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.
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