The UK: Outlook Far From Bright?
As we skate dangerously close to cut-off time, and this writer gets the distinct impression that he’s beginning to mix metaphors - the big question then: how does the UK feel it views environmentally pressing questions?
Looking to members of the website generous.org.uk I asked them what they felt. Commenting on my earlier blog concerning biofuels, Andrew Fleming gives a full and well-informed account of his personal views. Over to Andrew then:
“Biofuels are not a simple answer - until all the starving are fed, I would prefer that we feed the poor, rather than fuel the rich. It is not a simple question. If we do not alleviate climate change which is happening, then we will lose more land from active crop production due to global warming.
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“I strongly suspect that the amount of land which would be needed to produce enough biofuel to prevent further global warming would mean that there would not be enough land to produce food - unless more rain forest was cleared - which would mean an even greater proportion of the crops would be needed for biofuel, since there would be less land given over to forests which reclaim the CO2 from the atmosphere.”
Gordon Brown has recently gone ahead with nuclear again. Andrew, your thoughts?
“I do not think that nuclear fission is the answer either - at least until we have found a fissionable isotope which results in something with at least a very short half-life - or better still which is atomically stable. Nuclear fusion on the other hand - if it could be tamed - would (or at least at the moment seems likely to) be a good solution.”
But the broader picture. The UK’s general views to the environment. Do we even care? I stated that the national press, certainly The Guardian and The Independent, had environmental sections, which in turn suggested a strong reader demand. Rosalyn from Birmingham perhaps put me right here:
“I wonder if the national press has embraced the environment [though] - have The Sun or Mirror recently had any articles [regarding the environment]?
“I think it has got to the point where recycling is seen as normal and not excessively green. Amongst the chattering classes it has got to the point where people will pretend to be more green than they actually are.
“Supermarkets now have their own green ranges. Yet this has happened before and they stopped when demand decreased again. I’ve noticed a lot of 4×4 drivers use Ecover washing up liquid.”
Certainly, this suggests hypocrisy amongst some so-called environmentally aware UK folk.
And Huw? What are your thoughts?
“I must say I feel a lot less positive than most.
“We have just been away for a week with two other families - both very educated, informed, responsible, middle-class and evangelical Christian.
“As ever, I pointed out that the foil lids on our yoghurts and the foil dishes our takeaways came in were (unless I am mistaken) pure aluminium and should be recycled. They looked at me in surprise. Really?
“Recycling aluminium must be one of the easier and most obvious ways to avoid absurd energy waste, and I would guess that it is 30 years or more since the green movement started urging people to do it. If the message hasn’t got through yet, it doesn’t inspire much hope.”
Huw, I mentioned that an environmental section in The Guardian must at least offer what is now fast becoming a dwindling hope? Positive feedback please …
“My other big bugbear is plastic. Since I read recently that there is something like 100 million tons of plastic floating in the Pacific, and that this vast soup is expected to double in size in the next decade, I have had a horror of unnecessary plastic packaging, bags and (especially) bottles.
“But I can’t bring myself to say anything to my family, let alone my educated, informed friends, because I think they’ll just think I’m bonkers. My impression really is that green consciousness has made few inroads into even the leftie broadsheet-reading population of this country.
“I rent an office in the house of a Guardian-reading social anthropologist, who leaves his TV on standby 24 hours a day and has not a single low-energy lightbulb in the house (except the one I’ve put in my room!).
“Again, I don’t feel able to say anything because I don’t want to be labelled an eco-fanatic. These things are so far from being second nature even to the small minority in this country who read the greener newspapers.”
My sincere thanks go to Andrew, Rosalyn and Huw for their feedback. The UK then: a nation with a long way to go?
Picture source:
Courtesy of flickr
It DOES seem like we have a long way to go, but the key is to continue to educate our children - from what my daughter is being taught at school, I’m convinced the next generation will be GREEN light years ahead of us on living more sustainably. Beautiful pic too btw.
There seems to be regurgitation of unproven assumptions in this post. I’ll address a few.
1) “If we do not alleviate climate change which is happening, then we will lose more land from active crop production due to global warming.”
This remains unconvincing. The assumption implicit is that man-made emissions will cause warming, which will cause further drought. But we know CO2 is a fertiliser. And we know that melting ice-caps will mean more water around. We also know that the predicted warming, without feedbacks, is about 1oC by 2100. So, a little warmer, more water and more fertiliser = LESS crops? I am unconvinced.
It should also be noted that advances in GM mean that we are likely to have drought resistant crops within a decade or two. But then, GM is all bad too, eh?
2) “since there would be less land given over to forests which reclaim the CO2 from the atmosphere”
This is simply incorrect. Much of the world’s natural CO2 emissions comes from rotting vegetation, such as is found on forest floors. There is no evidence that forests absorb more than they emit (please, enlighten me!). Tundra and wetlands are far superior net CO2 sinks… The kind of places you might find when ice starts melting.
3) “I’ve noticed a lot of 4×4 drivers use Ecover washing up liquid”
I wonder how you noticed..! Comparisons such as this are pointless and misleading. And not in the slightest bit hypocritical - that is a sad accusation.
____
Also, you mention the Independent’s “Green” section… Did you note the article in this week’s Private Eye, that the Independent editor now has 16 dozen 42-inch plasma TVs adorning their offices, received in payment for a full page Currys advert?
Finally; a long way to go? Perhaps. But we have only been conscious of environmental degradation for two, maybe three decades. Maybe we should go about feeding, educating and providing sanitation to the wrold’s people before we get too depressed and guilty about enjoying the life we have?
Re: Independent TVs, I meant “16″, not “16 dozen”!
So much to comment on. Thank you. Fortunately, I tend not to buckle due to environmental guilt or depression.
I find it so tiresome when climate-change-sceptics imply that the alarm about global warming all arises from ‘guilt’ or some form of masochism. I don’t feel at all guilty about the way I have lived for the first 40-something years of my life; I have simply been persuaded that it is not sustainable - and certainly not if everyone in the world aspires to live the same way. The alarm about MMGW is not now coming primarily from eco-worriers but from mainstream and very eminent scientists, of the stature of Sir John Houghton and Jim Hansen, George Bush’s chief climate modeller, who is said to be ‘close to panic’. Nor is it politicians who are driving this - another silly claim often made by the sceptics. Which politician ever won votes by advocating austerity? The fact is that, though the reports from the IPCC have been getting progressively more alarming, they have been watered down by diplomats at the UN for political reasons, not hyped up.
It’s true that many people are very wary of GM crops. I don’t think this can be ascribed merely to anti-science-and-technology prejudice, as I suspect Matthew means to imply. First, the last 100 years has seen a number of cases where ‘wonderful’ new technologies have been used with abandon - asbestos, CFCs &c - and, arguably, plastic - only to prove much more harmful than we thought. In those two cases, we have managed to repair most of the damage, but GM is a genie it would be impossible to get back into the bottle. Second, it is not so much technology people mistrust, perhaps, as the big businesses that control and exploit it. GM will simply concentrate power over the whole of humankind in the hands of a very small number of huge corporations. I don’t think it’s any surprise that on both counts people are very wary of GM and the people who are talking it up without ever acknowledging the risks.
Huw, very keen insights.
I find it so tiresome when AGW advocates completely ignore one of my major points, i.e. that feeding the world is far more important than saving us from a bit of adverse weather that we have always had to deal with. Or was the earthquake in the UK this week a result of warming too?
A few other things:
“certainly not if everyone in the world aspires to live the same way.”
Not everyone in the UK lives in the same way, or even aspires to. Globalisation does not have to end in a homogenous genetic soup.
“very eminent scientists, of the stature of Sir John Houghton and Jim Hansen”
I don’t know about Houghton, but there is some significant critique of Hansen out there. And I suppose that these scientists: http://www.inteliorg.com/US_Senate_Report_Over_400_Prominent_Scientists_Disputed_Man_Made_Global_Warming_Claims_in_2007.htm
…are all in the pocket of big business? Whereas the ones that work for the government are all kosher.
“Nor is it politicians who are driving this”
It is an intergovernmental panel. By definition it is driven by politicians.
This is one of the major critiques of the UN that comes from developing countries and academics: since it is funded by member states, it is directed by their national interests. Some have greater influence than others.
“GM is a genie it would be impossible to get back into the bottle.”
True, but it is already out of the bottle, as are cloning, AI and nanotechnology. There ain’t no going back.
See e.g. 200,000 GM trees planted in China, and the resulting confusion between two government departments, neither of whom would accept responsibility: those trees are now lost, and there are no records of where to find them.
This does not mean that it won’t do us a lot of good in the future, in the same way that plastics have revolutionised our lives - no matter how many bushes in Argentina have plastic bags in them as a result.
“GM will simply concentrate power over the whole of humankind in the hands of a very small number of huge corporations.”
Possibly, probably even, but so will carbon trading and carbon taxes. The difference is that few corporations ever went to war. And do you think those corporations don’t already have enormous power? I know one - Unilever - that does a lot of good with the power it wields.
So, are you just against corporations and skeptics, and pro-government and believers, or are your views more subtle than that?