Read Bryan Appleyard in today's Sunday Times
If you possibly can, get hold of a copy of today's Sunday Times Magazine and read the article "The last Refuge" by Bryan Appleyard. It is the best article I have ever read describing the current debate about the environment. If you can't get a copy of the "dead tree" version of the paper the article is also available on their website.
Some of it is a bit tongue in cheek - the front cover of the magazine shows a family wearing only white, in front of their white painted house, car, etc - the idea being to raise the planet's albedo by making as many things white as possible so that heat will be reflecte out to space. The article explains this, and than makes clear that "Albedo chic" is a humorous "thought experiment" invented by the SF writer Gregory Benford to get people thinking about what we need to do.
The article crams a host of ideas and concepts into relatively few pages. He places environmentalists on s spectrum from the "Sandals" (Zak Goldsmith, Jonathan Porritt) to the "Nukes" (James Lovelock, Sir David King) depending on what sort of approach they take.
I am interested to learn that salad, and particularly lettice, is bad for both our health and the planet - it takes up vast amount of agricultural land and is often grown with artificial heat and light but provides virtually no nutritional value. So every little boy who refuses to eat his salad is helping save the planet ! This gem alone is worth ten times the price of today's Sunday Times.
Other things in the article include the idea of paying Brazil for the oxygen emissions the rainforest produces so they have an incentive to stop felling it, cars which run on electicity or hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions, and an interesting description of how carbon capture and carbon burial actually works.
Much more painful - Appleyard argues that the era of cheap air fares will have to come to an end, indeed very possibly we will have to kick the habit of air travel altogether. Fixed wing aircraft are responsible for perhaps the biggest avoidable cause of carbon emission into the atmosphere.
One question he does not ask is whether it is time for the return of lighter than air travel. Dirigible airships require massively less energy per passenger mile or ton of cargo lifted and may therefore have a much lower impact in terms of both carbon emissions and noise. Given a tax regime which reflected the environmental impact of air travel, perhaps the airship would become commercially feasible once more.
Any serious politician, and any responsible voter, needs to understand more about the environmental challenges which the whole world faces. Appleyard's article is an immensely valuable contribution to the debate.
Some of it is a bit tongue in cheek - the front cover of the magazine shows a family wearing only white, in front of their white painted house, car, etc - the idea being to raise the planet's albedo by making as many things white as possible so that heat will be reflecte out to space. The article explains this, and than makes clear that "Albedo chic" is a humorous "thought experiment" invented by the SF writer Gregory Benford to get people thinking about what we need to do.
The article crams a host of ideas and concepts into relatively few pages. He places environmentalists on s spectrum from the "Sandals" (Zak Goldsmith, Jonathan Porritt) to the "Nukes" (James Lovelock, Sir David King) depending on what sort of approach they take.
I am interested to learn that salad, and particularly lettice, is bad for both our health and the planet - it takes up vast amount of agricultural land and is often grown with artificial heat and light but provides virtually no nutritional value. So every little boy who refuses to eat his salad is helping save the planet ! This gem alone is worth ten times the price of today's Sunday Times.
Other things in the article include the idea of paying Brazil for the oxygen emissions the rainforest produces so they have an incentive to stop felling it, cars which run on electicity or hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions, and an interesting description of how carbon capture and carbon burial actually works.
Much more painful - Appleyard argues that the era of cheap air fares will have to come to an end, indeed very possibly we will have to kick the habit of air travel altogether. Fixed wing aircraft are responsible for perhaps the biggest avoidable cause of carbon emission into the atmosphere.
One question he does not ask is whether it is time for the return of lighter than air travel. Dirigible airships require massively less energy per passenger mile or ton of cargo lifted and may therefore have a much lower impact in terms of both carbon emissions and noise. Given a tax regime which reflected the environmental impact of air travel, perhaps the airship would become commercially feasible once more.
Any serious politician, and any responsible voter, needs to understand more about the environmental challenges which the whole world faces. Appleyard's article is an immensely valuable contribution to the debate.
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Bryan
Chris