the price of good beaches

Last week's Tonight programme on ITV was titled 'how safe is your beach?', and proceeded to investigate the cleanliness of sand and water on our nations beaches - particularly those rated 'good' that turned out to be 'bad'.

Tonight does have a habit of reducing important issues to sub-tabloid levels of hyper-sensationalism, but it was pretty well balanced and didn't get too over excited despite the use of a lot of rather nebulous stats. What exactly does a "one in seven chance of getting sick" really mean? Am I really going to get sick every seventh time I go swimming? I do worry that alarmist stats like that actually numb the viewer into a general sense of unspecific unease without helping to really press the case. We don't want people to avoid the beach - just take more care of it.

As clean beaches are the basic raison d'etre of this blog I was delighted to see the issue on prime-time, even if there was a definite sense of deja vu. The Beeb's Panorama covered the story in slightly more graphic style last year from Surfers Against Sewage's perspective and Tonight's version didn't raise much that was really new. They were obviously sparked by the release of the MCS' annual Good Beach Guide, which is a curate's egg of a thing, as the BBC website reported with a blindingly confused title, "More UK bathing beaches have excellent water quality than last year, but pollution has worsened since 2006, the Marine Conservation Society says. It rated 421 of 769 beaches as excellent - 33 more than 2009, but below the 505 rated highly in 2006."

I'm afraid that if you're being harsh that synopsis really reads as 'Some of Britain's beaches are a bit better than last year but they're mainly still shit'.

I did enjoy the part of the programme where the reporter gave the Environment Agency spokesman a deserved kicking and the poorly-chosen spokesman for the water industry twitched and flinched through the interrogation and just made his clients look as culpable as they undoubtedly are.

The idiot from the EA made the statement that you were 'more likely to drown on a beach than get sick from the water', which the reporter quickly informed us was rubbish - actually there's a one in a million chance of drowning versus the vaunted one in seven chance of getting sick. The man from the Agency quickly disappeared up his own fundament with gibberish phrases like 'I'm not sighted on that intelligence' and firmly proved that the EA has no control over the water industry it is supposed to police (it lets them record and reveal how often they pump poop into the oceans without any oversight), and worse, that its senior officials are happy to blurt out made up stats.

So here we are again. Another pretty good bit of TV that highlights a serious problem and reminds us how dangerous uncontrolled utilities companies can be, but what will actually happen to improve the situation, particularly in relation to allowing untreated sewage to be vented into the sea?

SAS reports that there are over "4,000 unregulated Combine Sewer Overflows (CSOs)" in the UK which are overflow pipes which release excess 'fluid' into the sea when the storm drains overwhelm the sewage system. The water industry seems reluctant in the extreme to do anything to prevent or even reduce the practice, but in a country where it has been known to rain a bit, it seems unbelievable that this 17th century practice is still so prevalent.

SAS are maintaining their pressure (see their article here), but they acknowledge that it will require more action to see significant change.

What no-one asked is why raw sewage has to be pumped into the sea at any time? What are the alternatives and why aren't they happening or being made to happen? The age-old argument that it's a problem of the the antiquated infrastructure that the water companies inherited can't be sustained any longer. Surely they should be obligated to find a way of keeping storm water and sewage separate. With BP having to shoulder responsibility for the toxins they're releasing into the Gulf of Mexico, so too should the water companies take responsibility for their mess.

From an economic point of view, the water companies' major costs are tied to the volumes of water that they have to treat - thus CSO's provide a handy reduction in sewage that they have to process, reducing treatment volumes and therefore costs. Just as a bye-the-bye, I read that Severn Trent Water has reported a 19% increase in profits to £541m for 2009/10 and

South West Water's pre-tax profits have risen by almost 9% over the past 12 months.

Profits went up by 8.7% to £132.5m.

A quick wild under-guesstimate.

4,000 CSOs each releasing 100,000 litres each stormy day (I imagine it's a lot more given that an Olympic pool holds 2.5 million litres), and guess that there are a minimum of 30 stormy days a year? Equals a rough 12,000,000,000 litres. Or a little over a European billion.

Even if you wildly under-guesstimate the amount of merdre being released by the CSO's around the coast, it adds up to a frightening amount of crap that really has no business being there at all and a huge saving to the companies' shareholders.

What to do? Simples as the meercat would say. Install flow metres on every CSO and charge the responsible company per litre that is released. Fair discounts will apply for the ratio of water to poo, but a base of 50p per litre would make the companies move pretty quickly I'd imagine (£6 billion by my spurious maths).

Reasons why not? None I can see.

Chris Huhne

Chris Huhne is the MP covering our much maligned beach in Hamble and I have met him on a couple of occasions regarding environmental issues. As a constiuency MP he was excellent - dealing with my requests swiftly and writing to the Minister in question (then labour) and letting me know how the follow up went.

And now he's Energy Minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and as the Gruniad comments, he has the experience and power to make 'cleantech' a viable way forward for the government....

"At the risk of sounding like a mini Alan Sugar, what the Department of Energy and Climate Change needs now is to get business savvy.

We've had just about all the bureaucracy we can stand with the likes, as worthy as they are, of the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling schemes and the Carbon Reduction Commitment. To keep DECC relevant, what we need now is an effective green investment bank to hand out smart loans swiftly to support projects for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

We also need government to help businesses, especially in the engineering and manufacturing sectors, to save energy and innovate with clean tech products via small loans and tax rebates. In addition, companies investing in renewable energy production need clarification on the Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy system quickly.

The arrival of Chris Huhne as energy minister at DECC is a good sign. He is aware of the investment needs of cleantech and, after his stint in the City as vice chair of ratings agency Fitch, he'll know how business and investors work, and hopefully how the department can work with them.

Unsurprisingly, RenewableUK has told me it is "delighted by the proposal of the coalition government to increase renewable energy targets". But Richard Gledhill, global leader of climate change and carbon market services at PwC, took a more reserved stance, explaining: "Chris Huhne… has got to keep the lights on and to keep energy affordable, at a time when public expenditure is going to be under huge pressure."

We will no doubt see an upward trend to energy prices as a result of various climate change levies, and DECC will have to be fair and transparent about how the money will be raised and where it is going.

There is also a need to deal with EU carbon pricing realistically. If the carbon price is to be useful to compliant businesses it needs to be more stable and to rise predictably; but that's a matter to be dealt with at the European level, and will take time. Part of this shift may involve supporting a 30% reduction in EU emissions by 2020, to lower the emissions cap.

His experience in the investment community will make Huhne more likely than most to spot the wise bets in clean energy. His more challenging task may be in overcoming the political obstacles along his way."

The guardian sustainable business section also reports here on more from Chris and the new green government...

bluebell woods

cutting across country to avoid jams on the M5 has its rewards

Guido’s Advice to Newbie MPs

I regularly follow Guido Fawkes' political blog - not because I agree with is right-ish/libertarian sentiments - but mainly because he pulls no punches and skewers left and right equally.

So I am happy to cut and paste his advice, and warning to the new batch of MPs; whoever their leader might maybe.

"First day for a couple of hundred or so new MPs today. The thrill of looking for a new office, excitement at your new status, a slight sense of disbelief that you pulled it off. Congratulations, well done.

Here’s some advice. Read the Green Book, it is your responsibility to know the rules. Better still read the Shadow Kelly Report on reforming the rules and best practise, there are copies in the House of Commons library. Screw up and try to use the excuse “I thought it was within the rules”and you’ll be unemployed after the next election (which might be sooner than you think).

Don’t claim for a single thing that you don’t want to see on the front page of your local constituency newspaper.

Why are you in parliament? If it just to climb the greasy pole of power (and for many of you it is) well nothing Guido says is going to influence you. If you have ideals, hold onto them, resist all baubles and temptations that might lead you to abandon those ideals. Being a backbench MP who influences legislation for the better is a worthy if not so glamorous role.

Finally, never forget Guido and his co-conspirators will be watching you. Step out of line by doing the wrong thing and we’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks. Be seeing you…."

Eneropa

And the interesting (wacky/clever/could that work?) ideas are coming thick and fast at the moment - and it's another Euro architect who has caught my eye.

The gruniad reports that maverick architect Rem Koolhaas has wiped out a couple of millennia of history and re-drawn the national boundaries of Europe along sustainable energy lines. The article is nicely Utopian and as As Reinier de Graaf, the partner in charge of the proposal, says (I suspect with his tongue in his cheek): "Megalomania is a standard part of our repertoire."

The graphics make tasty food for thought.

Organic seaweed farm powers bio-hydrogen airship

How can you go past a headline like that?

Regular readers will know that I have a love of both quality sci-fi and sensible environmental solutions to our planet's travails, so this idea from Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut ticks all my boxes..... except perhaps the one marked simple and quick to install. But why pick holes with an idea that includes airships powered by seaweed. That's got to be ace hasn't it? Briefly, Monsieur Callebaut has dreampt up a sustainable air-cargo ship/office block that is powered by renewable bio-gas from fast-growing organic matter.

The full story is here on treehugger and whilst it is easy to dismiss as a mad scientist's flight of fancy, it does show the kind of integrated big thinking that is needed - not just for practical advances covering several problems at once - but in setting an engineering agenda too. And it looks super-cool to boot.

Change - yeah yeah blah blah

Tomorrow the UK goes to the polls to vote for change. Or for more of the same. All the parties are claiming that they are the only true agents of change, but really this is like a choice between takeaways; all are superficially tasty with the promise of fulfilment, but bad for you in the long run. Burgers, pizzas or chips - that's the choice - there's nothing radical on offer like vegan, Nepalese or macrobiotic - not even a basic vegetarian option. Nothing that might be hard to stomach to begin with but that is ultimately healthy and life-boosting.

And we've heard it all before Obama said 'Change' and everyone was filled with joy and a new dawn emerged. Frankly being African-American was change enough and it showed that the most blighted political landscape could be changed radically without him even having to sign a bill into law. The fact that he's gone on to be true to his word on big issues like healthcare ensures that he'll be rightly remembered for far more than his skin. We don't have such a candidate - they all say 'Change' and we say 'yeah yeah blah blah.'

The media is slathering that this has been the most exciting and extraordinary campaign in decades, but also point out that even with the emergence of Nick's Liberal Democrats, none of the three leaders are telling the electorate anything they don't want to hear. Like details of the fact that the country is going to have to undergo some very nasty belt-tightening that means none of us are going to feel better off for years. They're not saying that vital investment in environmental development will surely be slashed and that we're all in for a grim old time.

As with politics stateside, there's precious little obvious difference between the parties' policy-wise so we end up electorally lashing out at them all - "a plague on both your houses". The LibDems have done well purely because they are the only ones who haven't been in power since Prime Ministers had big moustaches and MPs wore fob-watches. They're agents for change simply because the other two haven't let them play with the ball since the first world war.

I always used to joke that I'd vote LibDem for a bit of a giggle - it would be funny to see them in power - but the joke is on me now as they do have a good chance of wielding power of some kind and are really the only ones with the chance to deliver some kind of change. Even if it's token gestures here and there. And there's the rub. Until we the people really get involved and demand change as a set of tangible, measurable actions then we'll get the government we deserve and be back here, on the eve of another election, with even less of a choice than before. The prospect of a hung parliament is the opportunity that activists (supine or otherwise) have to grasp and enforce real change, real fairness and real action.

So change will surely come with the new government, but it's not an Obama-esque hope-filled change we might wish for (there's no-one with his charisma standing here); it's a change like The Who sang about...."meet the new boss, same as the old boss....won't get fooled again". Will we?

Duh! story of the day

Just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" such as a park can boost mental health, researchers claim.

This is a charming story on the BBC website that really is a 'you don't say!?' story and apparently "There is growing evidence that combining activities such as walking or cycling with nature boosts well-being." Who'd have thunk it?

"In the latest analysis, UK researchers looked at evidence from 1,250 people in 10 studies and found fast improvements in mood and self-esteem. The study in the Environmental Science and Technology journal suggested the strongest impact was on young people.

The research looked at many different outdoor activities including walking, gardening, cycling, fishing, boating, horse-riding and farming in locations such as a park, garden or nature trail.

The biggest effect was seen within just five minutes.

With longer periods of time exercising in a green environment, the positive effects were clearly apparent but were of a smaller magnitude, the study found.

Looking at men and women of different ages, the researchers found the health changes - physical and mental - were particularly strong in the young and the mentally-ill.

A bigger effect was seen with exercise in an area that also contained water - such as a lake or river."

I'm not sure what is more worrying - the fact that Mind, the excellent mental health charity, thought that it was necessary to conduct a study of the bleeding obvious (is water wet and fire hot?), or the fact that the Environmental Science and Technology journal found it necessary to point it out to the world. It is a sad, sad day when people are unaware that getting out into nature makes you feel better.

On the flip side - hooray for publicising the outdoors to glum people. I know that even a short burst of mother nature always heals me.

I love a good oil spill

Simon Barnes, writing in The Times today, makes the point that no one can really argue with...it's a silly way to live.

"I love a good oil spill. With a really good oil spill, every possibility of ambiguity is vanquished. With an oil spill, there really is no “on the other hand”. An oil spill is plainly, unremittingly, remorselessly dreadful. I love a good oil spill because there is not a single good thing that can be said about it.

I’ve been to one. I was in West Wales when the Sea Empresswent down in 1996. The sweet smell that hung in the air wasn’t even unpleasant, just hideously unnatural. A scent that told you fast as intuition that the world was out of joint.

I saw three or four ducks flying over the roofs. If you were any kind of birder you could feel the awfulness of this event. These ducks were scoters, sea ducks, and they never, ever, fly over land. Their minds had been scrambled by the terrible things that had happened to the place they live in.

On the beach I saw another scoter swimming along gamely. It was up to its neck. This was a duck, for God’s sake, the most buoyant thing on the planet, and it was going down with all hands, going down even as the stinking black treacle oozed on to the shore. No one, human or duck, could be in any two minds about the matter. It was awful.

It is even more awful as the great slick slithers across the Gulf of Mexico and starts to devastate the coast of the southern United States. I’ve been there, too. I saw brown pelicans, majestic aeronauts with comic-book beaks, and roseate spoonbills, bright pink birds with a beak like a ladle. Both species, along with many others, are going to cop it from the oil.

We have a dreadful oil spill, and we say, oh, this is dreadful, and dreadful it is. And then a few years pass and we have another one. We don’t seem to be making much progress. In the United States, they had the spill from the Exxon Valdez as far back as 1989.

You’d have thought that any country would do anything to stop such a thing happening again, but here it is, happening again. It’s a different format of disaster — this is a rig, not a ship — but it’s the same old oil, and it’s here for the same old reason: because safety precautions are insufficient. It is more important to get oil than to stop occasional wallops of it polluting the world.

These spills concentrate the mind, at least for a while. They tell us that our addiction to oil is madness, that our short-term thinking is madness, that our reckless approach to containment — oil at any price — is madness. Treasure this spill: it is a rare occasion on which we can see this essential truth of the way we run our lives with absolute clarity.

We crave oil as the junkie craves his fix, and like the junkie, we will put up with anything to get it. But even for an addict, there come moments of searing clarity. A sudden revelation that this is actually a stupid way to live life. Well, the spill tells us that this is a stupid way to run our planet.

It threatens the continued existence of brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis, roseate spoonbill Platalea ajaja and human beingHomo sapiens. Perhaps it’s time we did something about it.