Carbon Paw Prints

As if you weren't subject enough to the needs of the planet, what with insulating your house, leaving the car in the garage, turning the damn lights off and the heating down, reducing the number of kids you have and what else besides. Well, what else besides might be to consider keeping a no pet home.
Owning a pet comes at a far higher cost than you might have thought. According to the authors of the new book, "Time to Eat the Dog" it takes 0.84 hectares of land to keep a medium sized dog fed. Meanwhile, running a 4.6 litre Toyota Land Cruiser, including the energy required to construct the thing, and drive it 10,000 Km/yr, requires a mere 0.41 hectares!
Or how about some other troubling comparisons? The average citizen of Vietnam has an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares and an Ethiopian just 0.67. In a World of scarce resources can we justify keeping pets?
We grudgingly put out the recycling and use low energy light bulbs, is giving up our pets in the name of sustainability a sacrifice too far?
Well, perhaps we could start thinking about reducing our pet's impact. Feeding your dog or cat or gerbil leftovers will have an immediate effect and help to do something about the scandal of food waste. Pet food manufacturers sell us the idea that nothing is too good for our beloved pets and indeed the choice for them is staggering, it takes longer to choose the dog's dinner in the supermarket than your own. The first manufacturer to produce green products would be ahead of the game.
Oh, cats? Eco-footprint 0.15 hectares (similar to a VW Golf). Fluffy hamster? 0.014 hectares... large dog; a staggering 1.1 hectares.
But that's not all, every year the U.K's 7.7 million cats kill over 188 million wild animals (one common objection to wind turbines is "bird strike", reasonably calculated at one bird killed per year, per turbine. I bet there's a NIMBY wind turbine objector or two with a cat or two).
Dogs are not entirely blameless either, in 2007 the University of New South Wales monitored bird life in woodlands to assess the impact of dogs being walked there. They showed that bird life in areas frequented by dogs, even when kept on a lead, had 35% less diversity and 41% fewer birds overall.
Areas with off-lead dogs seem to suffer even more; ongoing studies here in the U.K. indicate that dogs are aiding the decline of some rare species of birds, such as European nightjars. As if that weren't enough we should consider the effects of tonnes and tonnes of pet faeces on the environment... it's pretty bad!
Solution? Well, obviously fewer pets or perhaps eating them or turning them into pet-food at the end of their lives.

Dirty Aliens/CRC

Looking for life on other Worlds has long fascinated us. Seeking out radio noise has been the preferred method for some time, but do Aliens pollute their planets? If they do, then this would give us a promising way to spot where they live.
Light pollution from out cities might give us away and we can look for a similar glow on far away planets although our detectors would need to be very sensitive. Our presence on Earth also leaves other traces that could be observed from afar, CFCs strongly absorb infrared light making them detectable in the atmosphere, as do other artificial compounds, each with their own characteristic infrared fingerprint. So, if you don't want to be invaded by Alien monsters, stop polluting!

I keep being asked about CRC, so here it is, pay attention;

The CRC has now been renamed, rather nattily, as the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme, which trips off the tongue as easy as a peanut butter sandwich.
Under various climate change agreements the government has incentives in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from big energy intensive industries. The next stage of the government plan to achieve it's obligations is now being introduced.
The new emissions trading scheme, this CRC energy efficiency scheme thingy (herein after called the CRC) is a mandatory scheme starting next April and affects all businesses and organisations whose electricity consumption exceeds 6000 MW/hr... or in other words, those with an electricity bill of more than around £500K ... that is many businesses and organisations (Councils for example) . This will include companies that operate across multiple sites, or that have franchises, or groups of companies in private equity ownership.
From April 2010 all organisations in this category will be required to measure their carbon footprints and then purchase carbon credits at a currently fixed price of £12/tonne CO2e.
At the end of each year, performance will be summarised in published league tables outlining the best and worst performers in terms of carbon emissions and reductions. The auction revenues generated by the initial sale of the credits will be recycled back to participants with organisations receiving payments back from the government in relation to their first year emissions, plus or minus a bonus or penalty dependent on their league table position.
In year one the maximum bonus or penalty rate is 10%. This will rise to +/- 50% by year 5.
In 2013 the ante will be upped and the system will become a full cap and trade system with carbon credits being sold on the open market by those with surplus through efficient operation and purchased by those that increase their greenhouse gas emissions.
I think this is a superb piece of government thinking, and if you're eligible then you'd better get on it sharpish.
The organisation performance will be ranked in the league table using three metrics;
Absolute Metric; the relative change in absolute emissions
Growth Metric; their change in emissions relative to revenue
Early Action Metric; whether they have taken voluntary steps to reduce emissions prior to 2010.
Any business out their not up to speed.... you'd better contact Change of Atmosphere.

Copenhagen or Bust

Plenty is going on regarding sustainability, low carbon technologies, climate forecasts, government shilly-shallying, and a simple wising up to what is going on. Much of this of course is down to governments, and any with vested interests, jockeying for position ahead of the crucial Copenhagen talks in December. These ought to be, NEED to be, delivering a global consensus on the requirements to solve climate change and a binding treaty delivering fair, far reaching and deliverable solutions.
One of the starting problems is calculating the true emissions of each country and how much carbon is absorbed by forests and farms, it's a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.
We have a bit of time to turn things around and recession helps, U.K. greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by 3% this year due to reductions in production and consumption, but at the pace we going it is not nearly enough. Copenhagen and all the delegates need to be bold. No solution or inadequate solutions coming from this summit would be deeply and unforgivably immoral. It would condemn coming generations to a catastrophically diminished future.
A warning out today suggests that utility costs will rise by as much as 60% over the next 6 years. This would be the case if we, the U.K. did little to secure energy procurement and protect and invest in home energy production rather than import.
I seem to remember dim and distant school discussions that any sovereign nation should be wary of giving up control of it's basic needs. Keep all your primary industries (ooops), ensure national control of transport structure (ooops) and always keep full control of your energy production (oh dear!). A country should be self sufficient, hmmmm, well perhaps we might consider now the implications of becoming almost wholly reliant on imported gas and electricity. Invest now and invest wisely in a basket of energy sources, renewable, nuclear, clean coal et al and invest now in the means to reduce consumption. It has to be done, it must be done to reduce emissions significantly and protect us from energy charges far in excess of inflation.....not to mention the devastating effects of accelerating climate change.
The really cool thing about the solutions being put forward to make the changes we need is that they bring with them new ways of thinking, new ways of resolving issues that create new markets and new opportunities. A fresh "wealth" creation system that doesn't simply rely on GDP and unsustainable, greedy, unbridled profit growth as the measurement of success, but rather a whole host of factors including quality of life, numbers of people and eco systems benefiting etc.
President Sarkozy has put together a very powerful think-tank to look at this and will be presenting the findings at a G8 sometime soon. Bon, tres bon!

Thy heart with dead, wing'd innocencies fill'd, Even as a nest with birds after the old ones by the hawk are kill'd.

Recently a young mother of four in Northern Ireland, Lisa Saunders, spent some time looking at all the entries in the New Oxford Junior Dictionary and compared it to previous editions noting newly included and removed words.

Here is a list of some of the words removed;
Catkin, brook, minnow, acorn, buttercup, heron, almond, ash, marzipan, beetroot, bray, bridle, porpoise, gooseberry, raven, sycamore, tulip, blackberry, cygnet, porridge, magpie, violet, vine, conker.

Here are some of the words newly included;
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, bungee jumping, cope, committee, compulsory, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro, square number, mp3 player, block graph, attachment, data-base, analogue, voicemail, chatroom and yes, blog.
(actually, "blackberry has been replaced by "BlackBerry" an electronic, hand held device).

Environmentalists of the future need to get out more.