Carbon footprint improvements

A local magazine tasked me with finding out how much my CO2 footprint improved in the last 10 years and suggest what changes I would need to undertake in order to achieve what is considered to be my sustainable allowance of 2 tonnes.

Most of my lifestyle energy changes over the last 10 years have been positive ones including reducing how much I drive, reducing travel abroad, how I shower, shave and wash the dishes. The household also made some positive changes including how we heat water, light the rooms and how much we heat the house.

I travelled abroad just twice in the last 5 years – a significant improvement on times past.

For heating the house my household no longer attempts to be as warm throught the house.   In winter, bedrooms are 14-16°C and living room is 18-19°C in the evening.  When cold we put on an extra layer.  We now use 750L of oil per year between 3 people compared to 1000L in the past. We also save a bit by turning down the boiler thermostat to 65°C.

For electricity we rarely use the immersion so I wash dishes either without hot water or with remaining hot water from the kettle and the odd boiled kettle for harder jobs. I rinse and steep dishes and pots immediately after eating which minimises hot water and washing liquid requirements and steep pots and pans on the electric hob rings immediately after cooking as the rings are still hot. On the odd occasion when the hot water storage cylinder is needed, I use the boiler instead of using the electric immersion to heat it.
The electric shower is the biggest carbon consumer in the house so I use the lowest of the 3 power settings which saves over 50%. We replaced all the light bulbs in the house with CFL lights and for cooking I try to use a single ring with a steamer to do most of the cooking work. We moved to Airtricity which claimed to use 66% renewable energy, but in the last bill they changed this claim to 24% – still much better than the competition so despite concern over this dramatic drop we’ve stayed with them.

For food changes, I went from being a meat eater to about 80% vegetarian and buy local if possible. I also buy a good bit more organic food and have started to grow some of my own.

On the negative side I changed to driving a bigger and less efficient car (from 40MPG to 35MPG) in 2002. Also, since about 2005 we’ve only 3 people sharing the house (it was 4 prior to that) so this has reversed all our heating oil CO2 savings.

Overall I improved my Carbon footprint from 5.88 tonnes to 4.68 tonnes, positioning me considerably better than the average Irish citizen’s 9.8 tonnes. The world’s poorer citizens are helping to keep the global average down to 4 tonnes. However, that’s still twice the sustainable target of 2 tonnes.

 I’ve identified four things I can do, some not so difficult and others involving major lifestyle change So here they are:

Being into innovation, I’m hoping sustainable and affordable technology will advance to help bridge us that gap within a few years. That mightn’t happen quickly enough, so perhaps my past and identified future improvements this article can empower you to make some changes to your carbon balance.

Sustainable economics vs. proposed Euro cures

In summarising the various responses to the economic crises in Europe there are a number of emerging possibilities. All of these will have the additional impact of  undermining the global economy.

None seem likely to work for varying reasons:

Scenarios:

#1 Euro bonds:

To deal with the sovereign debt issues of several countires (to keep governments solvent so they can pay for Civil Service, nurses, police, teachers etc.).  The consequence of this in isolation is not necessarily bad as some economists say the European Central Bank does not even have to put the money into circulation (avoiding inflation) – it’s kinda created out of thin air.

The reason Ms. Merkel in particular have been reluctant to agree to this until now is because it will rise German interest rates. She and & Mssr. Sarkozy are also worried about letting perceived delinquent countries like Greece off the hook. Also Germans voters don’t like for example how people get to retire so early in countries like Greece and Italy if they are being asked to bail them out. 

If implemented, this solution means loss of severeignity on economic matters and lots of rights lost – but that’s already happening re unelected governments is at least 2 European Countries to date. Alternatively the enforced austerity measures may strike much riots/social/political unrest. Austerity is some Euro states also defeats the purpose of the Eurobonds.

#2 Print more money

Also called quantative easing.  This means the ECB must go against its own policies of keeping inflation below a certain point so they must change their rules and their role (the ECB to date does not have the same role as the Fed in the US or the Bank of England so their role would be adjusted to something similar to their counterparts).

From a saver’s perspective “quantative easing” is a bad thing as it dilutes your money (but it also dilutes the debts of people in debt which is a good thing). If done at an EU scale, it could work out a lot better than scenario 3 below.  Economic think tank FEASTA identified 2 approaches in the 70′s and 80′s which contrasted in their outcome. When the world economic masters let inflation happen rather than try to control it things got better much more quickly. 

The difference today appears to be that personal and mortgage debt are extremely high so it probably won’t cure the economy as it did in the past, just buy some time.  The US and UK have implemented this a few times it since the current crisis began but are just limping along because of the EU crisis but also because private debt in all 3 jurisdictions is far too high. Austerity measures impact on incomes and keep people in debt preventing spending our way out.

#3 Euro breakup

Many pundits across the political and economic spectrum say this will happen because it is not possible to have a single currency with a range of diverse political systems. They could be right. German exports lose out in this scenario as their currency will be stronger than other eurozone states. Weaker countries could face strong inflation and with core countries facing strong deflationary shock. Various analyses go through scenarios from Greece and/or a few other peripheral countries leaving to complete breakup which seems to be the worst case. The timescale is also important with some pundits predicting the long-term benefits being completely wiped out by the huge short-term costs.  Any scary news for the markets tends to end up in a run of some sort, so an EU dismantling would seem likely to cause makor trouble.

#4 Leaders pay heed to emerging alternative economists: Australian Economist Steve Keen is one of those emerging in the global media.  He is saying that the most important debt is private debt and that we must fix that to fix the global economy. He says among other things we effectively need to give people money and mentions wage inflation and citizen payments (which citizens in debt must first use to clear their debts) as ways to do this. The so-called leaders may come to his conclusions but it could take time due to political differences meanwhile the economy stagnates. What is clear from Steve Keen’s commentary is that austerity measures won’t work as people don’t spend.  Steve Keen says most economists fail to understand what money is.

#5  Sustainable economics:

Even scenario #4 doesn’t seem sustainable for long because even alternative thinking economists don’t seem to properly factor in peak resources and environmental destruction. Because the economic system is so complex, it is unlikely that any controlled dismantling of the capitalist system can be achieved.  What is clear is is that we need a system which factors in both the environmental and social costs.  Adding this on top of the existing system would seem preferable to allowing collapse and attempting to rebuild.

Sustainable economics does not obsess about  “growth” because growth with present day economics means rapid depletion of any remaining resources.  Sustainable economics’ difficulty  is the need to get golbal citizens (many are voters) and so-called (political) leaders who do not understand sustainability to buy into it. Growth is not technically possible – an engineer or mathematician knows this but most economists (who should by extension be mathematicians) don’t.  The problem is “failure to understand the exponential funciton”.

One such instrument is called Cap and Share which targets our unsustainable energy usage as the instrument to control. This system can generate much income for citizens (a goal of Steve Keen in scenario 4 above), but the income needs to be targeted at sustainability, and the instrument is likely to need to be expaneded to many other sectors. For example the disposable throwaway attitude to waste needs to be turned around so that upcycling, re-use and recycling are given higher value, creating many jobs.  The cap also needs to contract year on year via a machanism such as “Contraction and Convergence“.  The financial system could adapt well to Cap and Share / Contraction and Convergence mecahnisms because of the certainty it would bring.

Cap and Share evens global inequality somewhat, empowering the poorer who will spend more (the poor spend much more freely than the rich).  Higher income also allows investment in their children’s education and by extension reduces population (education is the most effective means of population control).  It also means various sustainable energy projects gain mainstream traction driving employment and helping save the environment.

What exactly are sustainable jobs – #1 food

As pundits are looking for signs of the “green shoots of recovery” there are two paths we can take in terms of  jobs.

1. Sustainable jobs

2. Unsustainable jobs.

Many sustainable jobs are possible in the food, agriculture, water, energy, forestry, clothing and social sectors.  At present almost all of these jobs as well as many of our discressionary and luxury items come into the “unsustainable” category due to their energy and waste impact as well as the pollution and workers rights issues which apply to them.

Food

To address global food security (which becomes a crisis as peak water, phosphates and fertilizers approach (nitrates are made from natural gas)) we need to improve efficiency while at the same time eliminating the use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers.   This sounds challenging and it is because it could be more labour intensive.

1. To make it possible to make a living, we need to change the markets by cutting out the midddle man who currently acquires so much of the crust which could be going to farmers and horticulturalists .  This means more local markets.
2. Change of diet towards mainly vegetarian diet is also a requirement (speaking as a non-vegetarian). The reason for this is that land used to produce crops provide much greater yield than land used to produce meat.  Reducing meat consumption is something unpalatible to many people, but we have a choice in this – to do it voluntarily or to let nature force us to do it. This does not mean a loss of jobs in farming nor does it mean enforced vegetarianism. What it means is a transition in production and consumption patterns to less of one and more of the other.
3. Adoption of clever methods of cultivation such as permaculture, row cropping, intercropping, no-till farming (but without the pesticides) and other methods are required to replace the need for pesticides and artifical fertilizers. The reason for reducing pesticides is they are slowly killing us as a race over a number of generations and killing many of the occupants of the food chain on which we are interdependent.  Soil conditioning is interdependent on many things including bacteria, fungi, carbon content, nutrients, trace mineral content, and biodiversity. Pesticides break down this interdependency.

These actions will be difficult to implement without changing the economic system to phase in making  it economical for farmers to produce long-term sustainable produce and without debate to encourage social change in relation to our excessive meat consumption (in the context of it’s rate of depletion of the earth’s available resources).

Energy silver bullet #1 = home heating

This is the easiest thing to address as it actually saves us money as well as the environment. Ask any home energy expert what you should do to improve your home and they will say #1 is always insulate better, #2 the heating system and its controls. Choice of a low-tech or high-tech method of heating is required:

Free energy surrounds us, the problem is in winter time it’s just at slightly the wrong temperature – usually only 3 to 6% wrong in fact. Freezing point is 273° Kelvin and we only want to reach about 293° Kelvin to be comfortable. There are 2 popular approaches – combustion boilers, and heat pumps (essentially air conditioners running in reverse).

Although biomass boilers are cheap to run and can be powered from sustainable forestry, heat pumps may be even better because all they have to do to make energy useful is compress a gas (which raises its temperature) and renewable energy can be used to do this. By cycling a refrigerant gas from liquid to gas, massive heat is adsorbed (from the air) and dumped into the heating system; modifying the refrigerant pressure is used to control this process.

Boilers produce hot water at or above 333° Kelvin which is unnecessary, wheareas heat pumps operate at around 313° Kelvin.

Heat pumps are a better solution than legacy air conditioner systems as 1) they can avail of cheap rate electricity and smart metering (as opposed to instant demand) and 2) the technology as improved so much (very high efficiencies – several hundred percent) making them much cheaper to run.

More information in the comments…

I have the silver energy bullet, but it won’t work

If I told you I had access to a magic solution to the world’s energy needs and was willing to share it with everyone for free, would you be correct in thinking “great – that’s our problems solved”. You may think also that the economy would be free to grow again but you would be wrong.

The reason is that it’s not just energy we’re wasteful of, it’s water, lots of  minerals, phosphates and other drivers of food security.

I have discussed the problems of peak minerals and peak fish in previous posts. These are vital resources in our present economy and most deplete on timescales of less than a decade to several decades.

Phopspates have about 5 or 6 decades of  production left and this will limit our ability to grow food – we need to recycle phosphates.

Widespread pesticide use is threatening biodiversity and human and animal health. Indeed, some analysts point to weeds (botanists say there’s no such thing as weeds) getting more resilient as the stronger ones survive pesticide bombardment (much like bacteria have become resistant to anti-biotics). When weeds become more resilient, more pesticides get used, or new pesticides get created.

The source of our problems is our dislocation from nature. Most of us see nature as something to go to and visit when we need to “get away” as opposed to something we are totally interdependent on and it seems have weak enough understanding of. Even in dense cities, nature is everywhere if we chose to notice it.

It’s likely the silver (energy) bullet exists or a number of smaller silver bullets (combining as one big one).  But rather than solve the global crises, it is likely to accelerate them, we could easily return to a perception of no brakes on economic growth.

Anybody who understands the exponential function (first brought to our attention in secondary school mathematics class) will understand that growth is impossible with finite resources, therefore new paradigms – innovation growth, resilience growth and resource adaptation growth etc. leading to employment growth need to be found, but these cannot lead to GDP or GNP growth mindsets (which are destructive).

That means a new economic system based on understanding that all resources are finite is required.  Much debt will have to be forgiven and new value systems will have to be applied to all items. Governments are slow to change but they do adapt to what citizens want. So its up to the global citizens to “want” the right thing and participate to achieve it.  Once enough of us understand that previous standards of living are impossible to achieve but that a good quality of life is still possible.

The other obvious thing is that while local resilience helps, we’re all interdependent so helping people on the other side of the planet to be more resourceful and resilient is in all our interests (as opposed to scrambling for ever scarcer minerals and climate destroying fossil fuels).

I finish by saying I have know where the silver energy bullets live but I’m not passing them just yet on because they won’t work on their own. For that to happen you have to think about the consequences.  They depend on other silver bullets in soil fertility, water conservation, biodiversity protection and a whole range of other things. Failing to understand means failure, and learning to understand can mean a better world. To quote a rather famous book title, it’s “our choice”.

The unhelpful politics of Anger post 2008

Since 2008, many populations throughout the world previously living in relative comfort have been thrust into uncertainty. The emotions fear and anger have come to the fore in place of optimism and positive activism. Prior to this time, if a political party we didn’t support was in power, we complained but got on with things. Now, people are looking for more people to blame and many scapegoats can be found. Bankers, politicians, regulators and developers are the most obvious targets. We’d like revenge and to put some of the culprits behind bars and out of business. We are angry!

This emotion is not going to help solve our future. In politics, the likely outcome is voting the ruling party out of power. However, a negative vote is the likely to provide a negative outcome. We repeat the negative vote at a 2nd election and are stuck with even fewer people we can vote for.

A positive approach is to vote for something or someone new or different. A negative approach is to stick with establishment political parties who are funded by corporations, developers and trade unions which leaves them compromised. As the political climate swings away from ruling parties, these corporations, developers and trade unions will concentrate their electoral funding on the parties whose policies bear close resemblance to their value systems, but more importantly those perceived as most likely to gain power. This means the system is permanently compromised.

In looking for someone to blame (especially politicians) we forget to look at ourselves. The majority of us after all voted them in. Unless we look at our value systems, we will vote for similar politicians those we believe to have failed us. People have many motivations when casting a vote, some idealogical focussing on the rights of workers or the environment, others based on religious belief systems, others on the economy and jobs and others again based on personal self-interest. Politicians often get asked “what can you do for me?” as opposed to “for the Country / World?”. Many people were happy to vote for the politician who will do them a favour. Tribalism is also a big factor with some families not changing their votes for generations meaning establishment power is often slow to change.

We can’t afford to be angry for too long because it paralyses us. Anger does not seek positive solutions, just negative ones like punishment and revenge. Taxes and austerity measures, even those designed to fund jobs are met more anger and finger pointing the super rich whose wealth is declining at great pace. The culprits can be punished over time and will sooner or later have to face up to their actions even if it’s their legacy after they’ve gone.

The reason we can’t afford to be angry is the scale of the crises coming on stream. The rising cost of grain in the aftermath of the Russian heatwave and of cotton prices in the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan highlight the challenge. The peak oil crisis is likely to have a major impact on the prices of food and energy. The food crises of 2008 was triggered by peak oil as was the global banking crisis (which would have happened eventually but needed a trigger). Sovereign, banking and personal debts are far greater than money in existence, so without clever solutions we can expect several more financial crises. Bankers, politicians, developers see the only way to get the debt money back is growth and this idea has been sold to most of the public.

The most difficult of items in the positive emotions list below is forgiveness. If we could forgive wrongdoings even if it means those who have done wrong go unpunished, then we can move on.

Continuous growth destroys the planet and extracts all its resources – it’s not a solution. Therefore creative thinking is needed, something not provided by many politicians. Their focus is on the short-term and on next election. Many work long hard hours and many help a lot of people, but not so many have clear vision. Those who do are afraid to tell people that times ahead mightn’t be so comfortable – it loses them votes – a catch 22. Climate change, planetary destruction in its many forms, peak water, fish, grain and a whole range of resources are all on or within the horizon.

Solutions exist but solving them needs understanding followed by agreement.

Some solutions instead of anger:

1. Participate and initiate change, engage your politicians – they adapt to public mood and some do change.
2. Think of the bigger picture – long term sustainability.
3. Decide to move away from anger and towards positive action.
4. Form or join think tanks.
5. Stop watching so much TV and advertising which is designed to brainwash and tamper with our value systems.
6. Don’t let technology dictate your lives, it takes away from time planning our (families) future.
7. If change takes time, in the meantime vote for politicians with vision (instead of constituency work or familiarisation). Good vision leads to more positive outcomes for all.
8. Take action on the path to sustainability in your life every so often. Many people respond well to seeing other people doing things rather than talking about them.

More positive emotions:

Ten percent CO2 reduction per year is very easy

We can far exceed 10 percent in one year CO2 reduction (the aim of a new Irish website www.1010.ie/ .  We can prioritise energy reduction areas which make a big impact as follows:

1. Transport – individual car usage is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions Alterntives are walking , cycling, using public transport, car pooling or sharing.  Not all of these are easy lifestyle changes but changing from individual car usage to one of the alternatives is probably the biggest single thing we can do and should be our greatest priority if we’re really serious about our future and that of our children.
2. Domestic: The first priority is to reduce the energy to heat or cool the home Super insulate the walls & attic and improve draught-proof ing.  Attic should have 250-300mm (10-12″) insulating wool or half that depth if using an insulating board which is a better insulator.  Wall cavities can be pumped with insulating beads for < €1000. If wall has no cavity dry lining and external insulation are other options.  These measures will reduce domestic energy consumption by about 50% (probably 15% of our total greenhouse gas contribution).  Replacing an older boiler (many of these are only 70% efficient and at best 85%).  Change to a condensing oil boiler (97% efficient), or a gas boiler (91.5%).  Gas saves more greenhouse gases and is a cheaper fuel.  Better again is to install a heat pump (air source is easier than ground source for retrofit) but this should be hooked up to the most renewable energy provider or preferably use night rate electricity.  Air source pumps are now over 300% efficient and ground source pumps are approaching 500%. Wood fuelled is better than fossil fueled providing trees are adequately replanted.  Farther down the scale is to replace lighting using LED or CFL for lights – LED will soon be much better than CFL .  Showering is a significant CO2 contributor and if you’ve an electric shower, for most of the year use it at the lowest setting (which uses less than half the power).  If you change your boiler, having a separate circuit for space and water heating is a good thing to do although it can be expensive.  Also best zoned heating controls can save up to 20%.
3. At work usually nobody takes ownership of energy issues so why don’t you?  An obvious saving is avoid using air conditioning in temperate climates where the outside summer temperature is near the optimum room temperature 19C (66F). Instead use a cross flow from windows open at opposite sides of the office .  Ask the person in charge of maintenance to reduce hot water temperature and power (these are often excessive in factories).  Lighting could be put on Infra Red sensors which turn off when no one is present.  Most importantly no-one is dedicated to turning off the lights or printers which can be on for hours or until the security guard does a tour. Ask that high power devices such as toasters in canteens get turned off.  Organise a responsibility system the workplace.

Dometic and transport changes save you money year on year and expensive changes are still economic if you use a loan for any capital costs. Many Countries have insulation grants which reduce the cost significantly.

Changes in work save you employer money and makes your job more secure so being environmental makes sense.   Time is running out so we all need to change fast. Don’t make a small change make a big one and do so as often as you can.

What might the world look like in 2050

Many of us won’t be alive then, but to achieve sustainability one our the tasks is to envision a sustainable society where the world will be in 2050 (when hydrocarbon inputs to our energy economy have been phased down to a fraction of present day).

The scenarios below are the positive case ones where we’ve globally worked out the problems and acted accordingly:

1. Per capita, we will be less affluent; people’s income will have dropped to a fraction of what it is today.
2. Global population will have reduced to under 6 billion and perhaps below 5 billion following extensive eduction programs in reproductive health and sustainability in the regions most inclined to increase.
3. Quality of life may have dropped but not by nearly as much as income – our understanding of how to live efficiently and sustainably will be strong.
4. Domestic energy consumption will have dropped perhaps by as much as 90% because even renewable energy as a proportion of people’s income will be high. Home energy use will be very low because many people will have retrofitted their homes to consume far less.
5. Our ways of getting around will have moved away from private vehicle ownership to a variety of solutions based on demographics. E.g. urban dwellers will have integrated public transport (powered by sustainable energy) and won’t drive or even need a car most of the year – they will e.g. hire (sustainably powered) vehicles for the final legs of more awkward journeys. Rural dwellers will have car pooling and sharing schemes to reduce costs and more rural transport schemes. Far more people will be walking and cycling.  Newer vehicles will be running off electric power or compressed air.  Existing fossil fuelled cars may be retrofitted as electric or compressed air powered.
6. Products will be designed for disassembly and will be more modular (greater standardisation).
7. The renewable energy economy will have grown massively. The world might not have one dominant source of renewable energy but a range of complimentary inputs based on geographical advantages e.g. biomass from highly forested areas, wave & wind from windy climates like NW Europe, tidal from seas and estuaries and solar power from sunny climates like the Sahara. Energy storage techniques will also have matured and we may have large global grids (high voltage DC) to better manage power around the planet. Hybrid technologies merging the advantages of several of today’s renewable solutions will have emerged.
8. Carbon sequestration projects will be well underway. Biochar (which also replenishes soil fertility) will be a mature solution and a source of income for a percentage of rural dwellers many in the less developed world. Although some land will be lost to climate change, the land area available to humans will have increased through improved techniques of land management. Growing algae may have evolved to maturity as a means of sequestering carbon and providing energy.
9. Large poly tunnels (some of these multi-storey) will be producing much more food on smaller land footprints in climate controlled conditions.
10. Unsustainable packaging will be eliminated.  Many of today’s advertising techniques will be redundant as people (living off  tighter budgeting constraints) will understand their needs much better.  Motivation will be driven by environmental understanding and because the costs of waste management will be high compared to incomes.
11. Supermarkets will be mainly replaced by local community supported agriculture markets supplying mostly local produce.
12. The world will contain significantly more forest as a source for home heating, biofuel for transport (wood cellulose converted to ethanol), and as an income via carbon credits.  Food sourced biofuel will be mostly discarded as a solution apart from mainly food waste sources.
13. Lighting efficiency in domestic, commercial and industrial will have exceeded 150 lumens per watt and will generally be switched on and off by detection sensors rather than switches.  However, street lighting might be used much more sparingly with increased police surveillance cameras to compensate for reduced security.
14. We will be eating far less meat having recognised that the energy and land footprint will be too large (10 times greater for beef) to sustain the planet’s population. We will be growing more protein rich vegetables and grains on land previously used for meat production.  Farming will have made a great resurgence and many more people will be farming but the sources of farmers income will have changed.  Urban farms will also be more popular, replacing lawns in suburbia and flat rooftops in inner cities (presently popular in Cuba).
15. We will have moved away from intensive pesticide use towards permaculture, row-cropping, intercropping and strong local food production.
16. Countries will be sharing water resources. Those with surplus rainwater will be exporting it via pipeline to areas  (within a few thousand Km) where water shortages for food production and drinking water exist. This will increase income in the water depleted countries thereby increasing regional trade and regional food security.  Regional power e.g. desert based solar will help to power water pumping. Water management will become much more efficient; waste water for reprocessing and drinking water will be separated.  International agreements will exist to control the waste of water resources.
17. We will be separating and reprocessing human waste. Urine as a source of fertilizers and faeces will also be used as a resource to produce fertilizers, humus and possibly biogas.  We will not be pouring present-day household chemicals into human waste systems, understanding that these contaminate human waste resource processing.
18. Food will cost a much larger percentage of income, but it will also bring in a much larger percentage of money into economies than it does today.
19. Plane transport will be a fraction of what it is today and far fewer people will be flying on foreign holidays several times a year.  Plane transport may be allocated on a priority activity basis (e.g. conferences to address global problems and certain freight requirements).  Slower more efficient forms of air transport e.g. airships for freight may become popular.
20. The money system will have broken down at least once the repaired version will be in a far simpler form. The stock market will no longer exist.  Funding for large projects will be more based on global bartering and co-operation systems.
21. The political system will have reformed dramatically such that we have effective organisation from the global to the most local level.  People will be participating far more in decision-making rather than electing politicians and leaving them to it. Town Hall style meetings will be much more commonplace (possibly weekly).
22. The world’s poorest and most indebted countries will have the debt burden removed. Richer Countries will realized our growing interdependence on the poor. The benefit of empowering other global citizens for co-operation on many mutual solutions will be understood.  The poor will no longer be growing the cash crops dictated by organisations such as the IMF and World bank.  The WTO will have been abolished and will be replaced by a more wide ranging global decision making body (one which understands sustainability).
23. We will be paying a carbon subsidy to rainforest regions (especially Brazil and Indonesia) to maintain and restore their rainforest (in recognition of their importance in keeping climate change at bay).  The subsidy would be used to employ people in the rainforest maintenance and enhancement work required.  These subsidies will be corruption proofed so that citizens rather than Governments benefit.
24. Patenting of seeds and lifeforms will be made irrelevant as ownership rights of our food sources and also medicines are understood to threaten our existence.  The organisation replacing the WTO will have changed patent laws away from ownership of essential food and medicines.
25. Most important of all many more innovations that haven’t yet been conceived will improve our quality of life and this will balance against many of the things we have to sacrifice to survive.

The population issue is most controversial, but with understanding of sustainability it’s east to recognise that there is little chance of humans exceeding 9 billion as suggested by many organisations. Sustainability and resource issues mean are likely to have hit many walls blocking population long before then.

The challenges are to understand sustainability and to minimise all the constraints and to develop solutions.  Disclaimer: many solutions will not work without global co-operation.

Pesticide spraying by Councils

In May 2006 I was alarmed bright orange colour of roundabouts, grass verges and underneath trees all around Galway City where I live.  I contacted the local Parks Department in City Hall to find out exactly what sprays they were using and at the 2nd time of asking they provided me with information on the chemicals and their components.

These are Casoron G (Dichlobenil), Greenway-simm Flex (simmazine & Glyphosate), Gly-flex (glyphosate), Roundup Biacative (glyphosate), Nomix Total (glyphosate & diuron). As a concerned citizen, I decided to research these products on receipt of the information. Not surprisingly, there are health concerns with many pesticide / herbicide products, since they are designed to kill living organisms.

Glyphosate (which seems the most common) is a chemical over which there is much concern. Symptoms detailed in the research on exposure to glyphosate formulations include swollen eyes, face and joints, facial numbness, burning and/or itching skin; blisters; rapid heart rate, elevated blood pressure, chest pains, congestion; coughing; headache; and nausea. There is general concern over organochlorines effect on the reproductive system and on cancer. Use of Glyphosate directly impacts a variety of nontarget animals including insects, earthworms, and fish, and indirectly impacts birds and small mammals. A study conducted by the International Organization for Biological Control found that exposure to Roundup killed over 50 percent of three species of beneficial insects (a parasitoid wasp, a lacewing and a ladybug). Repeated applications of glyphosate significantly affected the growth and survival of earthworms.

Studies have also shown that glyphosate, and in particular the “inert” ingredients in the formulation of Roundup are acutely toxic to fish. Many ingredients (known as inerts) contained in these sprays are trade secrets. However, inerts known to be included in glyphosate products include ammonium sulfate, benziothiazolone, 3-iodo-2-propynl butylcarbamate (IPBC), isobutane, methyl pyrrolidinone, pelargonic acid, sodium sulfite, sorbic acid, and isopropylamine. All of these chemicals are associated with skin irritation, gastric and respiratory problems. I raised concerns saying I hoped that stringent health and safety procedures are being used by the Council to protect any staff who are spraying.

The most recent data (1998) from California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation finds that glyphosate ranks first among herbicides as the highest causes of pesticide-induced illness or injury to people in California. A campaign called Beyond Pesticides’ pesticide incident reporting system has received numerous reports of people poisoned by exposure to glyphosate from around the US. These victims of pesticide exposure suffered from eye soreness, headaches, diarrhea, and other flu-like symptoms.

I informed the local community in Galway about the spraying of our roundabouts and verges via letters to three local newspapers.

Another chemical of great concern is 2-4-D (although I’m not sure if this is used by our local Council).

A summary of environmental Health Effects of various pesticides are listed on beyondpesticides.org.

For more information visit the pesticides and harmful chemicals links page.

No doubt similar chemicals are being sprayed by City and County Councils all over the world and by people around their homes, golf courses etc.  Often knowing they’re toxic and wearing a mask while spraying is perceived as the correct action to take, but trying to understand what it is we’re spraying is far more important.

Car pollution

Because of the focus on Climate Change, the other things being emitted by cars is often overlooked.

A short list of the likely pathogens in car exhaust:

• Carbon Monoxide
• Nitrogen dioxide
• Sulphur dioxide
• Suspended particles, PM-10 particles less than 10 microns in size.
• Benzene
• Formaldehyde
• Polycyclic hydrocarbons

These affect humans, the wider environment.  Some of these and their persistance in the environment are seen by clicking on the graphic above:

Relevant links are provided below for more background:

1. Car Exhaust – Air Pollutants
2. Automotive Exhaust Chemicals: disease causing effects -
3. Cars, Air Pollution and Health
4. Cars, Trucks, & Air Pollution