Song for Jasmine

Next Monday, June 8th, is World Oceans Day. At the risk of turning this blog into a diary of global eco-events, I’d like to draw your attention to it.

The idea to have a world-day for the oceans came in 1992 from Canada, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It’s been celebrated every year since then, but this year marks the first time it has official U.N. recognition. Henceforth, World Oceans Day will be celebrated on June 8th, every year.

You might think that since I live near Geneva, about as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in Western Europe, I would not have much to say about the sea. If you think that, you must be new to this blog (welcome!), the sea is one thing I can talk about for hours. I grew up in England, closer to the coast than most people there. Nobody in England is more than 70 miles from the sea, I grew up much closer than that, about one mile away from the shore, on an island, no less. I spent many a childhood summer day freezing in the cold water, picking my way over the stony beaches, trying to see what I could through the opaque grey-green waters of the north Kent coast (not much, as it happens). I collected foraminifera (tiny shells, less than 1 mm across) and looked at them under a microscope. I remember the first time I saw sea-anemones, on the beaches of Jersey on a family holiday. I’ve seen octopus and nudibranchs on crowded Greek beaches, and sharks and dolphins in the Maldives. Oh yes, I can safely say I love the sea.

The oceans are huge. They cover almost three-quarters of the surface of the earth, and something like three fifths of the earth is over a mile below the surface of the sea. There is an awful lot of seawater out there. So why do we need a world-day event to draw attention to the oceans? Well, as it turns out, the seas and oceans of the world are not in good shape, and it’s our fault, again. You can find out more about the threats to the oceans on the Marine Conservation Society website, here are a few of the highlights.

Everyone knows about global warming, and the melting of the polar ice-caps. That’s bad news for penguins and polar bears, but also for people. A large fraction of humanity lives near the coast, making a substantial part of their living from what they can haul out of the sea. Rising seas and warming waters will change that. Not only will islands and low-lying regions be lost under the waves, the ecosystems at the coastal fringes will suffer too. Coral reefs, for example, provide living space and nurseries for a great many species, and are essential to the marine environment. Even creatures that don’t live on or in them directly often depend on the animals that do. Excessively warm water leads to ‘coral bleaching’, which can kill it if the water stays warm for long enough. Bleaching events are more common than they used to be, and are predicted to become much worse over time. Despite some research showing that some corals may adapt to warmer waters, there is strong reason to believe that most corals will be killed by warm seas by the end of this century unless we make big cuts in our emissions of greenhouse gasses. Scientists are working to find ways to help coral survive, but they’re racing against the clock.

Globally, there’s an even bigger threat, ocean-acidification. The oceans absorb a great deal of the excess carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere, and this is slowly turning the seas more acidic. This slows coral growth because it is harder for the coral to form its chalky skeleton. Other creatures, many of which are right at the bottom of the marine food chain, will suffer the same fate. Acidification of the oceans is a global problem by its very nature. It will affect reefs and other ecosystems worldwide, not just those near to cities and industries.

Overfishing is another major problem for the oceans. By depleting stocks of even a few species, we change the way entire ecosystems behave, often seriously. Tuna have been fished almost to extinction in the Mediterranean sea, and there is little sign that common sense will prevail to reduce the pressure on them. Tuna are predators, high up in the food chain. When you remove top predators, often the result is that a few species lower down the food-chain start to dominate, out-competing other creatures. The ecosystem becomes unbalanced, and may change its nature completely. It may not be enough to simply stop hunting the predators, the ecosystem may no longer be able to recover on its own.

Floating garbage is another serious problem. On the tiny atoll of Midway in the Pacific ocean, albatross often mistake floating plastic garbage for food, which they then feed to their chicks. That kills many of them, not surprisingly. Albatross aren’t meant to digest golf-tees, toothbrushes, and lego blocks.

Even the efforts we go to to protect the oceans and their inhabitants can often be misguided. I’m sure we’ve all heard of dolphin-safe tuna, it even got a mention in Lethal Weapon 2, released some 20 years ago. I’m fond of dolphins, like many people, but I was shocked to learn about just how much damage dolphin-safe tuna-fishing can do. The methods used to catch tuna without harming dolphins have a much higher rate of bycatch than other methods. ‘Bycatch’ is another word for ‘collateral damage’, animals accidentally killed while hunting a specific species at sea. Much of the bycatch in dolphin-safe tuna is in itself seriously endangered, far more so than dolphins themselves. No, dolphin-safe tuna is not a good thing for the marine environment.

More and more people are becoming aware of and involved in environmental issues. They are paying attention to the environmental cost of the goods they purchase, insisting on packaging that can be recycled, lower power consumption from electrical goods, or higher mileage from their cars, for example. But what can you change in your daily activities to help the oceans, especially if you live far from the sea? The Marine Conservation Society have some advice, and there’s also a page of hints at The Ocean Project. One obvious thing is to be more informed and cautious in your seafood purchases, both sites have suggestions there. If you prefer to avoid seafood altogether, simply buying organic food is a good idea. That encourages farmers to produce more of it, which means less pesticide in use. Reduced pesticide use means less of it getting into our rivers and from there into the sea, finally ending up in marine mammals like that dolphin we were trying to save a moment ago.

You can find out more about World Ocean Day at the World Ocean Network site. Maybe one of the events that they list is taking place somewhere near you. If not, there are plenty of web-based resources available, like the 24 hours in the Ocean online event from the Musée Nausicaä. I’ll certainly be following that for some of the day.

Climate Change in the American Mind was published in March 2009. It contains the results of a survey of Americans conducted during September and October 2008. The report is 56 pages long, and is packed with information. Not surprisingly, it has been talked about on the web. Unfortunately, some of the information from it has been summarised in a very misleading manner.

One particular question asked Americans how much they thought global warming would harm different groups. They were asked to decide which option (not at all, only a little, a moderate amount, a great deal, or don’t know) applied to a number of different groups:

• you personally
• your family
• your community
• people in the United States
• people in other modern industrialised countries
• people in developing contries
• future generations of people
• plant and animal species

The results are presented on page 30 of the report, figure 22. Nate Silver summarised the answers to this question on his blog, in “The Environmental Inverted Pyramid“, but the picture he presents there (reproduced here) is misleading.

There are several things wrong with this picture. I won’t be the first to point out that the size of each segment is not in proportion, others have already done that (e.g. “The environmental inverted pyramid, corrected“). Even so, it’s worth looking at some of the other ways that this picture is misleading.

First, let’s make the bars to scale. There, that’s better. Now you can see quite clearly that the narrowest bar (‘you’) is genuinely half as big as the largest. Not that steep a pyramid at all.

There’s also an issue with the size of the text. Putting ‘you’ in tiny letters makes it seem unimportant compared to the large text for ‘plant and animal species’. So let’s make all the letters the same size.

There. I don’t know about you, but that looks a lot fairer to me! So it looks like only 1 American in 3 thinks global warming will affect them, and 2 out of 3 don’t think it will.

Ah, but we’re not done yet. New Scientist points out that we’re actually using the wrong data! These numbers represent only the ‘moderate amount’ and ‘great deal’ categories. If we want to see how many people do or do not think they will be affected by global warming, we should not forget that some of those people think global warming will affect things ‘only a little’.

‘only a little’ is not very well defined. It could mean they don’t think they will be able to go on holiday because of more hurricanes in their favourite resort, or that they think they will have to pay more for food or water. I have no idea what those people who said ‘only a little’ thought, but I do know that we can’t simply ignore them. That would effectively put them in the ‘not at all’ category, which is wrong.

So let’s add those people to the chart, and see what it looks like.

Now it hardly looks like a pyramid at all! In fact, the categories ‘you’, ‘your family’, and ‘your community’ are very closely grouped, as are the categories of ‘people in the United States’, ‘people in other modern industrialised countries’, and ‘people in developing countries’. The question might as well have been simplified to ‘people near you’ and ‘everyone else’.

So we can safely say that over half of Americans believe that someone near them will be harmed by global warming, and almost 2 out of 3 believe that someone, somewhere, will be harmed, even if only a little. If you’re among the remaining third, you could do worse than to read “Bracing For Sea Change“, to see how easily climate change could affect the world around you.

The full report contains 39 charts, and looks to have a great deal of interesting information in it. I haven’t read it all yet, but I will do so soon. Even on a quick scan through, there are some interesting nuggets that are easy to find. For example, 82% of Americans think they need more information about global warming (figure 33), 82% of Americans would trust scientists for information about global warming, and 77% would trust their family and friends (figure 39). That tells me that the scientists and other people among you who are concerned about global warming need to speak up more, 4 people out of every 5 out there would listen to you. Go to it, people!

Finally, let me just quote a few of the highlights from the executive summary:

All that seems to me to be a long way from the tiny triangle at the bottom of the inverted pyramid.

This photo shows the Geneva valley on a good day. It was taken in the Jura, looking across Lac Leman to Mont Blanc, which is clearly visible, some 50 miles away. It’s a shame that views like this are something of a rarity these days, the visibility is often much worse.

This second photo shows a more typical view, taken in winter. The mountain in the background is the Saleve, just across the valley, far closer than Mont Blanc. The layer of smog is clearly visible and, if you had x-ray vision, you would see the suburbs of Geneva in the middle of it all. All those people living down there are breathing that stuff.

It has long been known that this ‘particulate air pollution‘ from fires, vehicles, and industrial activity can lead to all sorts of health problems. A study published in the The New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 360:376-386) in January 2009 shows that life expectancy increased in areas where particulate pollution was reduced, and that the more the pollution was reduced, the greater the increase in life-expectancy. Clean up the air and people live longer, what a surprise!

Another study suggests that traffic pollution can cause genetic changes to babies before they are born, making them more susceptible to asthma. That may go some way to explaining why asthma affects one child in ten across the UK.

In France, another recent study, Un rapport et un avis d’expertise sur la pollution de l’air par les particules fines et son impact sur la santé publié par l’Afsset (“a report and analysis of air pollution by find particles and their impact on public health”) concludes that there is no safe limit for exposure to this type of pollution, it affects health from the very lowest levels. In particular, the report says that:

Particulate pollution can even affect the weather, causing more lightning-strikes in the middle of the week when vehicle emissions are higher. If that’s not enough for you, black smoke is also responsible for half of the warming in the arctic, because it darkens the snow which can then melt faster because it absorbs more sunlight.

With a problem on that scale, is it worth individuals trying to do anything about it? I think so. If it’s true that many smokers would quit smoking for the sake of their pet, surely it’s reasonable to take some steps to protect ourselves too, or to reduce our own output of such pollution? In our part of the world, for example, we see a lot of people burning garden waste. This is a shame when it could be used for compost or disposed of at council facilities that can incinerate it properly.

Using the car less is another option. The Commission for Integrated Transport in the UK points out that driving children to school is a major contributor to road traffic, and that simply putting kids on the bus would improve things for all concerned. There would be less congestion at the school gates, fewer vehicles on the roads, less time taken from the parents, and the kids get to spend more time with their friends on the bus. The US Environmental Protection Agency are undertaking a program to monitor air quality at schools, they are that worried about it. They have a number of good suggestions for reducing your childs’ exposure to vehicle pollution at school, such as encouraging no-idling policies for vehicles that are loading, unloading, or waiting.

Dweezeljazz has written in the past about the reducing our pollution intake on car journeys, by using filters such as the XR-100 Car air purifier. We’ve used one for some time now, and it really does make a perceptible difference to the way we feel in the car.

The picture (right) shows a new filter for the XR-100, and one that has been used for 4 months. It’s rather shocking how filthy the used one is, especially when you consider that I don’t live or drive much in a big city. It certainly makes me want to stay away from the roads!

Just to remind you that tomorrow, April 22nd, is Earth Day 2009. Earth Day has been around for a long time, the first one being in 1970, some 39 years ago. It is hailed by many as being one of the cornerstones of the environmental movement, and this year it’s still as important as ever. More so, perhaps, as the need to act on climate change and pollution becomes ever more urgent.

You can look for Earth Day events near you on their site. If you can’t find anything, why not just do something for yourself? Our dear friend Shannon Ryan took part in the very first Earth Day, all those years ago, by walking to school instead of taking the bus.

Of course, no gentleman would ever do the math, but this clearly makes her an experienced lover of nature! You need only read Shannons’ blog “Chippers’ Alley” to see that for yourself, it’s full of the beautiful photos she takes on a regular basis, such as these mushrooms. Nice one, Shannon.

Whatever you do to mark the occasion, I wish you a Happy Earth Day 2009!

Earth Hour 2009 is fast approaching. On Saturday March 28th (yes, tomorrow), many people around the world will turn out their lights for one hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 in the evening (local time, wherever you are on the globe). Despite all the gossip about Earth Hour on the web, there seems to be some confusion about what it is actually about in some places.

Earth Hour is not about saving electricity. If you switch off your lights for one hour, you’re not going to save much. One hour every year is about one hundredth of a percent, so in the grand scheme of things that’s a drop in the ocean. No, that’s not what Earth Hour is about at all.

Earth Hour is about raising awareness across the world that people want action on climate change. A global, co-ordinated action to make it clear how strongly people feel that climate change needs to be tackled now.

The organisers of Earth Hour are hoping that 1 billion people will participate this year, which corresponds to about one out of every seven people in the world. That’s a huge number, and would make it one of the largest events in human history. Considering that the first Earth Hour was held only two years ago, in one city, that’s an impressive growth, and a strong statement about how people feel about saving our planet.

So who is that statement for? Well, I guess it’s for everyone, there are still a lot of people with their heads in the sand. With one billion people involved, Earth Hour must surely be difficult to ignore. Even the politicians will have a hard time claiming that nobody cares about climate change. More importantly, world leaders will be shown that it is not just people in rich or poor nations, large or small, developed or not, that care about climate change. Countries like China and India are participating, along with many other developing nations. Hopefully this will encourage leaders of nations everywhere to be more responsible about tackling the problem than they have been in the past.

One thing that intrigues me is, how exactly will the organisers figure out how many people participated, after it’s all over? It’s not like they’re going to have time to go round counting, they’ll only have an hour to check each timezone and I don’t suppose Father Christmas is on the team.

One way is to measure it indirectly from the utility companies. Providers of electricity have become masters of estimating demand to within one or two percent minute by minute, and if one person in 7 turns out the lights for an hour, they should be able to spot that rather easily (Toronto showed nearly a 9% drop last year). That’s still a lot of information to analyse, there are over 80 countries involved. If anyone out there has a clearer idea of how the Earth Hour organisers will make their estimate, please let me know!

However it’s done, the important thing is that people should participate. It’s not just about telling the politicians, it’s also about telling the other 6 out of 7 people, and encouraging them to add their voices too. Maybe there’s something special happening near you. If not, there’s a list of suggestions for things to do during Earth Hour on the Earth Hour site, some of which can definitely be more fun in the dark than with the lights on!

Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, has recently given the best political speech I have ever heard. Released with the premier of “Age of Stupid“, his message to the world about climate change was very clear. If you’ve never heard a politician talking straight and making sense before, you may find it refreshing.

Come to think of it, that makes two politicians I know of who know how to make sense, Presidents Nasheed and Obama. Hopefully it’s catching.

“Age of Stupid” was released on March 15th in the UK. Set in 2055, it’s a film about the consequences of global warming, made using a lot of real news footage from recent times. For example, one clip features French mountain guide Fernand Pareau reflecting on the way the glaciers and Alps have changed in his 82 years. The film stars Pete Poslethwaite as a man looking back at 2008 and asking “why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?”. Pete is a lovely actor, highly charismatic and gloriously ugly (no offense intended, Pete). I just loved him in “Jurassic Park – The Lost World”, a role rather at the opposite end of the ecological spectrum. Pete clearly believes in the message of “Age of Stupid”, he has a wind turbine in his garden in Shropshire.

Back to President Nasheed, what did he say in his speech? Well, for one thing, he announced that the Maldives is going to be carbon-neutral within a decade. In his own words:

That’s a bold statement, but is it really such a big deal for such a small nation to achieve that? I think so, it’s not like they have a great deal of flexibility in going carbon-neutral, their choices are very limited. They import all their wheat, so it’s unlikely they can grow biofuel crops. They can’t relocate to higher ground to escape rising sea levels, because they don’t have any high ground to go to. They have no mineral resources and very little in the way of agriculture. As far as natural resources go, they have sand, sea, coral, fish, and tourists. That’s not a lot to work with.

The credit-crunch is already affecting the Maldivian tourist trade, tourism is down 14% on last year. They are calling it the ‘financial tsunami’, referring to the drop in tourism after the tsunami of December 2004.

Global warming will damage the reefs in many ways, such as bleaching through heat-stress, acidification from the extra CO2 dissolved in the ocean, and erosion from rising sea levels and extreme weather events. When the reefs suffer, the fish suffer too, so they get hit from all sides. No, small as they are, I reckon that going carbon-neutral has to be a lot harder for them than it would be for many other nations with more resources at their disposal.

President Nasheed is taking other measures to protect his nation. I’ve written before about some of the things the Maldivian government is doing to address climate change, but that’s not all of it. He’s reduced the cost of the presidency from $150 million per year to $4 million, and is selling the $7.5 million presidential yacht. He chose not to occupy the presidential palace, it may become a museum or a university. Instead, he shares an office with his secretary. Clearly he doesn’t want to squander the resources at his disposal.

The Maldivian government also recently introduced a total ban on shark fishing within their waters, extending a previous ban which only covered the tourist atolls. Sharks are top predators in the marine environment, and as such they are essential to maintaining the health of a coral reef ecosystem. The Maldivian Ministry of Fisheries is working to find alternate livelihoods for the shark-fishermen, so they will have no reason to defy the ban. This is important when you realise that these are not rich people killing sharks for fun, but just poor people trying to feed their families, and one shark-fin can be worth $100. There’s a very good discussion on shark-finning on the Southern Fried Scientist blog, but be warned, the video linked there is not for the faint of heart.

President Nasheed says “for untold fossil fuel consumption in our lifetime, we are trading our children’s place in an earthly paradise”. It would be understandable to think that the Maldives has more at stake than the rest of us, since they are such a small, island nation, but that would be totally and terribly wrong. If the world can’t save countries such as the Maldives today, we won’t be able to save places such as London, New York, or Hong Kong tomorrow. Much of Manhattan could be under water by the end of this century, and the longer it takes for us to act, the worse it will be.

The last part of President Nasheeds’ speech is directed towards the climate conference in Copenhagen in December of this year:

Well said, President Nasheed, it seems to me the world could do with more leaders like you. Perhaps if we all send a clear message to our own leaders, we might get the message through in time.

Some dates for your diary:

• 28th March, 8:30-9:30 local time, Earth Hour
• 22nd April, Earth Day
• 20th-30th March, Semaine sans Pesticides (“Week without pesticides”)

Earth Hour is something that started only two years ago, but is catching on fast. In 2007, 2.2 million homes and businesses in Sydney, turned out their lights for one hour, as a gesture to raise awareness about global warming. Last year, 50 million people took part, in 400 cities in 35 countries around the world.

This year, over 80 countries will take part, representing over 1400 cities (and growing fast). The Eiffel Tower in Paris is one of many major landmarks worldwide that will have its lights turned off for that hour. Apparently Switzerland hasn’t heard about it yet, but there’s still time.

They’re hoping to have a billion people participate this year, so please visit the Earth Hour site, watch their rather impressive video, and join in. Maybe invite a friend or two over for the evening of the 28th and see how much fun you can have with the lights out!

Earth Day, just over three weeks later, is a bit less dramatic, but they claim to already have a billion people participate in their activities, so it’s no small thing. Earth Day has been around since the 1960’s, and is aimed at raising awareness about environmental issues. There are a variety of different events, organised all over the place, so there may be something near you. Switzerland are on board this one, at least in Zurich, as far as I can tell. It’s unfortunate that the earthday.net web-site is so poorly structured, it’s really hard to find anything useful there. You might have more luck with Google., or you can find some ideas on how to participate at the earth911.com site.

Making the bridge between Earth Hour and Earth Day, you can take the Earth Hour 2 Earth Day Challenge if you want to do more.

Another noteworthy event is “Semaine sans pesticides” (“Week without pesticides”). This started in France, and is young, like Earth Hour, this year being only its fourth year. France uses more pesticide than any other country in Europe (76,000 tonnes per year), and this movement is all about letting people know there are better ways of doing things. It has also become an international event, and this year it has gone as far as Brazil. Check out their website to find out what’s going on near you.

An American study published last year showed that pesticides can be measured in young children on a conventional diet, and that switching to organic foods eliminated the pesticides from the childrens’ bodies in less than 36 hours. Switch back to a conventional diet and the pesticides are detectable again almost immediately, which means the children are eating pesticides every day. I don’t know about you, but that rather worries me.

So, there’s a lot going on in the near future, and it’s easy to get involved. Attend one or more of the events for Earth Day or Semaine sans Pesticides, or switch off your lights for an hour on the 28th and have some fun.

Oh, that reminds me, I haven’t mentioned this to DweezelJazz yet. DweezelJazz, fancy spending an hour with me in the dark on a Saturday evening?

The “Bein’ Green” song was written in 1970 and sung by Kermit the Frog in the first season of Sesame Street. Since then, it’s taken on a life of its own. Frank Sinatra did a version of it in 1971 on his Sinatra & Company album and many other artists have performed it. In recent years, it’s been picked up by the environmental movement, given its obvious connotations. It’s even been used in an EDF advert last year.

Those immortal words take on new meaning these days, when the difficulty of being green is all about how we can act in a way that doesn’t harm the environment. This is often made difficult by apparently conflicting information. For example, do I throw out my old fridge because it’s inefficient, or do I use it till it falls apart? If I throw it out I can save energy with a newer model, but I create more waste (even if it can be recycled) and another fridge has to be made to fulfill my needs. The British alone throw out about 3 million fridges per year, so this is not a trivial concern.

I looked it up on google. It seems that fridges manufactured in or after 2000 shouldn’t be replaced for some time yet. Fridges purchased in or before 1985 definitely should be replaced, as replacing them could pay you back in less than 2 years in savings on your electricity bill. Between 1985 and 2000, it’s not so clear cut. Many domestic appliances didn’t have an energy rating until the early 1990s, but a fridge in good condition may still have life left in it.

So how do you know if you should throw your fridge out or not? For the purely financial aspect of saving energy, there’s a calculator at www.energystar.gov that can help you decide. Unfortunately, it’s tailored to the US market, so europeans will have a harder time using it. You can take a more direct approach, and actually measure the consumption of your current fridge, and compare it against other models.

Tom Harrison has a really informative blog (“fivepercent”) which illustrates the effectiveness of this approach. He has reduced his electricity use by 50% in 4 years, and his use of water by a similar fraction. One post refers to measuring power consumption minute-by-minute using a Cent-a-meter, so you can see which devices are really responsible for your consumption. This gadget works for US and european voltages, and Tom estimates that it can pay for itself in less than a year, even if you are already frugal with your electricity.

Toms approach to everything illustrates the importance of actually measuring the things you are trying to save money on. You could simply do some of the right things, like turning off lights in empty rooms, but when you measure your use of electricity (or water, petrol, etc) you will learn just how effective you are being. I have done this myself with my petrol consumption, and I can testify that it is a powerful incentive to save more. I’ve also started tracking my use of water and electricity by reading my meters regularly. Not as precise a method as Tom, but it’s a start.

The cold weather we have experienced recently has caused record demands for electricity (about 92,000 MW), and EDF announced that they may introduce power-cuts to save electricity. That peak could be eliminated by savings of 10% or more per person, which would mean no power cuts would be necessary. 10% is not much to ask for, even Tom managed to find an extra 10% after four years of actively trying to save electricity!

Maybe it’s not so hard to be green after all…

Climate-change and global-warming are among the main themes for this blog, and that is one subject certain to encourage the pessimism in a person. On the face of it, if you accept the scientific evidence for global warming and the rate at which climate-change is happening, it can seem hopeless to attempt do anything about it. Individual actions are just so small on the scale of the problem we all face, and actions of nations on the other side of the world can make everything you do seem irrelevant. Coral reefs are sufferring, the Arctic ice is disappearing fast, extreme weather events are on the increase, and major governments are waiting for someone else to take the first step. The world’s climate has already been changed by mankind, and further change is inevitable, no matter what we do next. Why bother to try to recycle, to save petrol or polar bears, or do anything at all when faced with such a challenge?

Despite this, I personally am optimistic about the future. It’s true that we face a challenge of immense proportions, but individual actions really can make a difference. We talk about “saving the planet”, but the planet is not in peril. It is us, our children, and the plants and animals we share this planet with which need saving. Solving the problem of climate-change means nothing if it is not about saving those lives, those species. The problems of climate-change and conservation of wildlife are closely related. Action is needed by governments, yes, but also by individuals. Governments won’t be able to solve this problem if we don’t want them to. Every level of society needs to be involved, from the UN down to you and me. We don’t need someone else to go first before we act, we can all start now and do something in our own corner. The more people act, the sooner they act, the more difference it makes.

Here are some of the things that happened last year that give me cause to be optimistic.

In Britain, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ran a campaign in 2008 asking people to do something in their gardens to help birds and the insects they depend upon. Some 25,000 homes responded, with all sorts of contributions. Even something as simple as choosing the right plants for your balcony can make a difference to your local birds by encouraging the right sorts of insects at difficult times.

In September last year, the European Parliament published the results of a survey of 30,000 people around europe to find out their attitudes to climate-change. It seems that 3 people out of every 5 have already taken some personal measure to reduce their carbon footprint. So the majority of europeans have already done something on their own, without waiting for their governments!

Interestingly, 1 person in 10 said that they did not know what they could do to reduce their carbon footprint. Simply talking to people and spreading information is therefore an important thing to do.

Another survey, this time by the BBC, asked 22,000 people worldwide what they know and think about the problems of climate-change. 9 out of every 10 people asked think something should be done, with 2 out of every 3 saying that drastic action is needed in the near future. Even the majority of the Chinese people (7 out of every 10) think that serious action is needed soon. The same picture emerged in almost all the nations included in the survey. Clearly, people accept the need to act when they are well informed.

On a different scale, the European Parliament recently introduced tougher controls on pesticides, such as banning arial spraying, protecting water-resources with buffer-zones, requiring the use of safer alternatives where they are available, and reducing pesticide use in parks, playgrounds, and other public areas.

Perhaps the most optimistic event of 2008 in this respect has to come from the United States. President-elect Obama has chosen real scientists to take key posts in his administration, including a Nobel laureate. Maybe now more governments will stop looking at each other and start looking at themselves.

None of these things is going to “save the planet” on their own, but each of them together may mean that there will be more of the planet left tomorrow, and the day after. Simply knowing that people do care to act once they know the truth is, to me, very encouraging. It’s a beautiful world, and it always will be. Just how beautiful is up to us.

I wish you a happy and peaceful new year.

I get free petrol this month. In fact, I expect to get free petrol every December from now on. I didn’t win the lottery, and I don’t have a company car, so how do I manage it?

About a year ago I read some articles on the web about how driving differently can reduce petrol consumption, with all the benefits that entails. I hadn’t thought about it much until then, but I decided to give it a go. Now I find I can travel about 8 or 9% further than before for the same amount of petrol.

That may not sound like a lot, but one month is 8.3% of a year, so as I see it, my petrol is free this month. I think I’ll use some of the money to take Dweezeljazz out to dinner.

There are several pages on the web now that discuss driving economically. There’s one from the BBC which has a graph of CO2 emissions versus speed. It shows that the most fuel-efficient speeds for driving are about 35-50 mph (60-80 kph).

There’s a more detailed BBC article and an an article in French that discuss the same topic. Between them, they make a number of suggestions

• drive smoothly, accelerating and braking gently
• remove the roof-rack and any excess weight
• check your tyre pressure
• change your air filter regularly
• don’t leave the engine idling unnecessarily
• change gear early, maintain constant speeds when possible
• use engine-braking rather than your foot. Modern cars will reduce the petrol injection when engine-braking
• opening the windows or using the air-conditioning will increase consumption
• know your route, to avoid unnecessary use of the car
• avoid unnecessary trips, especially short ones which don’t give the engine time to warm up

Driving economically not only saves petrol, it also reduces wear and tear on the car in general. It reduces your emissions of greenhouse-gasses and other pollutants, and makes the roads safer for pedestrians and other road-users.

Driving economically is one thing, but the last two points in the list above address the issue from a different perspective, consuming less petrol by avoiding use of the car. There are other ways to do that too, such as car-pooling, or sharing a shopping trip with a friend or neighbour. If you work flexible hours you may be able to adopt a schedule that avoids you getting caught in rush-hour traffic.

There’s another way to save petrol with the car, that’s to not drive it all the way to where you’re going. Instead of driving to my office, I now park my car over a kilometre away and walk the rest of the distance. It adds 15 minutes to my journey, but I get a lot of good exercise in the process. Getting that exercise by other means would undoubtedly take more time than that out of my day. Instead of just walking along the road, I have a route from the car to the office which avoids traffic, so I’m not breathing so much vehicle pollution. It’s not flat either, so I get even more exercise from the steps I climb up and down every day.

It’s actually a very pleasant walk, I get to see many interesting things on the way. All the photographs in this post were taken on that walk at one time or another. I get to see things like this daily, but I wouldn’t see them at all if I simply drove all the way to my office.

According to the BBC, driving economically can reduce petrol consumption by 10-15%. Apparently, Ford themselves believe people could reduce their consumption by up to 25%. I know I could try harder, and maybe, if I do, I will have free petrol earlier next year.

I’d like that, Dweezeljazz and I know a number of good restaurants nearby.