Thanks for the eggbox blurb efforts on the previous posts, chaps. Keep them coming!
No time to stop today - again - as I've missed the deadline for an article and really should know better. As a peace offering, have a clip from an e-mail I can't quite believe I just sent...
"...as a member of the public, if I was given the choice of attending the (insert worthy cause here) AGM or watching a duck die in the river, I'd probably have to think about it.
At least the river is handy for the chip shop."
At least the river is handy for the chip shop."
11 comments:
Dear Hedgewizard,
I finally finished your blog yesterday! It was a labour of like (love's just too strong a word at this stage isn't it :0D) and I really enjoyed it!
You've really opened my eyes to certain things and as I'm a novice gardener it's much appreciated.
However, I'd like to pose a poseur if I may? It's a serious question because I know a bit about logistics and I'm genuinely curious about something.
What happens to the argument on food miles if the transport was carbon neutral and environmentally friendly?
I think it will eventually happen and it's much more efficient to transport things by road in the general case - rail can only going point to point whereas trucks can go to variable places.
I take valid points on air travel - but if someday engineers stick solar panels on the outside to power it inflight and they have a battery to get into the air which recharges during the flight... what then happens to the argument on buying and staying local?
I'm being serious and am not trying to wind people up - I'd like to know your thoughts!
But it the chicken and egg thing, at the moment we are doing bugger all to seriously reduce our carbon use, because we don't as yet really have to. As soon as things get more expensive and shortages occur, more people will take notice, and as the saying goes "Necessity is the mother of invention." However there may well be a period in between a "solution" and post peak oil that means we'll all have to make sacrifices. Getting ready for this and doing something to reduce oil consumption now can only help.
And as to those as yet un-invented inventions, well who can say, we may be visited by a far more advanced alien race who have already sort it. And no I'm not taking the piss (much), all the odds are that in the vastness of the Universe there has to be other life forms and some will be more advanced than us.
Marvo: (May I call you Marvo? Excellent) Aah, Greentech. This is an argument much touted by Government and industry alike; 'The green technology isn't ready yet but it's on the way'. Unfortunately none of it is on the way fast enough. We're already on the wobbly plateau at the top of the Hubbert Curve, or at least so it appears. So how much time have we left to develop this new green technology? Ten years, perhaps fifteen at most. The whole point about Transition is that you don't cross your fingers and hope for the best - you work with what you've got. As for truly carbon-neutral transport... that's what we're going to have to aim for, and it will make moving things long-distance very expensive. Think wind/solar hybrid cargo ships, rail port-to-station, solar/biodiesel station-to-shop/village, and horse/bicycle/walking shop-to-home. It can be done, but local produce will win every time!
Cheezy: How true! Sadly Carl Sagan's work on the likelihood of alien contact proved that although alien life is (we now think) a certainty, the probability of two cultures meeting over their own lifetimes is practically zero. A fat lot of use, then!
Hedgie: (you can call me Marvo if I can call you Hedgie - deal?).
A) I'm not saying that Transition work isn't a good thing but there have already been advances in developing a car engine that runs on sea water.
B) Yes, I agree that initially these things will be very expensive - true - but economies of scale should reduce it. All handmade crafted items are and should be expensive because of the way we cost time. Labour is the most expensive cost in any manufacturing organisation. This is why outsourcing to foreign companies happens. However, because hand crafting takes up so much time, we try and find ways to reduce this time so we go for mass manufacture - and this is where cost reductions can be made. The downside is labour reduction and what that does to people but I digress. Anyway, my point it that once these technologies are developed sufficiently to have manufacturing trials, then the manufacturing engineers take over and strive for replicability and repeatability of a sufficient standard to mass manufacture at lower cost. This then makes technology affordable.
So - yes I agree with doing more locally but I also think all of us should be lobbying more for investment - I actually don't think it's that far off you know - certainly not tens of years away - its just the money isn't currently there.
btw - am a manufacturing engineer so kinda have some clue about this.
Oh I forgot to say, Cheezy - I agree with you.
My point of view is that we should all strive to be carbon neutral anyway. Not just to "save the planet" (even though I know it needs it) but because its the right thing to do. That's why I love Hedgewizard's story - he's totally doing what I'd love to be doing.
But my own point as - post whatever peaks are there (sorry not read enough about it) - the fact remains that technology is definitely one of the ways forward. And I do think we'll get to a time where we will have sustainable transport at a sufficient standard to be able to import / export items to our hearts content.
Whether the products being imported are of good standard is another subject altogether. I'm not talking about that - home grown veg is much nicer than bought in veg. But what I AM saying is that the transport of such goods and commodities can be carbon neutral (or as close to neutral as you can get) if the investment is there.
And if that's the case - apart from the flavour and nutrition arguments against it - I can't really see an argument against importing / exporting.
(me ducks now)
Marvo: Be my guest! Everyone calls me Hedgie online anyway.
A) This'll be the John Kanzius affair. It's a dead duck, I'm afraid; Kanzius died in February (from pneumonia) which has allowed more open discussion of his work. It appears that what he discovered was how to use tightbeamed RF to mimic the EMR signature of a catalyst (probably platinum). Yes, he was breaking down the seawater; and no, he's not generating any energy - just transforming his RF energy into hydrogen, with a little waste along the way (despite some of his later media claims). The good news is that although this isn't an energy source, it could revolutionize catalytic converter design.
B) I'm with you on the manufacturing issues, but not on the physics and economics. Take fossil energy out of the picture, and transport costs trump everything else. We'll still import and export, but it'll increasingly be high-value goods only; the icing, rather than the cake.
I hope I'm wrong about greentech being too little, too late - I really do. But I can't bank on it when no single technology stacks up - fossil energy simply provides an absurdly high return compared with everything else. We've got used to having it, and now we've got to get used to having less of it every decade for the next couple of hundred years.
We're not going to thrash this one out between the pair of us without an evening and a moderate amount of beer, but let me encourage you to read a bit about peak oil. Wikipedia is a bit heavy, but at least it's not got an axe to grind and you can follow references from there.
BTW - I'm nowhere near carbon neutral and probably never will be; it's a journey (sometimes called a descent plan) that I take a step down every time I'm ready. That's what Transition is about!
Hedgie - I'll have a look but I'm also going to read the skeptical environmentalist as well.
I believe in global warming but I'm just sketchy on the causes!
One problem I see all the time is that we humans tends to become fixated on technological solutions to problems instead of averting the problems in the first place.
We live out in the sticks, and are a few miles from the nearest village. Until 20 years or so ago, most families had just one car, children walked to school, and shopping was done in the village a couple of times a month.
Now, almost everyone (bar us) has two or three cars, children are bused to school, and people think nothing of driving an hour or more several times a week to go shopping.
To maintain that, most people want technological solutions such as more environmentally friendly cars. This is "progress".
We, on the other hand, have got rid of our second car and walk/cycle as much as possible, much as people would have done until recently. That makes us "backward".
If you enlarge the scale, we find there's an ever increasing demand for electricity to meet the consumption of the modern, Western household's plethora of TVs, games consoles, mobile phones, MP3 players, computers, printers, scanners, electric toothbrushes, digital cameras, hair straighteners, robotic vacuum cleaners and more. That demand for energy results in increasing pollution, so the standard answer is "find a technological fix" to make everything clean.
The non-standard answer is to asked if we really need all this energy consuming dross. We managed quite well until very recently without most of it.
But I would think that as I'm a curmudgeonly old Luddite, or so people tell me!
No Stoney your a nutter! (and I've said so before), one of whome I'm much in awe of.
Marvo, have a wonder through the link in his post into Stoney's life, and you'll soon realise that the techno answer had better come soon as anything else is bloody hard work.
To put Stoney into context (Warning making assumptions on someone via their blogg is bad form so I appologise now!)
He's not from the hairshirt brigade, he's just a bloke trying to live his life without having to work for "The Man." Ergo utilities and technology cost money, so you have to do as much as possible to reduce these.(insert the phase self sufficient if you like) So you have to resort to human hard work, as it is cheaper.
What's his life choice gotta to with us?, well his choice has lead him down the low tech, low consumption route, a route which we may have to take notice of if the price of oil keeps going up as production goes down.
(where's that beer HW)
What worries me is that there are people out there who believe that if they get someone to plant a few trees because they took the kids to Disney Land, that makes the holiday "Carbon Neutral". They are missing the whole point.When one form of carbon (i.e oil) runs out, no amount of bloody trees are going to save your arse!.
Hello!
Stonehead (may I call you Stoney?), I applaud your mission and I promise I'll have a read of your blog soon.
However, I firmly believe we are too techologically advanced to give it all up now. I genuinely do not see a problem with technological solutions if they are "neutral". I do however, believe that we should reduce, reuse and recycle and compost where possible. I think the two can merge together with the caveat that we only buy what we need etc.
I lived for two years without a tv and didn't miss it at all. However I do like going to the cinema and out for dinner etc and socialising. Thats what makes techology so wonderful - we can do more things and travel and get new insights into the world and ideas from it.
In my work I desperately need a computer and a printer and the internet but because I do a lot of printing I collect used paper around the company and print drafts on the clean side. It's my way of preventing unnecessary spending on new paper (for myself at least)
When I worked in manufacturing - there were masses of initiatives to be greener (probably a little too late but there we go) with new energy saving lightbulbs being bought, paper and ink cartridge recycling going on etc so there are people trying to do their bit as companies (all could be doing more I agree). The way I see it is that if these companies could provide their own energy from sustainable means and were as green as possible then we should applaud them. They provide jobs which provides money and therefore necessary in this world where money rules everything.
Obviously, not having read your blog yet, I don't totally understand where or how you're living but if you're lucky to get on with your relatives and family it's great and certainly subsists your way of life. It is my opinion that for those who don't get on with family or friends what you're proposing will lead to social isolation because moving on or back will be that more difficult.
I do think there are aspects of technology that we don't need. I also believe that walking and cycling where possible is to be highly recommended but I do think that any permanent solution will include urban and country planning along with improved technologies.
I simply can't see any other way alternative to this because (and apologies here) I think that although there are some for which living permanently locally and rurally (in a lot of cases) would lead to stagnation and isolation.
People flock to towns and cities for many more reasons than energy and regardless of whether we run out of energy or not that trend will continue. Therefore it needs supporting and thus we need energy.
Because of this I think that if and when the oil runs out (wasn't there some study where oil wells were refilling inexplicably?) we'll end up running on green tech and nuclear power.
I don't agree with nuclear power but I believe it will win out in the end.
Sorry for the ramble - I haven't time to tidy it up - I hope you see what I mean and I would like to say that I'm not deliberately trying to be argumentative and controversial. I just want to chat and apologies if any offense is taken.
Stonehead - I'm fascinated by the brief bits of your story I've heard through Cheezy and Hedgie so I will be dropping by to your blog. I hope you haven't been offended by my ramble.
Marvo, I'm glad you're reading - just make sure you read widely, and beware of the tendency to grasp at straws rather than face the unpalatable.
It's important to realise that the journey down from peak oil is not something that can be done all in one go - at least, not unless circumstances force it upon you. It's a process, but if you take some steps every time you're ready, you'll find the changes that are coming less traumatic.
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