Educational? or a Ticking Clock of Doom?

What do you all think about the world’s first real-time greenhouse gas emissions counter? It’s a giant billboard in New York, with the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted around the world displayed in glowing numbers for all to see. There’s talk of one being put up in Sydney too.

If you want to see the numbers flicking away for yourself, check out the Know The Number website. The statistics are provided by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based on data collected from around the world. They’ve put quite a lot of work into getting the numbers right, accounting for aerosol effects, seasonal changes and regular patterns like El Nino.

Their goal is to raise awareness of climate change, which is great. But I’m not quite convinced a billboard with a Ticking Clock of Doom™ is the way to get any real action on the subject.

On the upside, it’s a constant reminder of a global threat that often gets forgotten in our busy, everyday lives. It provides a concrete set of numbers so people will be more informed. It’ll be seen by approximately 500,000 people every day, which increases the chances of it having an effect on the policy makers in our political and business worlds. It might even raise public awareness to the point where political action is unavoidable.

On the downside, having a constant reminder of a threat you can’t personally fix right this instant can be paralysing. The numbers themselves don’t suggest any solutions, simply serving as a reminder that you’re probably contributing to the problem right now just by breathing. Will people tune it out, as part of the standard flashing lights of advertising? Or will they become hostile to hearing about a problem that seems too large for them to solve alone?

If information was all it took to fix climate change, we’d have done it just after Al Gore’s roadshow. But knowledge is just the first step. Information alone doesn’t lead us to action; emotions do.

I think a steadily-increasing number representing the amount of horrible crap in our atmosphere is likely to create a sense of fear or dread in people who see it. Fear is a powerful motivator – but it often drives us to lash out, to make rash decisions, or (in the other half of “fight or flight”) hide under the bed until the nasties go away.

Hope is a better motivator than fear, any day. It makes us feel like if we were to do something, it might succeed – that we have at least a chance to improve the situation. I’d like to see a section on the billboard with suggestions like “switch to GreenPower” or “write to your elected representative to show your support for a climate bill” or “leave your car at home”. Or (to go back to the question of information) some statistics about the potential of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Something to tell people that yes, there’s a serious problem we need to sort out, but there’s already a way to make it happen.

Either way, can we get one installed in Canberra?

Fresh green links

Some fascinating stuff out there this week:

A fight for the Amazon that should inspire the world – indigenous tribes in the Amazon put their lives on the line to stop oil companies from destroying their homes and the planet’s lungs. The Peruvian president was going to allow  logging, drilling and ‘exploration’ of 70% of Peru’s section of the Amazon rainforest. The tribes blockaded the roads – the president ordered the military to attack. The tribes stood their ground. And finally the Peruvian government overturned the ruling, 82 votes to 12. A quote from the linked article:

“There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?”

Preserving old-growth forests is vital to saving the planet – however, the world’s most carbon-rich forests aren’t the tropical rainforests of the Amazon, Borneo or Africa’s Congo Basin, according to research by the Australian National University. It’s the tall, old-growth mountain ash forests of Victoria’s Central Highlands. We need to protect all forests, not just the exotic ones! And we could probably preserve them without having the military sent in to deal with us. I’m just saying…

Climate change science: proof vs belief – this one’s for Senator Fielding, who’s willing to let Exxon tell him what to think. If you’re not qualified to assess the scientific proof of climate change, how do you decide who to believe? Take a look at what each side offers – more of the same consumerism (has it actually made anyone happy yet?), versus the chance to make a better, cleaner, more just world. This is a thoughtful post from the rather good Twilight Earth blog.

Wave power: clean energy for the future

Pelamis wave power station in Scotland

There’s a lot of fuss over solar and wind power in Australia lately, but they’re not the only alternatives to coal-fired energy here. We’ve also got a nice, long coastline, and I reckon we should also be looking into the potential of wave power.

The basic idea behind wave power is that wind blowing across the surface of the ocean transfers energy to the water, whipping it up into waves. A device placed on or in the water can capture that energy and transfer it to a generator which will create electricity. There’s several different ways to do this, most of which are on trial around the world, in places as diverse as Scotland, Portugal, Namibia, the USA and Australia. If you’ve got a technical frame of mind, you might like to check out the Wikipedia entry on wave power to see the formulas and diagrams.

A report by Carnegie Corporation, a WA wave power company, estimates that Australia has a near-shore wave energy potential of 170,000 mega watts, which is about four times the national installed power generation capacity. Even if we only used 10% of that potential, it’d supply 35 per cent of Australia’s current power demand. I think that’s well worth investigating!

Unlike wind and sunlight, the waves are in action 24 hours a day, which can help us with supplying a base load of power to our homes and businesses. Plus, like any energy industry, wave power would create up to 15,000 new jobs in administration, manufacturing and maintenence work. Check out the WWF’s Power to Change report to see maps of where wave power could work in Australia, plus more details on the jobs it would create.

The drawbacks to wave power today are that a) it’s expensive, because it’s experimental, and b) the waves are so full of energy they can damage the equipment if there’s a storm! But that’s what the research is for, to find ways of making it cost-effective and long-term.

There’s a few businesses in Australia putting wave power to the test right now. Carnegie Corporation is working near Esperance in WA, while Oceanlinx is operating in Port Kembla NSW and Portland VIC. ABC’s Catalyst show has a video with Alan Burns, one of the people working on wave power, which shows how the CETO devices work in the water (click on the video links just underneath the article title).

I find wave power very exciting – it’s got huge potential and is so close to being successful on a commercial scale. Combined with wind and solar power, as well as energy-efficiency, I’m sure it will be part of our clean energy future.

Kev’s Patch

A couple of weeks back I posted about the Kev’s Patch campaign started by Darren at Green Change, which I heard about through Gavin. I thought it was a great idea and wrote an email to the Prime Minister about it, asking him to organise an organic vegie patch at his Canberra residence, The Lodge.

Well, Darren and Gavin and I decided that if we wanted this campaign to take off, we’d need an official website. So here it is: KevsPatch.com.

At the moment, we’ve got a few sample letters and ideas for you to use to show your support for this idea. But it’s well worth subscribing to the blog, so you can get updated when we add free graphics for you to download, and get a petition going for you to sign.

I think this will be a fun way to get some eco-education happening in Australia. Organic gardening is better for the planet than conventional gardening because it reduces soil and water pollution, and so is eating local food because it cuts down on transport emissions. You can’t get any more eco-friendly than food grown organically in your own backyard!

Please give us a visit over at KevsPatch.com and leave a comment telling us why you think the PM should plant some vegies!

The saga of the Greenland Vikings

Vikings! Rampaging about the north seas, taking and destroying then getting drunk and singing about it all. What could we possibly have to learn from them about environmental management? Last week I wrote about Easter Island, based on Jared Diamond’s Collapse. But I think the Viking case study in that book is fascinating too, and wanted to share it with you.

Vikings made raids across many places in Europe, with some of those raiding sites turning into Viking settlements and some of those settlements merging with the locals to become stable societies. But not all of their expeditions were 100% successful.

• the Vinland colony in North America only lasted 10 years before the Native Americans there got rid of them
• the Greenland colony lasted for 450 years, and ended badly
• the Iceland colony struggled at first but survived to become the modern society we know today
• the Orkney, Shetland and Faeroe island communities had very few problems
• Viking settlers across Europe merged with local populations and played a part in forming the nations of Britain, France and Russia

Why were some of these attempts work out so much better than others? The six different types of Vikings are a good experiment for seeing how a local environment can change the way a people live. The Greenland settlement is particularly interesting, because the Inuit had settlements there too which were a success, with their descendants still there today. Why couldn’t the Vikings make it work in that place, when they did so well in other lands?

The Greenland Vikings brought the usual Viking customs and lifestyle with them: they brought cows, pigs and horses with them to farm, as well as barley, oats, cabbage and hops. They fished and hunted seals and reindeer. They forged iron tools and weapons, and held massive feasts to compete with each other over who was the richest and could get the strongest allies.

Back then, the climate in Greenland was pretty similar to what it is today. But the weather was much colder and more changeable there than the Vikings were used to in Norway. Greenland’s got a much shorter growing season, and much steeper mountainous regions. The soil there is more fragile, as are the plants.

So their normal farming techniques didn’t suit their new home. Pigs destroyed the fragile soil and plants, cows required pasture for longer than the short summer months allowed, and needed to be sheltered from the extreme cold. The crops were too small to allow everyone grains for bread or beer, or many vegetables besides cabbage and onions.

But the Vikings kept feeding the cows all their grains, because they were status symbols. They kept sending men off for the annual sea hunt, and spent lots of money on churches and fine clothes to impress visiting traders, instead of figuring out more appropriate farm techniques. They cut down most of the trees, thinking that they’d grow back as quickly as they did in Norway, which left them short of lumber for building, home fires and iron forge fires. They were determined to maintain their old lifestyle even if it was difficult.

Meanwhile, the Inuit who had moved to the region from North America were happy to eat reindeer and seals and the abundant fish. They learned to hunt whales, and used the blubber as lamp fuel. They built their homes from ice, the igloos we recognise today; their boats were made from sealskin stretched over a wooden frame instead of entirely from wood; their weapons used walrus tusks instead of iron. They adapted their lifestyle to suit the area, instead of trying to do it the other way around.

So what can we learn from the Greenland Vikings? That you have to pay attention to the resources you’ve got, not the ones you wish you had. I think it’s relevant to us in Australia – we grow crops like rice, which are better suited to the rainy tropics; we keep sheep and introduced rabbits from Britain, instead of keeping animals like kangaroos or camels that are used to the plants and weather. We do these things because they’re what we’ve always done. But I think it’s time to re-visit those decisions and see if they’re still appropriate, now that we’ve got a better understanding of the climate we have to live with. And we need to be looking to Aboriginal people to find out what worked for them, for the 40,000 years they were here before Europeans showed up. Like the Inuit, they adapted their lifestyles to suit the land.

As Diamond points out, the things the Greenland Vikings valued were the things that eventually caused their downfall. But we shouldn’t get too smug – at 450 years of continuous society there, they lasted longer than Europeans have been living in Australia. Maybe we need to have a careful look at what our expectations are for our future…