectives of bloggers on the south bank.

The railways are being nationalised, the banks have forgotten that they are, the IPPR have decided that being a pacifist is cheaper and I am still in T5.

Oh yes the F1 community are ripping themselves to pieces, the fans are astonished that its about money and the sun is out. According to a number of high brow newspapers London was hotter than Brazil yesterday.

Lets go back to the beginning. Michael Jackson’s death. Is the world a better or worse place as a result of this. I suggest it is unchanged. He might have been a great bloke but as I never had the pleasure I will never know. The songs, videos and dances were amazing, changed the face of pop. Obviously having changed the face of pop the next thing was for the proceeds of pop to change his face.

Glasto was great, not that I was there but the sky box is stuffed to the gunnels of its hard drive with hours of great music. Yes Springsteen was pretty special, the Durbury boots and guesting with Gaslight Anethem were both taking points but then again he is an old pro and knows how to get a crowd on his side. For me the performance of the weekend had to be Pendulum, I had never come across them before but that blend of techno and rock is just what we all need. We had a bit of a night of it on Saturday, a couple of friends came round for sundowners and we all ended up properly pissed in front of Bruce, with the kids coming downstairs telling us to turn the music down as it was one o’clock in the morning and they wanted to go to sleep!
A couple of the bits of Neil Young were special and bang on for the Glasto vibe. Florence and the Machine did it in the JP tent and Blur managed to get on stage as a group and do want they do well, have fun.

During the Bruce stuff M and the guests actually agreed to go to Gasto 2010 so see you there.
Check out Lucy Kellaways blog on the FT website as she is always great and never more so when deep in introspection. She is deep in middle aged mum land having just made 50. Worth a listen to her podcast.

Likewise The lady Magazines new Literary Editor Paul Blazard. The old Editor was non other than Charles Dickens, it has taken a while to find a suitable replacement. Much as I love the great Blez “suitable” is not the world I would use for him. He has a great log at http://libradoodle.blogspot.com. Tune in.

On the subject of tuning in if you are a petrol head go a look up www.sidepodcast.com or better still subscribe to the podcast and enjoy. This is for both supa-sad F1 people who really need to get a life outside there Excel spreadsheet analysis of Fantasy League F1, the real races and anything else that fits in rows and column. However if you are just a bit interested and want to hear some great interviews with F1 journo Joe Seward it’s a must. Joe speaks as well as he writes, even if he is either very tired or very “emotional” when the folk at SPC interview him. Again tune in, down load and find out the truth that is not F1 you read about in the papers. I love F1, not the racing its usually a dull a life devoid procession around a shiny new circuit in a shiny new country. It’s the politics and the technology that floats my boat. The level at which the gamesmenship is played is always breathtaking and sometimes heart stopping. Obviously its about the money the money and nothing but the money. Its no different from the Premier League, the PGA or whoever runs world tennis just the business of sport. Joe and the folk at sidepodcast understand this, talk about it well as both fans and world weary cynics.

As to pacifism, well I suggest anyone trying to understand why we want to spend lots of our national debt on either a nuclear deterrent or a couple of aircraft carriers read the first couple of chapters of Tony Giddings new book, The Politics of Climate Change. He offers the best and most succinct discussion of why at least the carriers will get built. A quick précis goes like this. We live in a globalised world economy, that was a one-way valve, we cannot go back, to that end trade routes are vital as everything we consume from Lego to petrol to newsprint and coffee come to our island by ship. As we have all seen, piracy is a growth industry, protecting the merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden is one of the few areas where there is real cooperation amongst the navel powers of the world. All signed up to keep the cogs of global trade turning, we see joined up navel operations between the Chinese, Russian, French, British and US Navies, to name just a few. It is common to find one nationals air patrols spotting a suspicious vessel that is then investigated by helicopters from other forces, whilst fast response RIBs from a third deploy their marines to board and search. The air assets being refuelled by any ship with chip and pin, and club card points.

As we start to run out of stuff and it takes longer to find the replacement sources of energy, water, food etc, the only way to maintain the supply chain into British ports is to be an effective navel power. This means expense ships with even more expensive aircraft on board. A mix of fixed wing patrol/AWACS and rotary assault means a couple of carriers at least and hopefully a couple of cheaper HMS Ocean style assault ships. That should keep the shelves of our supermarkets full and childhood obesity on the upward trend.

Trident? As a fully signed up old hippy I do not like nuclear weapons but if the spokes really do not know where the Pakistani/North Korean or Irainian nucs are and who has the key. I do want some kind of seat at the top table and I suspect giving up being a nuclear weapons would result in a another revolving seat being created on the Security Council. We may be a tin pot nation, and I am a long way from being a little Englander, but until the EU have demonstrated a degree of solidarity in the face of “hostile” nations I want HMG to stay at the top table.
It might be cheaper to try and stick together an effective European military force but until we have, can we empty the piggy banks and melt down our fillings to pay for some real navel power, a half decent Air Force and an Army that is a little bit bigger than the home gate at Old Trafford. As to the Vanguard boats I have always found that gaffa tape and cable ties can fix most things, in the short term at least.

And finally. Yes its hot and sunny, that happens in the summer, even in the UK. Oh yes I am not in T5 any more, via a long bus tour of Heathrow I am now X thousand feet of England on my way to Newcastle airport. Deep joy. On an unexpected 767 not a cramped airbus. BA do get it right some times, even if its by accident.