Monthly Archives: May 2013

Under my hood

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I thought I’d let you inside, to shed light on what someone who campaigns about climate change feels under the hood.  In my last post I mentioned that we can appear to be pleased about climate change and I promised to let you know the true picture.  I’d be interested to hear from anyone reading how much of this rings true for them, or if I am alone.
Me8 for main
How is it that everything we feel we want to do turns out to be bad for us?  I love a drink occasionally, but that’s not good for your health, breath, head the following morning or for avoiding leaving the door open overnight.  Fry-ups, cake, biscuits, pork pies, doughnuts – I’m salivating, thinking about them – but they’re not good for your arteries and processed meat leads to the big C.  Sex before marriage will send you to hell.  Some love to smoke, but that leads to the bigger C.

And it turns out that having bright, dimmable lights that some on instantly; Me7 for mainlong showers; too much heat in the house; open fireplaces; and travelling anywhere more than a few short miles away are bad for the planet*.

I’m not a religious man (I categorise myself as an active agnostic) – but this does all bring to mind the apple in the Garden of Eden.  I often wondered what that symbolised – maybe it refers to everything desirable being bad?

Thing is that booze, greasy food, shagging about and smoking really only hurt the person doing them†.  I’ve no problem with that – do what you like.
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Wasting energy and burning fossil fuels, however, don’t really hurt the person doing them‡.  They mainly hurt people in other parts of the world (if you are in the developed world while reading this) or in the future, such as our children.  Because of this natural injustice it makes me Angry when people ignore the issue, blame China and the US while continuing with bad habits and make out their opinion on the scientific facts are as valid as 99% of scientific studies.

The other deep emotion I feel is mourning for the lost future.  When I delve deeply to understand the root of this feeling, I realise that it is not only about the potential for world conflict and the loss of the natural world, but also my own personal lost future.  Me1 for mainThe increasing apathy and even antipathy towards climate change makes me realise that I need to devote more and more of my own life to the cause.  As former BP CEO Tony Hayward famously once said “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back”.

The emotions aren’t all negative, of course.  This resolve gives me a life purpose that is hard to find from any other activity.  As Bill McKibben said “Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important”.
Me6 for main
I am also hopeful, even confident, that we will eventually win the argument.  It is almost inevitable.  Nature will not allow us to ignore climate change forever, as it will crank up the stakes and shove it in our face and across our flood plains.

How about others?  When it comes to climate scientists, it seems that those that engage their emotions rather than carry out their duties in a detached way can feel depressed, even suicidal.  A far cry from inventing the issue to get grant money.

How does it make you feel?

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

* Caveats required here: These days you can get fantastic bright, dimmable low energy light bulbs and you can heat your house with renewable energy sources, such as by capturing the heat from a log fire.  I’ll stick by the others.

† Uh oh, more caveats.  Yes, all these things done to excess can ruin families and cost the health service a fortune.  And there is passive smoking.

‡ Here we go again.  Of course it will hurt your back pocket.  And too much driving means losing out on the opportunity of more exercise.  And there are floods, droughts, crop failures and increased food prices.

Pleased about climate change?

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Thank you very much to Juliet, who gave me some very useful feedback in the follow-up to the last post I put up.  It was the one that featured the video of David Mitchell on his soap box, having a go at people who publicly push climate change as an issue (that would include me) and those that deny it’s a problem alike.Balanced Stones - smaller

Have a look at the video if you haven’t already, and again if you have.  You don’t have to, it just might set a bit of context to the rest of this blog.  I’d really appreciate some feedback on what I’m about to say, so it would be great if you could think about that as you read.  I’ll keep it short so you have more time to feedback.  If you aren’t able to comment directly below, then using Facebook, Twitter or email are all fine – I may post some of it back here in the comments.

There are lots of useful messages in Mr Mitchell’s video, such as that whatever you do, mitigating against climate change isn’t going to sound as sexy as driving to the arctic and blowing up an iceberg.  It’s just something we need to do, like the washing up.

The gem of an insight that Juliet gave to me was in drawing my attention to the first sentence in the video.  David pointed out that those people who raise the issue of climate change often (always?) seem to be just a little bit pleased about it.  Juliet took that further and likened “us” to the hairshirt brigade – delighting in forcing people to ride their bikes rather than use the car and the like.  It was a particularly useful piece of feedback as it came from someone who described themselves as part of the “wider audience” rather than the converted choir, on the sympathetic end of the spectrum, but not ready to join up [to Transition Town Berkhamsted].

Thinking about it from the other side of the fence at the time, I thought that there might be some who do see climate change as an opportunity.  It could be political, to move people to the left, or it could be idealistic, to return to a more natural lifestyle.

I’d be very interested to hear from any of you whether you can identify with these thoughts, and whether I myself come across as being pleased about climate change*?  And if I or others do, how could we avoid doing so?  What is it about how I / we put things across that creates this impression?

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

* I’m not, of course.  My next post will be about what I feel about it, and its impact on my life at the moment.

The Farage of popular opinion

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I read a very interesting article recently from a group called the Green Alliance, who have taken a step back to look at the shifting landscape of public opinion, particularly in relation to climate change.Farage

They used a term “populism” in the article, which I had to look up.  It basically means any political movement that goes with the public mood, particularly when the general feeling is that there are a bunch of elites at the top, usually involving conspiracy theories.  It is fuelled by chats with mates in the local, listening to celebrities on the telly, that kind of thing.  It generally doesn’t involve a deep understanding of the underlying issues or the science.  How often do you hear someone in the pub saying “good point, I’ll carry out some research – see you same time tomorrow so we can carry on with this interesting debate?”

Under this definition, the current groundswell of support for the UKIP party puts it in the populist category.  They are effectively a party-political voice of the man down the pub.  Pictures of a grinning Nick Farage having a celebratory pint play underline the point.

A party voicing the general public opinion and being on the side of the man on the street?  Nothing wrong with that, you’d think.  The trouble is that some issues, in fact a lot, are very complicated.  They way they need to be dealt with doesn’t always align with what Jo Blogs wants to see happen.

And it can get very dangerous when, as at the moment, the popular opinion is that scientists and others who raise the issue of climate change are grouped among that dangerous elite who should not be trusted.  Or when the populist opinion starts to veer to the right and when members of the populist party are in some way racist.  That turn of events has a precedent in the recent past.

Spot on, David.  Although it is imperative on us to find a way to make it fulfilling, desirable and fun to take actions to care for others and our future – not just something we have no choice but to do.  Why not?

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

Life getting in the way

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I have to admit that I am struggling to keep all of my plates spinning.  The business is being much more successful than I could have hoped, which means that to keep the Transition Town, UK Power Shift, allotment and family nourished of my time requires me working early and late, burning the candle at both ends.

My allotment. The shed is in the neighbouring plot.

My allotment. The shed is in the neighbouring plot.


It is a crucial time of the year for the allotment, with all manner of life enjoying a little more warmth and trying to sprout up.  It is my job to try to make sure that the life that makes the best fist of it is edible.  Last year was my first year with an allotment, and I did a great line in slugs.  This year the plot is surrounded by a wall of garlic, with slug pubs and organic pellets ready to keep out those that make it through.  Slug pubs are glass jars buried in the ground, with a little roof overhead, with a little beer in the bottom – the terrestrial gastropod molluscs can’t resist a tipple.

The weekend just gone saw an all-day open meeting at the local Hospice to discuss community building in Berkhamsted.  The focus was on an interim and then long-term solution for a community centre in the town, which it lacks at the moment.  The centre of the town is also being developed in the upcoming years, with the location of the old Police Station, Library and Civic Centre up for grabs.  We want to organise what is known as a “charrette” (intense design meeting) involving as many of the townspeople as we can muster to make sure that the space meets our needs and not just want the council think it needs.

The other major initiative discussed on the day is called “My Compassionate Street”.  There is recognition that in 20 years’ time there will be as many people who are great grandparents as there are that are children, parents and grandparents combined.  I’ll try to grab the source and graphics on this for a future post.  So who is going to care for them?  My Compassionate Street will help us form those close neighbourly communities where we can help each other rather than rely on assistance from outside.  This will also enable collaborative consumption – where a street might buy a ladder and a power drill, rather than each household forking out and storing said items themselves.

I’ll stop there – I need to get on with some business work.

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

My year ahead

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It was the Annual General Meeting of Transition Town Berkhamsted (TTB), and so time to think to the coming year and what we plan to achieve.  We are as always on the cusp of either collapsing due to burn out or on the verge of making that major breakthrough in getting a significant proportion of the people in Berkhamsted behind us.
TTB Logo
In terms of practical achievements that will take us forward, there ought to be a few.  There is the Community Growing Project where in return for volunteering with the local charity Sunnyside Rural Trust people have the use of a large polytunnel and surrounding ground to grow vegetables.  With a partnership with the Town Council to make use of and improve currently unmanaged space we could potentially open this up and start something like Incredible Edible in Todmorden.  This would sit alongside the transition-led Dacorum Local Food initiative, which is mapping out local food and making it more available and attractive for everyone in the area.

At the AGM we heard from TiK (Transition in Kings Langley), who have made some exciting steps forward in creating a limited company GUCE (Grand Union Community Energy) for the locally owned generation of renewable energy.  They have done a quick survey of Berkhamsted and I am excited about the opportunity to build on what they have achieved and bring it here.  There are plenty of potential sites, in particular schools such as Westfield and St Marys.

I’m quite keen to start up a series of competitions, at least among the members of TTB, for our own personal reductions in energy use, driving, consumption etc.

Alongside what we’re doing with our hands is what we are doing with our voices.  There is the engaging of other groups and organisations in the town to find our common aims and to form a community.  The third Building Community day is tomorrow, where we will be discussing the creation of a community centre and the development of the centre of the town to be a hub for people to enjoy.  We will also be talking about a burgeoning initiative called My Compassionate Street, looking at bringing back neighbourly support for those that need it.

There are projects kicking off with the local secondary schools, Ashlyns and Berkhamsted School.  Ashlyns are to start their own active sustainability group and are hosting high profile talks with TTB, one each term.  We’ve got Ian Roberts (author of Energy Glut) lined up for 16 October, and Mark Stevenson (pragmatic optimist) for 5 Feb.  Berkhamsted School has a massive Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and we will be chatting to the Year 9’s as they start out to enrole them in volunteering for TTB – in particular in setting up a series of films.

And then there is the Positive Money talk coming up on 11 June, which I’ve written about previously.

As for me, I have been re-elected Leader of TTB for a second annual term.  I plan to complete the strategy and firm up the structure of the group as soon as possible – I want to start getting my hands dirty.  I’ll be splitting my time between TTB, the Global Power Shift, my business, allotment and family.

Revolution?

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Last night I attended one of the joint meetings between Transition Town Berkhamsted and the transition group in the neighbouring town, Tring in Transition (they call themselves TinT rather than the other obvious acronym).  The meeting concerned what is termed inner transition, which loosely speaking means discussing the softer side of what we do – the mind-sets we face when trying to raise people’s sights over the horizon, plus our own health and wellbeing.

At this particular gathering we watched a video by Joanna Macey about what she calls “the Great Turning”.  She described how human society is currently going through a fundamental change, comparable to the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.  In her words, we are moving from the industrial growth model, to a life sustaining society.

She depicted the reliance of the current system on the resources we take from the planet (air, water, minerals, metals, fossil fuels) and on its ability to clean the waste at the end (be that liquid or gaseous pollution or the products at the end of their “life”).  Perpetual growth is doomed to fail, to self-destruct, because it does not allow for those resources and capacity to absorb waste to be finite.

The future as she sees it is one where financial growth at all costs is a thing of the past, and we have instead reconnected with the natural cycle in some way.

She may be right.  My question is this, though – can the free market and growth model really not cope with climate change and the inherent limits of the planet?

I see a couple of other potential futures.  Could we instead move to a society where at its core we have connected the circle by re-using or recycling all of our waste and pollutants into the next set of products?  The other future I see is where our society has so abruptly and completely collapsed that we have been forced to move back to the cycle of nature itself, and we have no choice but to wind the clock back a few tens of thousands of years to when we lived more simply.

In my eyes this is the single greatest challenge to the free market and perpetual growth models.  Can it (can we) acknowledge and cope with dwindling resources and an increasingly crippled natural world?  Or will it implode.  And how much damage will be caused in the meantime, either way?

It may surprise you to hear that I believe it can.  It would need some fundamental changes to the way we think and the processes we use, to incorporate the costs of our actions into the price we pay and therefore our financial decisions.

My concern, which hits me deep down in the gut as I write, is that if it can it will do so at such a great cost to the beauty of the natural world that generations to come will never be able to witness the wonders that we are privileged to be able to observe: the vast diversity of life on our planet.

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

Tragedy of the Commons

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Our local supermarket is Waitrose.  I believe it is the largest of their branches in the UK.  They recently installed new barriers to the car park, which lead to an incident that demonstrates amply the tragedy of the commons.

It was a hazy early Saturday afternoon.  I’d normally do the weekly shop earlier in the day, but it had been more of a lazy start to the day that usual, you know how it goes, especially with three kids to deal with at the same time.  I’m afraid I do shop at Waitrose regularly, and I do drive a car to get there, and so it was that day.Berkhamsted Waitrose Car Park

It surprised me when approaching the car park that the usual lengthy queue was not present.  Where was everyone?  As I closed in on the new barriers, I started to see what was going on.

The car park was jammed full of cars.  Not just in the bays, but grid locked, engines humming, trying to find a space.  The staff were obviously having teething problems with the new barriers, which were up.  The barriers up, everyone had just driven in unthinking, and the chaos before me had ensued.

Not much point in ploughing on in, I thought.  I’ll wait here just outside the car park for a few cars to leave, to ease the situation.  Very sensible.  I switched my engine off.

A few minutes later, with no more cars adding to the mess in the car park, a few gaps in the traffic were starting to appear.  As had a small queue behind me.  I resolved to count five more cars out then I’d go in, and hope that the people behind me were awake enough not to all stream in in my wake.

I’d barely counted a couple of cars leaving before someone approached from behind.  An elderly gentleman leant down to my window.

“Are you having a problem?” he asked.  I explained about the faulty barriers, and my ploy to wait for the situation to ease before going in.  To be honest, I wasn’t surprised by his reaction – he started getting a little animated.  “There’s a queue behind you, you know!” he accurately pointed out.  I told him there should be a queue, if the barriers were working, and I’d wait a little longer.  He went back to his car in a huff.

Slightly to spite him, I waited for another five cars to leave (which was difficult to explain to the small enquiring voices from the back seat).  Found a space straight away.

What this little saga demonstrated to me was how blinkered and unthinking people can be in their daily lives, if all they do is concentrate on their own little piece of the overall jigsaw.  No wonder, I thought, that we are finding it so difficult to make the adjustments necessary to work together to reduce our impact on the future.

If we don’t realise that driving into a car park that is directly in front of us and is demonstrably over-full is a little on the stupid side, what chance have we got of realising that we are all collectively driving a massive wedge into our future and that of our children?

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

Idling our future away

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When it comes to actually making changes to the way we live to lessen the impact we have on the climate, I can typically see both sides of the argument.  Take wind farms as an example.

As a child I used to look round at the views on Anglesey and strain and struggle to find any view that did not contain signs of human activity.  Even looking into the skies did not help as I realised that the slowly dissipating stringy clouds were produced by planes soaring across the heavens.

So I totally get why people would not want our beautiful landscapes further derided by human structures with the erection of turbines*.

What I don’t understand and really can’t abide is where people needlessly waste energy and pollute.

In particular: idling cars.  Bloody people sitting in their cars with the windows down in a car park with the bloody engine on.  What on earth are they thinking?  Really makes my blood boil.Exhaust fumes - do not loiter - smaller

I have at times resolved to ask people, or confront them.  I’ve tried a lot of different tactics.

I might open with “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, what is the reason for you having your engine on at the moment?”

“What’s it to you?” would come the rather indignant reply.

“I’m worried about the fumes and the effect on the climate, not to mention that it’s wasting your money”

“Good point, thank you” was a recent response from someone sitting in a sports centre car park in their car.  They left the engine running.  I left them to it.

Or I might say “Excuse me, could you please turn your engine off?  My children are walking past your car and I’d rather they didn’t have to breathe in the fumes”.  More success with that one, but people can still get a little uppity.

Not many people realise that you only need to be stationary for 10 seconds or more before you would have saved money had you switched the engine off.  It is almost always worth switching off your motor if you stop at a traffic light (other than a pedestrian crossing – you don’t get much time to walk across the road), let alone when you are waiting outside someone’s home, or in a car park.

If you stop at a traffic light 10 times a day, and sit idle for 20 minutes a day on average, you would save between £180 and £632 per year on your petrol bill (depending on the efficiency of your car)**.  And your engine would last longer.  Imagine how much taxis could save.

I know at some times of the year people have the engine on to run the air conditioning or the heater.  Seems utterly daft to me – running a large petrol engine to heat a car?  Imagine doing that in your home, you’d feel a little daft.  But it’s when people leave the car running for no reason at all that really gets under my skin.
small image - no idling car sign
Oh, and by the way, it is illegal in the UK to have your car running while being on the mobile, even if it isn’t moving.  You need to switch it off and take the key out.

Thoughts on how (or whether) I should approach people much appreciated.

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke

* The way I think of it, though, wind turbines are temporary.   If we want to cook, heat, watch telly, have loads of lights on in the house – we need electricity.  So we have a choice, do we generate that electricity in a way that will arguably spoil some views for 20-30 years?  Or do we instead burn gas, oil and coal, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to damage our climate – and hence our views – effectively forever?  Nuclear is another matter – I say let’s put a load of reactors round the coast as well as build the wind farms.  Bring on nuclear fusion.

** Calculation: 10 stops of 20 seconds per day = 20 hours per year.  20 minutes idling per day = 120 hours per year.  140p per litre of petrol = £6.36 per gallon.  Saving between 1/5 or 7/10 of a gallon per hour = saving of £180 to £632 per year.

We don’t need to build all of these houses

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I don’t think there is a housing shortage in the UK.  House prices are too high and so there is a shortage of affordable housing.  To help reduce house prices the response has been to try and build more – the bigger the supply, the lower the price, or so the theory goes.  This places more and more pressure to encroach ever further on the precious green spaces within and around our towns and cities.

But the reason our house prices are too high has nothing to do with lack of supply, and much more to do with how money is created by our financial system.  This isn’t obvious and takes a bit of getting your head around.  Transition Town Berkhamsted are hosting a big event with a speaker Fran Boait from the Positive Money campaign to help us all understand.  I’m going to have a go at explaining, but am in no doubt I’ll make a hash of it – so come along to the talk or watch the video at the end…

It’s official, the financial system is broken.  You’ve heard it repeated over and over in the media.  I have recently been made aware of exactly why is it really is fundamentally flawed.  The inevitable consequence are the booms and busts and recessions that we have habitually seen on and off over the years.

The interesting point is that there is a way to fix it.  Not one you’d hear of much in the mainstream media to date.  There is a growing movement called Positive Money that are lobbying and raising awareness of the issue and the obvious fix.

Technical bit – from reading the book Modernising Money: How Our Monetary System is Broken And How It Can Be Fixed, by Ben Dyson and Andrew Jackson.

Ask yourself this – how is money created?  You probably think of the royal mint, or the Bank of England.  You’d be wrong.

97% of the money in the UK economy is created by a bank giving someone a loan.  All they do is open an account for you with a positive balance, and note down that you owe them that balance plus interest.  No physical money needs to exist for this to happen.

The banks want to loan as much as possible, because that is how they make a profit.  And they don’t need that much in reserve to make those loans – if they loan you £100, they need much less than £100 to start with, and they can reduce this further by immediately selling on the fact that you owe them some money to someone else.

And ratio of their capital to the value of loans they make is lowest for mortgages.  So of the money they give out, they want to give as much out for mortgages as they can, so they can loan out more and increase their profits.

Following a recession, banks are less willing to loan out money.  When they loan to people to buy houses, they notice that house prices start to go up, so they want to attract more people to take out mortgages, so they lower the mortgage rates slowly, and people are willing to take out larger mortgages, and house prices go up.  House prices are going up, so more people want to invest in housing, so more mortgages are taken out, and house prices go up again.

In short, house prices are too high because banks create money, biased towards the housing market, which is relatively fixed in size, so the more money floating around the housing market, the more houses cost.

It also leads inexorably to booms and busts, as bank loans tend towards the housing market and financial assets, which creates no real value in the economy.  This creates an asset bubble, and a recession ensues.

The fix is simple, and of course very difficult.  The loophole in the law that was put in place in 1854 to stop banks from creating money is fixed – banks cannot create money by a trick of accounting, by creating a loan.  Instead money is created by a central bank, such as the Bank of England.  Profits from the creation of this money goes to reduce debt or spend on something useful, and the money created is directed towards a productive part of the economy.  Booms and busts are a thing of the past, and asset bubbles cease.

I am in no doubt that this makes little sense to most readers, so come along to the talk, read the book, or watch this video. It’s really good:

John Bell,

Ordinary bloke