Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

[richard-af]

What about good old nuclear? It's works well with submarines and feasibly could work well with planes (nuclear hydrogen jets). This technology could be easily transplanted into boats and freighters and bearing in mind that most nuclear plants in commission now days were built in the 50's and still haven't made the workers grow new body parts, nuclear really doesn't deserve most of the bad press it gets.

Why is it so hard to replace a lot of plastics with wood? Why is it hard to replace clothing using plastics with clothing using cotton?

Brazil seems to run it's cars pretty successfully on ethanol, so why is this not feasible for anybody else (The whole reason that happened was because they didn't want to have thier automotive industry reliant on oil coming from america)?
We currently use a lot of oil because it is an easy resource to purchase and can be used to create many different things, however we currently have alternatives that we can use if we so desire. The only difference is that we will have to use them if oil runs out.

Nuclear: Too pricey. The safety costs are astronomical. Oh, and it takes a lot of energy to actually get the stuff ready to use. Which means oil.

Ethanol:
Talking out of my botty here, but I imagine to satisfy the enormous demand for energy, there'd need to be more crops than can be grown.

Alternatives: No. To manaufacture viable alternatives, the creation of the necessary infrastructure would use up enormous quantities of... oil.

[richard-af]

This is interesting by the way, just in case you weren't panicking already.

Thanks - I needed cheering up.

[Ardesco]

What about good old nuclear? It's works well with submarines and feasibly could work well with planes (nuclear hydrogen jets). This technology could be easily transplanted into boats and freighters and bearing in mind that most nuclear plants in commission now days were built in the 50's and still haven't made the workers grow new body parts, nuclear really doesn't deserve most of the bad press it gets.

Why is it so hard to replace a lot of plastics with wood? Why is it hard to replace clothing using plastics with clothing using cotton?

Brazil seems to run it's cars pretty successfully on ethanol, so why is this not feasible for anybody else (The whole reason that happened was because they didn't want to have thier automotive industry reliant on oil coming from america)?
We currently use a lot of oil because it is an easy resource to purchase and can be used to create many different things, however we currently have alternatives that we can use if we so desire. The only difference is that we will have to use them if oil runs out.

[dang65]

This is interesting by the way, just in case you weren't panicking already.

[dang65]

Yes, the problem really is not so much that oil is eventually going to actually run out - that may be decades or even centuries away - but that is already becoming harder to extract and the new sources are massively more expensive to produce. Seeing as human life is currently so totally reliant on oil in all aspects of life, the effect of huge price rises is going to impact on absolutely everything, from cheap clothes and shoes to food production, metal extraction, fertilisers and pesticides, plastics, agricultural production, transport, holidays... just everything. If the price went up on one or two of those things then people would adjust, rearrange finances, but everything in one hit?

It's true that there are some alternative fuels around, and even quite a few options for producing cheaper electricity, but none of them are set up yet. Hydrogen powered cars, for example, are already in production, but hydrogen has to be produced... using power. And the cars are about 60 grand each. And they are produced using oil. Even converting existing cars will require massive amounts of work, all using oil.

Biofuels are also viable technically, but even the small amount of production going on now is causing food prices to go up as animal feed is redirected to biofuel production.

Also, cars are the absolute least of our problems, although it's always new ways of powering cars which get talked about. At the moment we rely on agricultural machinery, trucks (98% of products in shops are transported by lorry), shipping, aircraft. These are all powered by oil, not electricity or biofuels.

To adapt to new fuels would surely take decades, even if those fuels were to exist in anything like the volume that oil currently does.

[richard-af]

I don't see what the big fuss about oil is all about really. There are lots of alternative fuel sources such as alcohol produced from wheat, and things like plastics can be easily swapped out for things like wood/metal fairly easily. OK wood and metal aren't the cheapest of materials right now, but that will probably change.


I really can't see the problem with oil stocks running out.

Sadly, not true. Google for "Oil Peak"

The depressing truth about alternative fuel is all there.

I'm not saying Oil Peak is a truism; I am saying that alternatives to oil don't exist. It's less than obvious truths like the huge amount of energy (almost certainly related to oil) that it takes to manufacture, say, Solar Panels and such, that means oil is all we really have. Bit of a problem, eventually. Unless abiotic oil is a reality - which seems at best unlikely.

[Ardesco]

I don't see what the big fuss about oil is all about really. There are lots of alternative fuel sources such as alcohol produced from wheat, and things like plastics can be easily swapped out for things like wood/metal fairly easily. OK wood and metal aren't the cheapest of materials right now, but that will probably change.


I really can't see the problem with oil stocks running out.

[richard-af]

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.” [email protected]

Back to Methane again.

Only way out of Global Warming is to revert to Hunter-Gatherer living, which we won't. So, we're screwed. Never mind.

[xoggoth]

People should eat other people that would save us lots.

[dang65]

Personally, I think the whole Climate Change thing is being used as a decoy to stop the population panicking about The End Of Oil. Most the things the government tells us to do to protect the environment - cycle or walk more, eat local produce, reduce electricity consumption, recycle as much as possible - could just as well be seen as basic preparation for when oil becomes so expensive that only the super-wealthy can afford it and our entire consumer-based society collapses. That preparation will only be of use to the few people who really throw themselves into it completely and start doing things like harvesting rainwater and installing solar panels and growing their own food, but I guess there will be a few of them.

[kirk]

Nice to hear, although I always suspected it

[Ardesco]

I already know that Carbon Footprints are bollocks, nice to see the green's are starting to realise it as well.

[dang65]

Oh dear, from The Times. Couldn't find any mention of this on CUK, but maybe I missed it. Astonishing bit of fact mangling anyway.

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.

Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.

Fresh research published in New Scientistlast month suggested that 1kg of meat cost the Earth 36kg in global warming gases. The figure was based on Japanese methods of industrial beef production but Mr Goodall says that farming techniques are similar throughout the West.

What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink 420ml – three quarters of a pint – to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.

Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.

Michael O’Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world’s cattle. “The way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows,” Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. “I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.”

But according to Mr Goodall, Mr O’Leary may have a point. “Food is more important [to Britain’s greenhouse emissions] than aircraft but there is no publicity,” he said. “Associated British Foods isn’t being questioned by MPs about energy.

“We need to become accustomed to the idea that our food production systems are equally damaging. As the man from Ryanair says, cows generate more emissions than aircraft. Unfortunately, perhaps, he is right. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should always choose to use air or car travel instead of walking. It means we need urgently to work out how to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs.”

Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however, would be too modest a change. The food industry is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual’s carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit.

“This is not just about flying your beans from Kenya in the winter,” Mr Goodall said. “The whole system is stuffed with energy and nitrous oxide emissions. The UK is probably the worst country in the world for this.

“We have industrialised our food production. We use an enormous amount of processed food, like ready meals, compared to most countries. Three quarters of supermarkets’ energy is to refrigerate and freeze food prepared elsewhere.

A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of where the energy is wasted. You make the meal, then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage.”

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.” [email protected]

Shattering the great green myths

— Traditional nappies are as bad as disposables, a study by the Environment Agency found. While throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of energy, clean water and detergent

— Paper bags cause more global warming than plastic. They need much more space to store so require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops

— Diesel trains in rural Britain are more polluting than 4x4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander, when Transport Secretary, said: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive”

— Burning wood for fuel is better for the environment than recycling it, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered

— Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher

— Someone who installs a “green” lightbulb undoes a year’s worth of energy-saving by buying two bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain

— Trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon, were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas

Sources: Defra; How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, by Chris Goodall; Absorbent Hygiene Products Manufacturers Association; The Times; BBC