James Cameron's truthbombs

This is lifted directly from treehugger in which the director makes the arguement that the only way to make us less apathetic about climate change is to charge us directly.....all arguments about petrol already being £1.25++ a litre can be discussed later...

"Okay, so this is hardly news: it's been apparent for quite some time that coal and oil companies have been funding an ongoing campaign to confuse the public about climate science. Nothing revolutionary there; who would be surprised that fossil fuel industries are protecting their interests? What's surprising is how depressingly effective they've been. Which is why it's encouraging to see a smart, science-savvy public figure like James Cameron -- who also just happened to make the biggest grossing movie in history -- recognizing the travesty perpetrated on the American public.

Cameron is appearing on a CNN International special that's airing this Thursday, called 'The Special Debate for Earth's Frontiers: The Future of Energy'. The debate, which also featured Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, and Changhua Wu, the Greater China Director of the Climate Group , and others, saw Cameron enter the fray, no-holds barred.

He dropped a couple astute truth-bombs, like this one:What I see in the U.S is the oil and coal lobbies spending massive amounts of money on a disinformation campaign that is used to discredit science and steer public opinion away from any sense of social responsibility about climate change.What he sees in the US is the same thing we all see, if we're willing to follow the money . . .

Cameron also commented on the need to price carbon, and the damage our too-low gas prices are doing:"Nothing is going to change until we properly price carbon...Right now gas is US$3 a gallon at the pump... In my perspective, gas is 15 or 20 dollars a gallon if you fully burden it with the cost of all of these big military actions, the overall consequences to the economy and the long term costs of climate change."

Now, some may balk at that figure, and certainly the fact that he's a wealthy film director who can afford all the gas he wants may make him seem out of touch -- but again, I think he's closer to right on than not. Even if you look at the simple externalities, the unaccounted-for environmental costs of burning gasoline -- without the wars -- you still hit a figure way higher than $3 a gallon.Anyhow, the debate looks to be well worth watching. Catch it if you've got an hour to kill this weekend.The Special Debate for Earth's Frontiers: The Future of Energy' airs on CNN International on Thursday 29th April at 1330 BST, Friday 30th April at 0530 BST; Saturday 1st May at 0630, 1830 and 2100 BST; Sunday 2nd May at 0400, 0830 and 1600 BST.

History of medicine

Quite so. in a nutshell.

http://brainfood.howies.co.uk/2010/04/eat-this-root-by-living-medicine/

Power, Dr Emmett Brown's way

When Doc Brown returns from the future to collect Marty - to sort out his kids - they have no need for plutonium to generate one-point-twenty-one jigowatts of power necessary for time travel . He merely flips open the fusion-o-matic hatch on the back of his De Lorean and feeds it with scraps from the dustbin (No idea what I'm talking about? Really!? see Back to the Future).

In 1985, the idea that garbage could be the power source of the future was a humorous sci-fi dream and whilst we've yet to achieve nuclear fusion from banana skins and chicken bones, Refuse Derived Fuels (RDF) are a reality.

Through my work I sometimes have to visit landfill sites and every time, without fail, the scale of these stinking holes fills me with horror. It's not just the size of them that appals me, but also how much of the material that is being buried could be usefully re-used. It will come as a shock to many people to discover that much of the stuff that they put out for recycling, still ends up in a hole in the ground.

In many areas of the country, if you diligently put out your garden waste for collection, or take it to a recycling centre, it goes to a landfill site where it is composted as promised. However, the compost is then used to cap the layers of bin-bags and rotting food to try and create some sort of soil-like structure to the waste beneath. It's a common practice and without it landfill sites would be just pools of festering mess. Much of the wood from recycling sites ends up being shredded and added to the cover too.(see google map below)

If you're even remotely concerned about the practice of putting huge amounts of rubbish into holes in the ground it's a doubly painful experience to see useful material like compost and wood being buried too. And it certainly doesn't have to be like this.

Anaerobic Digestion is just one of the new, proven technologies, that works on small scales in local facilities and generates heat and power from waste. Food and green waste are cooked, the gas collected, and the resulting compost digestate can be used as fertilizer - http://www.biogas-info.co.uk/index.php/what-is-ad-qa. The success of these plants is unquestionable and although there are plenty of hurdles (like what exactly do you do with the compost?) they are small fry compared to the terrible legacy of landfill.

Doc Brown would be further impressed by the next generation of biomass power stations and industrial boilers that run off an ever wider spectrum of waste. At the moment the prime biomass fuel is wood - either residues from the timber industry or clean recycled wood, however, the Germans (of course) are now using materials like MDF, chipboard and even plastics. The trick is in the efficacy of the scrubbers and filters used to clean the emissions and in ensuring that all the CO2 and heat is efficiently harvested for use; not released.

It is possible now to generate huge amounts of power from waste and it is happening now, not in the future (probably close to 1.21GW). Except in Britain where decades of government dithering has meant that we have only a handful of such generators compared with the hundreds in use in Europe.

Consider this too. In the UK councils and businesses have to pay between £50-£90 per tonne to landfill their waste, but in Germany powers stations pay up to £40 per tonne to take it in as fuel.....you do the math as they say.

A landfill site with composting operation FYI

View Landfill site in a larger map

throwdownthrees

classic songs of love and loss from down under's finest songwriters

Don Walker's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILd1O44BDqc

Mark Seymour's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkRNz0tR7tc

Colin Hay's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XK46I_vMeU

devil's dictionary

I'd heard of Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary

, and now I've found it I love it.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/?C

is climate change the biggest SEP?

After nearly a week of pristine blue skies, the sight of aircraft con-trails this morning got me thinking again about climate change and why organisations like BeThatChange struggle to get us angry enough about it to participate in direct action. Or even put our vote where it counts and elect a government that puts environmentalism at the heart of its agenda.

It's well documented that the simple answer is that it seems too far off and too abstract an idea and we can't see how it really impacts on our lives. Yes we care about our kids' future, but it's a lovely day today and even when we are snowed in or flooded out, it's hard for us to blame the mess on Easyjet flight 413 to Malaga. If I took that flight last summer am I to blame when the river rises into my kitchen? Does the patchwork quilt of vapour in the sky today really mean that there won't be food on my son's table in a decade? It's simply too hard to make the two things fit together in a comprehensive way. So I'll go about my business and hope that the government sorts it out like they sorted out my free health care and the financial crisis. Small things I can deal with. The big things are for government; somebody else's problem.

In Douglas Adams' Life the Universe & Everything, Ford explains that the way to cloak a spaceship and make it invisible is to use an SEP field.

"An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye. The technology required to actually make something invisible is so complex and unreliable that it isn't worth the bother.

The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler and more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain."

When searching wikipedia for the quote I was delighted to find that many finer minds than mine have already used the SEP concept when trying to describe big problems that we struggle to deal with. Obama and Sarcozy join environmentalists and economists in paraphrasing Douglas' wit. The sad reality, however, is that because we don't care - or care yet - the government doesn't either. Modern politics is rarely keen to push wise policies for the future if voters don't say they are important today. The SEP flaps its powerful cloak and the problem disappears again. For now.

I've come to believe that the size and scale of climate change is so big that it will always be an SEP until it is really too late, so we might as well ignore it, but in a clever positive way. In Adams' book the only way to unpick an SEP is "to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye." and Ford goes on to explain that if you can ignore the fact that you're ignoring it, then you'll see it. Or words to that effect.

If we ignore the seemingly insurmountable problem that the world is changing dangerously fast, and concentrate on using our refuse to generate power, for example, the SEP can be uncloaked. It's The tired old maxim about thinking globally acting locally writ true.

The key to getting voters to get agitated is to give them small solutions that they can get their heads around and that they think are sensible to demand from politicians. Campaigning for carbon reductions is noble but I fear futile. No one I know, knowingly emits carbon. But I know plenty of people who would love to see their rubbish go to a local plant to produce sustainable power. I know lots of people who would rather take a train or bus to work, if only they could rely on them and they were cheaper.

To make a serious green agenda stick we have to break it down into do-able parts. One will knock on to another and the SEP can be banished harmlessly into space.

the supine activist

Supine - adjective:

1.inactive, passive, or inert, esp. from indolence or indifference.

2. Lying or sitting down

I always liked the idea of direct action but am always disappointed that it usually just results in the be-dreaded horde smashing stuff up. Sadly direct action is now a wobbly catch call for a media stunt, usually 'radical' and often alienating, to raise 'awareness'. Does climate change really need more awareness or just action? Worse, well-intentioned actions are often hijacked and end up being shambolic confrontations.

Dirtmeetsthewater started as a direct action, in the true sense of the word (just getting off my arse and doing something), but not in a political way. We were keen to make a point for sure, but mainly just wanted a clean beach. I had low expectations that our little beach clean would radically change the amount of marine litter sloshing about in the Solent, but the upshot has been that other local organisations have picked up the ball and are running with it. The beach was cleaner for a bit and a lot of unexpected people turned up and did.

The problem is that too often participating in a direct action does actually involve doing something and that is beyond a lot of people. Not always because they don't care but usually because they genuinely don't have the time or feel passionately enough to get involved. In the grand scheme of things marine litter has a very small impact on people's lives.... But the sad truth is that we're not often provoked enough by an issue to get off our arses.

So the new face of successful direct action needs to be the kind that you can do from your desk or sofa. Telethons have long known that it's easier to raise money through the TV and phone lines than by rattling tins on the high street, so it's no surprise that organisations are now trying to harness the power of the supine activist.

Through howies' brainfood blog I came across BeThatChange which has taken this idea to a nicely designed, and (I think) a well thought-out new level. BeThatChange is solidly and loudly apolitical and although they're taking on the minor project of ending world poverty in general, seem grounded in their main aims for their current campaign WakeUp:WalkOut.

Using the big noughties C word - change - they're nicely specific in demanding that the government commit to a 42% carbon reduction as a first step. Rightly bemoaning the anticlimax of Copenhagen, they are suggesting that everyone 'walks out' on Monday 26th April. Stop what you're doing and walk out. Where their plan gets canny is that they then want to create frenzied media storms; mass texting MPs, youtubing streets full of agitators and twittering to the rooftops. This, perhaps more than the physical action of meandering outside, will constitute the new direct action.

I'm a Twitter sceptic (I fear that I just don't get it, or worse, just don't like it), but there has been plenty of evidence that Twitter-storms can lead to policy change or at least a very fast,dynamic and powerful lobbying. Law firm Carter Ruck felt the full force of the Twitterverse when they tried to protect a nasty energy company from negative press and The Mail's Jan Moir got what was coming too when she made one snide homophobic comment too many. Read any article about new media and what becomes clear is that it is now all about speed and mass. It doesn't take much - a few active friends with huge lists of Facebook friends or Twitter followers to get a movement genuine traction in the real world. And it happens fast.

I enjoyed being part of the rage-against-the-X-factor victory. It felt like a win for the angry and ignored who like it loud and real over a faceless, beige, unit-shifting, soulless industry puppet. And it was, no matter how trivial the aim. What the bethatchange guys seem to be hoping is that someone or something (a tweet, a youtube clip or a facebook campaign) will be the catalyst for another 21st century direct action and that meaningful change will result.

Sadly I think that their immediate demand of carbon reduction will not spark the public imagination enough as an issue to really catch a fire, but if they can find that magic lightning bolt that provokes a response.... well it's clear that the new tools for a new kind of direct action are there to harness the couch-bound masses' righteous anger. It taps into the current Zeitgeist of voting with your phone (think dancing-with-the-x-factor-on-ice). Immediate say-so over who stays and who goes. Dial o800 for radical change if you want to reduce carbon emissions and dial 0801 if you want to save the whales. Get involved but costs from mobiles may vary.

What it means for the beach clean and campaigns like it, is that we have to try and get those that are too busy or too idle to trudge down the sand, to get involved without having to use more than their texting thumbs. Think what you like about the apathy and callousness of that state of affairs but you can only use the best tools for the job.

http://www.bethatchange.com/