Answer: a growing realisation of the need to factor the environment into the economy.

Lenihan’s budget today will at last introduce a carbon tax and, with it, the principle of ‘the polluter pays’.

US economist Elinor Ostrom shared this year’s economics Nobel prize for her work on ‘the tragedy of the commons’.

And David McWilliams, in his recent TV series, discovered that all the world’s production of ‘stuff’ is taking its toll on the environment.

Interestingly, for a country averse to taxes, there have been few complaints about the forthcoming carbon tax.  Perhaps the recent floods have brought home to people the stark reality that we need to do something fast about climate change and CO2 levels.

There have however been vociferous calls for a car scrappage deal in today’s budget, mostly from the ‘car industry’, which is to say the car sales industry… who, by their own admission, would not get work in any other industry.

Scrappage schemes are often touted as environmental measures, taking polluting old bangers off the road and replacing them with clean, green fuel-efficient ones.

Yes, new cars may be more fuel-efficient than old ones, but the combined energy and environmental costs of manufacturing a new car outweigh those meagre improvements in efficiency.

Perhaps more importantly, producing new cars, and indeed producing new anything, also uses up ever dwindling resources.

Forget peak oil — that’s only the tip of the (fast-melting) iceberg.  We are also running out of lots of other scarce resources. Or, as David McWilliams put it, we are now facing “peak everything”.

Our best estimates suggest that world reserves of indium – used in LCDs and flat screen TVs – could run out by 2017. Platinum, a vital constituent of catalytic converters and fuel cells, could be exhausted by 2020 (so much so that some researchers are already trying to ‘harvest’ the metal from road dust). Hafnium (used in computer chips) could be gone by 2017.  And terbium (used in fluorescent light bulbs) could be all gone as early as 2012. (Figures from ‘Earth Audit’, by David Coen, New Scientist, issue 2605, 2007)

These are rough estimates, and we may discover new sources for some of the rare elements that buy us a few more years. Landfill mining could yet be the next big thing! But eventually, supplies will run out.

Which is why we need to husband our resources sustainably, not waste them for the sake of a few short term jobs. And which brings me to the ‘tragedy of the commons’.

When something belongs in common to everybody, it belongs to nobody.

So, in the old days, with the village common ground:  it was in every farmer’s interest to graze as many of their livestock as possible on the commons, and conversely, it was in nobody’s interest to apply fertiliser.  Result: overgrazed, and undernourished pasture.

More recently, we have seen the same exploitation of fisheries, to the point where some fish stocks are so overfished that they may now be beyond rescue.

And the same is true of our wasteful and unsustainable use of all the world’s resources.

Biology and medicine has a name for such uncontrolled growth at the expense of the surrounding environment. They call it cancer.

Later today we will know the details of the new carbon tax, and whether Brian Lenihan has yielded to calls for a car scrappage scheme.

It would be nice to think he will say No to the car industry.  That instead he’s  going to introduce new measures to sustainably support the car maintenance industry, perhaps even courses to reskill salespeople as mechanics. After all, if anyone knows about the damage that can be done by a poorly controlled financial sector, it’s the Minister for Finance.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Can you suggest any uses for an e-voting machine?

I’m thinking we could rent them out for Lisbon Treaty referenda — free for the first 30 minutes — and hope that users wouldn’t return them!

An idea prompted by the fact that Dublin’s new bicycles have hit the streets at last : 450 bright and robust machines in a scheme that provides cheap efficient transport for short journeys.  Fingers crossed that this will be a great success.

Meanwhile, another, ostensibly high-tech machine was also in the news again: the ongoing saga of those e-voting machines. Storing the 7,500 machines this year is going to cost us €800,000, or a little over €100 each.  That’s on top of all the costs to date, not to mention the public’s loss of trust in technology.

So, could we not put them to some use instead?

Maybe give one to every school . . . they could be used for civics lessons in democracy, and technology classes for how not to design an e-voting machine.

Or install them in libraries and public spaces, for local referenda and community surveys (what to call Dingle/An Daingean, for instance) .

Or offer them to artists.  Surely someone out there can come up with a creative idea for an installation using a bank of these?  There’s even a precedent: Dublin City Council gave artists use of the (now vanished) kiosks on Capel Street bridge for a while, when they proved uncommercial.

We could have a competition for suggestions, but no e-voting allowed.

Or, maybe we should rent them out like bicycles.  And if you don’t return the machine within the allocated time, we give you €100!

Cheaper than this long-term storage, and save us all a big headache as well.

We’ve been watching a car crash unfold here over the last few days, as the future of General Motors was decided.  Or at least, the short-term future.

I’m posting this from southern Ontario, where in fairness thousands of jobs currently depend on the American auto industry.

As it happens, this is also the homeland of the Iroquois
people, whose Great Law requires that “in every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations”.

Looking at the long-term, 150-200 year impact of your actions and decisions, is surely the essence of sustainability. Sadly, that’s not how the decisions about General Motors were reached this weekend.

GM, remember, is the company that gave us the Hummer.

The good news is that GM will no longer make Hummers as part of its “reinvention” as a “leaner, greener ([sic], faster and stronger” company.  The bad news is that some other company has bought the brand, and clearly believes there is a future in gas-guzzling tanks.

Time was, people used to say that ‘what is good for General Motors, is good for America ‘. Actually, that’s a misquote. But understandable, given how central the motor car was to the American dream for the last 100 years.

The question now should be, as the Iroquois would ask, what about the next 100 years.

But governments here are looking, at best, to the next couple of years.  They’ve agreed to pump billions into GM in a bid to save jobs, and presumably in the belief that this 20th-century dinosaur can be turned around, and in no time at all. This despite the competition from more efficient Japanese imports, and the competition that will soon be coming from the new Chinese and Indian car industries.

In the run-up to the bankruptcy decision, I wondered if there was any chance that GM might actually be sacrificed?  After all, a number of banks have been let fail over the last couple of years, something that would have been unthinkable a few years before.

But while banks may be essential to the financial system, the American car industry employs far more people, and more voters.

I may not know much about cars, the auto industry and mega restructuring deals, but I do know that North America’s 20th-century car industry is not a sustainable future.

We can’t all install a wind turbine at the bottom of the garden, yet simply changing when we use electricity can make our power consumption greener.

Some years ago, making a science programme for RTE radio, I was let into the inner sanctum where skilled engineers control the Ireland’s electrcity supply to meet the constant rise and fall in demand across the national grid.

There, in a darkened room (the better to see all the computer displays), the Eirgrid engineers work not unlike air traffic controllers.  They have their fingers on the pulse of the nation, and their hands (literally) on the levers of power.

Electricity consumption in Ireland rose steadily over recent years. All those new homes, all those new appliances, all those switched-on lives. So much so that demand was almost outstripping supply, and new power plants were planned.  (It will be interesting to see if peak demand falls over coming months as the recession bites.)

Demand is highest in winter, as you might expect, but not on Christmas day as I had thought.  (Surely, with all those turkeys in all those ovens, all those lights on all those trees? But no: lots of households get together, and more importantly, most industry has shut down.)

No, the worst time — when supply from power plants has trouble meeting demand — is 5-7pm on cold winter week nights. That’s the electric rush hour, when the heating is on and everyone is cooking dinner in homes across the country, and all the power stations have to be brought on stream, including older and more polluting and inefficient ones.

In other words, it’s the dirtiest time for electricity generation.

(And the most expensive: commercial customers may be charged more for rush hour electricity. This is why CERN’s LHC experiment on the Swiss-French border will shut down for three months every winter: particle accelerators are heavy power users, and winter electricity is just too expensive, even for the world’s biggest experiment.)

Power production is cleanest and greenest, on the other hand, when demand is lowest – usually late at night.

So, if you want greener electricity, and can’t install a wind turbine, here’s a simple tip: spread your electricity consumption more evenly across the day, and try to reduce consumption during the peak hours of 5-7pm.

Leave the dishwasher and clothes wash till later, maybe use a microwave instead of a conventional oven, listen to the radio news instead of the TV.

By reducing peak demand, you’re helping to reduce the number of new power plants needed!

You can monitor Irish electricity demand and supply in real time on the Eirgrid website. Here’s a recent snapshot of the system (left), taken on the evening of March 10th 2009.

And at 8.30pm on Saturday March 28th, why not turn off all your lights? And join millions of others around the world in marking Earth Hour.

If enough city dwellers do it, you might even get to see the stars again. And if you can survive an hour in the dark, then you don’t have to turn all the lights back on at 9.30pm!  Fewer lights burning? Think of it as ambience.

And remember: night-time electricity is cleaner and greener.  So, spread the workload, and spread the word.

]]> http://marymulvihill.net/2009/03/10/earth-hour-2009-the-lhc-and-greening-your-electricity/feed/ 1 Mary Mulvihill earth-hour eirgrid http://marymulvihill.net/2009/02/01/how-do-you-cook-porridge/ http://marymulvihill.net/2009/02/01/how-do-you-cook-porridge/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:45:52 +0000 marymulv http://marymulvihill.net/?p=140 ]]>

Mmmh. With raspberry purée, cream and toasted almonds

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love porridge, and those who have yet to discover the tastiest, healthiest, greenest and cheapest way to start the day.

For the latter, all I can say is, don’t just take my word for it — food alchemist Heston Blumenthal’s favourite is porridge with blueberries.

And why is porridge so good and ‘green’? Well, oats are a native Irish crop, locally grown and needing little processing, so they are low in food miles, and you are supporting local farmers. There is no added salt or sugar. Oats also help lower cholesterol and blood pressure and, because they are more filling,  you are less likely to want a snack afterwards.

As well as being good for you, oats are much cheaper than other breakfast cereals, and a kilo lasts much longer, so you save bundles, and there’s less packaging.  Plus, they are a handy pantry staple for making oatmeal cookies and a nice fruit crumble topping.

But how to cook porridge? That was the burning technical question that engaged the science journalists, foodies and environmental engineers in O’Neill’s pub, after Tuesday’s launch of my new book*– eating porridge being the first tip in the book.

And, again, it seems that the world is divided in two: those who use the microwave, and those who use the hob.

I’m a wave power woman myself: two minutes in the microwave is predictable, needs no watching (just stir once halfway), and best of all there is no porridge pot to wash, which I reckon is a significant saving.  (The better half also likes to make his from oatmeal (rather than rolled oats), so if we were to use the hob would be into two pots.) Health journalist Aileen O’Meara, however, favours the hob. While environment engineer Kevin O’Rourke was inclined to think the microwave was more energy-efficient.  But who was right?

A couple of days later Leo Hickman tackled this very question in The Guardian environment section.   The conclusion was that using a microwave uses marginally less energy.    But, factor in the savings in washing-up, and the microwave probably wins out. (Sorry, Aileen)

It just remains to decide what to serve with the porridge.  We’re running down the freezer supplies just now, so this week it’s frozen raspberry purée with toasted almonds.  Other  favourites include: a small apple grated into the oats before cooking, then topped with toasted almonds and honey; or served with some raisins and toasted nuts and seeds, with honey to taste.  Our ‘Sunday special’ — very popular with readers in O’Neill’s pub the other night! –  is served with a drizzle of whiskey, some honey, cream and hazelnuts.

*Thanks to everyone who came and made the launch such a great night.  And a big thanks to everyone who didn’t come from far and wide, especially Carmel in Belgium, and helped to keep the event’s carbon footprint to a minimum!

A dramatic drop in the prices paid on international markets means that Irish waste companies have rather a lot of material which they are currently storing, presumably with more arriving every day.

(Image: enviro-solutions.com)

The cost of storing all this waste presumably means that companies will need an even better price if they are to recover their costs. Hence the suggestion that waste collection charges would have to go up.

But surely, since these are useful materials, there is something creative we can do with them? Some new businesses that could be started?

Suggestions on a postcard please to the Environment Minister’s new action group, which has been given until mid-November to come up with some options.

The 4,000 inhabitants spent €54 million (raised in local taxes and investment), to install nearly a dozen wind turbines on land, and the same again offshore, plus banks of solar panels, and some biomass generators.

The scheme has been so successful it is selling electricity to the mainland and generating an income for the locals — albeit about €68 per household a year.

Shows what can be done. Looks pretty idyllic too – we predict a boom in ecotourism there.

Tesco and other British high street multiples are introducing carbon labelling on selected products, and the Japanese government recently announced something similar.

But, I’m not convinced that this carbon labelling will work.

First, counting carbon (and the other greenhouse gases) isn’t easy: accurate calculations are difficult to come by, and specific to each context (change what you feed the chickens on a particular farm, and the carbon count for the supermarket chicken korma dinner changes dramatically). Then, there is the problem of what to include — only carbon? Other greenhouse gases? And how do we take account of the ‘virtual water’ contained in products?

Food product labels are already littered with data (calories, ‘nutritional’ information, and ‘may contain nuts’ allergy warnings . . .) and at a time when shoppers are probably most interested in what something costs.

Printing calorie information on food products hasn’t exactly stemmed the rise in obesity. And if we can’t as a nation manage a lo-cal diet, what chance for a lo-CO2 one? Meanwhile, Tesco has just announced a big drive to introduce yet more cheap ranges of low-cost products. Guess we can say goodbye to the organic aisle.

But are they really helping the environment? Or hoping to save money on their laundry bills?

I’ve been pondering this since reading about how hotels can make their ‘towel reuse signs’ more effective by wording them carefully. You can read about the study in the enjoyable and generally thought-provoking book Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion.

Sure, less laundry is ‘a good thing’ — it translates into less water wasted, less energy and detergents used, and less linen trucked around the place. But let’s have a little honesty here.

I have yet to see a hotel announce that, thanks to guests reusing their towels, the company saved €xxx on its laundry bill last year, which it donated to a named environmental charity*, and with your help they’ll save, or ‘raise’, even more this year.

Now, that’s a wording that would really convince me not just to reuse my towels — but even bring my own.

*With the receipt displayed proudly in the hotel lobby

Today, July 11, is World Population Day, inaugurated in 1988 by the United Nations to mark the day when the world’s population hit five billion, July 11, 1987.

The counter is at www.worldometers.info, where we learn that the absolute growth in population today (at the time of writing) is 135,468. Watching all the numbers spin around can be mesmerising. And worrying.

Some of the counters clock up slowly — the number of women who died in childbirth, for instance, although that depressing total is already over 330,000. Reassuring, on the other hand, if we can believe the statistics, that world expenditure on education is nearly twice military expenditure.

Other eye-catching comparisons: as a committed city cyclist, it’s nice to see that twice as many bicycles have been produced as cars this year, although I’m intrigued to see that there are three times as many computers as bicycles.

And can there really be nearly half a million new book titles so far this year? (Enough to humble any author who will soon be adding to the pile!)