Look out! It's the Carbon Weevils!

One of the aims of How to Turn Your Parents Green (how I wish I'd given it a shorter title!) is to inject a bit of humour into the global-warming-mass-extinction-oh-no-we're-all-going-to-melt thing. And I'm happy to say we're part of a growing trend. Yes, there are still plenty of tedious books and websites where people drone on about lightbulbs and recycling without so much as a smile, but some great comic minds are at work dreaming up wonderful new ideas.

My favourite is the Carbon Weevils, a short film made by madcap theatre troupe Forkbeard Fantasy. It's shown as part of their hilarious show Invisible Bonfires, which is about global warming, but you can also see the film by itself on Youtube or You Tube or whatever it's called - you probably know better than me.

The link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEuUDmwZ8a0

At least it should be. Sorry if it's someone doing a silly dance instead.

Viva Greenpeace!

It's hard to be positive when you come across stories like Goodbye Froggie. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read them. You just have to read them, think a bit and then do something. No one's expecting you to go charging around the Southern Ocean like the rainbow warriors of Greenpeace are doing right now. There is, as they say, more than one way to save a whale. Or a frog, come to think of it. This is what 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' is all about: direct action you can do at home.

Take the poor frog. In this green, wet country of ours there used to be lots of frogs, toads and newts. Witches didn't have to look far when they needed a bit of amphibian for a spell, they just looked in the nearest patch of weeds. There were ponds and streams everywhere, full of green, slippery creatures.

The modern witch has to look much harder, because there are less amphibians, and there are less amphibians because there are fewer places for them to live. Our growing towns and cities cover land with tarmac and bricks and concrete. We use strimmers and weedkillers to get rid of vegetation. Even in the countryside you have to look quite hard for a pond because people have filled them in.

So what can you do? Here's a clue: in our tiny city garden we have anything between five and ten frogs. They live in the flowerbeds around the world's smallest pond, feasting on the thousands of slugs that live in the garden. They're protected from local cats by the thick, messy foliage that we never cut back. We don't use any poisons. In fact a lot of the time we don't do much. It's a bit of a jungle, but paradise if you're a snail, a slug or an urban frog.

The gardening chapter of 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' has lots of tips for the greener gardener, so why not check it out?

Goodbye Froggie

The other day I was lucky enough to interview the producer of the new BBC nature series Life in Cold Blood, which is all about Reptiles and Amphibians. He told me a story which is featured in the series, about the Panamanian Golden Frog. It's one amazing creature, this frog, bright yellow with a black stripe. The male of the species will sit on the riverbank and, when it spies another frog, wave at it. To other male frogs, this is a bit like a shake of the fist - look at my muscles! To a female it's, well, much the same, only with a different aim...

A couple of years ago the producer contacted scientists in the region to talk about this frog and they told him, you'd better get here quick because we don't know how long this frog is going to be around. Apparently there's a nasty fungus which is spreading along river systems all over the world, and it is killing amphibians at such a rate that people are comparing the situation to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Anyway, the producer rushed over to Panama and filmed the Panamanian Golden Frog, which he described as a truly amazing creature. Scientists went along too, and did experiments to see whether the frog would wave at its own reflection or at a frog on a TV screen. And then, some time later, the fungus reached the homeland of the Panamanian Golden Frog and local scientists scooped up the last remaining population and took them into captivity.

The frog has waved its last in the wild, but it is about to become a TV star.

As a producer of nature programmes I suppose you get used to extinction, but I found this story disturbing. What you're wondering though is, are we to blame? The answer is, quite possibly. The killer fungus seems to have travelled from Africa along with the South African Clawed Frog, which is used by people all over the world. You see the South African Clawed Frog is very useful to us humans, because if you inject one with the urine of a pregnant woman it will produce eggs. Yes, this particular frog is a living pregnancy testing kit.

What does this tell us? With their thin skins, amphibians are incredibly sensitive animals. A frog may help us detect a pregnancy, but perhaps the rapid decline in species across the world should give us another kind of warning.

What does Green mean?

It's a tricky one, isn't it? We're always telling each other we should be Greener, but does anyone really know what this means? I have an idea in my head, but I doubt it's the same as yours. For instance, my Green vision isn't limited to worrying about Carbon. I'm not sure that all our attention should be focused so narrowly on this one element, because it allows accountants and technical people and marketing whizzkids to dictate how we think about changing the world for the better.

If you're obsessed with Carbon you can't think rationally about nuclear power or dams across the Severn. Of course this suits big corporations just fine, because a thinking public is not good for business. After all, if you think in broad terms about being Green you soon realise that the most important Green qualities are THRIFT (ie not wasting stuff), MODERATION (ie not consuming too much), SELF-RELIANCE (ie doing things for yourself) and CRAFT (ie making and doing things rather than passively consuming them). If you have these qualities you will have a small Carbon footprint. You will have lower Carbon emissions than other people. You won't need to waste any of your precious time thinking about this incredibly tedious subject.

But can you think of a business that wants its customers to be thrifty, moderate, self-reliant and crafty? What about the government? Our leaders want us to be healthy and reasonably content, but they also want us to consume. They want us to buy a lot of everything. For the economy to keep booming we have to buy more this year than we did last, and if we're Green we won't.

Carbon is a good get-out for government and business. Think about it. If you're a business person you want people to keep buying stuff, but there's only so much a person can buy. So you keep creating new products and new markets, and this is what's happening with Carbon. Instead of buying less, people are buying more, only they're buying stuff that seems to be Green because it involves less Carbon floating about the place. Biofuel is a classic example of this, as discussed in How To Turn Your Parents Green:

Don’t be Fooled by BioFuel
Car owners, manufacturers and petrol companies are always looking for ways to seem Green, and biofuels are the New Big Thing. Instead of powering cars with the energy from long-dead plants (ie oil), biofuels are made from plants grown for the purpose – crops like wheat, oilseed rape and oil palms. The idea is that the growing plants consume as much CO2 as the car engines will emit, but does this make biofuels Green? Not in the slightest. So how can you be a Green driver? By riding a bike instead

Don't get me wrong. I'm nervous about Global Warming and I know that we need to change our ways. But when you're thinking Green, have some imagination. Have some vision. Conjure a great life. The future needs hard-working, thoughtful, creative people, not a bunch of Carbon-crunchers.

Travelling Greenly

So Christmas is over and everyone's thinking about the summer holidays. I suppose it's pleasant to think about blue skies and hot sunshine when the weather outside is cold and grey, but for budding Greens the subject of travel is tricky. I mean, we like to travel as much as the next person, but we feel bad about the consequences.
Mostly people worry about carbon emissions from flying, driving long distances and so on, but there's another side to the story. Here's a little snippet from 'How to Turn Your Parents Green':

The Plane Truth about Stonehenge
You know the story of Daedalus and Icarus? Dad makes wings. Son gets over-excited and flies too close to sun. Wings fall to pieces. Son plummets to death.
Moral: THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE LEAVING TERRA FIRMA.
In the old days flying used to be dangerous, but now it’s safe and cheap, and Groans love it. They love buzzing over to Paris or Prague for the weekend, and because everyone else is doing it too they assume it must be a good thing to do. Of course people used to feel like that about sending little boys up chimneys and putting little girls in charge of dangerous machinery.
The trouble with flying is that it uses an amount of energy way out of proportion to the benefit gained, ie a Groan lying by a pool or trawling around the shops. And there are Hidden Costs.
Take Stonehenge. I don’t mean literally. Just as an example. Not so long ago you could wander among the stones, but now there’s a huge fence round them. Why?
1. Because otherwise the stones might escape?
2. Because a gang of dastardly international criminals is planning to steal them? Or
3. Because so many people come to see them that if there wasn’t a fence the stones would be worn away like the noses of cathedral saints?
A trip to a foreign country used to be a rare adventure, but now you just drive to the airport, hop on a plane and hire a car when you get to the other end.
Groans may grumble about how they used to wander round Stonehenge but they themselves want to go everywhere and see everything. They want More, Cheaper.
So Stonehenge is now hidden by a giant car park full of coaches and a fence, and none of you will ever see the old stones sitting quietly on the grass.

Still, even the Greenest among us will be thinking wistfully of a sun-soaked beach right now, because that's what we do in winter when we're hunched in our woolly hats and scarves. As we dream of the sun, travel agents offer to make our dreams come true. We book our exotic summer holidays so that the thought of them can sustain us through the winter. But when the summer comes around we don't really need to go anywhere. England (or any other northern country) is beautiful in the summer, wet sometimes maybe, but green and temperate when more southerly countries are roasting.
So what we need is a new way of dreaming through the winter. We need to invent imaginary journeys, magical cities, fantastic voyages. We need to read Marco Polo or Gulliver's Travels or The Odyssey. These adventures have helped people cope with hundreds of winters, and they can help us now.
In the future, when the human race has grown bored of zooming all over the place and Stonehenge is open to all again, people will sit in their gardens imagining fantastic journeys. Travel guides will no longer be published. Instead, there will be books full of imaginary journeys, while visitors to unfamiliar cities will be given puzzles instead of maps. Travel will be a test of character, undertaken only by those with a genuine thirst for knowledge and adventure.
In the meantime, try reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - you'll never need to leave home again.
PS The exotic desert island in the picture is called Steep Holm. Can you find it?

Thank you, Treehugger.com

Well, news of 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' seems to be spreading. It's a curious fact of modern life that a book should be impossible to find in our biggest local bookstore (but try finding anything at Borders without a pirate's treasure map), yet instantly available online.

Treehugger.com posted a fantastic review yesterday, which is now doing the rounds. Here in Bristol, England, I'm beginning to find that parents aren't quite so friendly... Apparently some of the pushier kids are holding them to ransom for low energy light bulbs. I guess it's quite unusual for an adult to arm children against other adults, but these are desperate days. While the news is full of stuff about international summits and all that Al Gore-type blather, our everyday lives are becoming less and less Green.

Everything that comes in the mail is now wrapped in plastic. Weekend newspapers have their insides similarly packaged. As supermarkets compete with each other for the badge of Most Organic, the amount of packaging on their products keeps increasing. People keep driving more, flying more, wasting more.

This isn't just about global warming, this is about environmental destruction on a casual, everyday scale. Everyone's talking about global warming as this single issue that technology can fix, but what use is a cool desert? 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' is about life choices. Here's a bit of the last chapter:

Live Green
The future of the world is in your hands. OK, so there are a few billion other people with a say in it too, but your choices and actions will affect the course of history as much as anyone else’s.
However your parents live their lives, you are free to choose your own course. Which is it to be: Groan or Green?
1. Do you want to use up the planet’s resources, or conserve them?
2. Do you want people to suffer in the cause of your cheap stuff, or to live comfortably like you?
3. Do you want to watch life on TV, or take part in it?
4. Do you always want to listen to music on an MP3 player, or learn an instrument and play it yourself?
5. Do you want to experience the world through a car window, or at your own pace, under your own power?
6. Do you want hedgehogs and bumblebees to disappear, or to flourish?
Of course it isn’t easy being Green. We’re only human, after all. But if you follow Groan philosophy you’ll be unhappy, stressed, overweight and, quite probably, under water.

So instead of More, Cheaper! try

LESS, BETTER!

Instead of Make Life Easy!

MAKE LIFE FUN!

Interview from Venue Magazine

What's 'How to Turn Your Parents Green' all about then?

It’s about a war that’s being waged in sitting rooms, bathrooms and kitchens up and down the land. In gardens and patches of wasteland. In supermarkets and on the streets. On one side we have our heroes, the Greens. On the other their enemy, the Griping Grumbly Groans.
Your Groan is the average-to-lazy modern adult human, who lives according to two simple rules: More, Cheaper and Make Life Easy. Your Groan moans about the traffic but insists on driving. Your Groan hacks down every weed in the garden then wonders why there are no butterflies. Your Groan slumps about the house in a T-shirt with the heat blasting. Sound familiar?
The aim of the book is to encourage the young and the young at heart to confront their Groans (parents, teachers, housemates) and force them to turn Green. There’s a Glorious Green Charter backed up by a system of fines established on the same principles as the old-fashioned swear box.

Where did the inspiration come from?

My daughter brought home a poster about saving Siberian tigers, which she’d made at school. Her painting showed a kindly, sad-looking tiger that reminded me of Bagpuss. I thought, this extinction business is making her sad and wistful, but her generation need to be angry. They need to be cross. They need to get us adults by the cojones and say, OK, that’s it, enough’s enough!

Who's it for?

Do you have parents? Then it’s for you. Our obvious target audience is kids aged 8 and up, plus their long-suffering parents, but there’s a lot in here for people who care about global warming and want to do something for themselves. There are some sophisticated ideas in the book as well as a few facts – one or two might even be true!

What do you hope people will get/experience from the book?

I hope they’ll chuckle. I hope they’ll get a kick out of Oivind’s cool illustrations. I hope they’ll feel as though they can seize a bit of control over what’s happening in the world. I hope they’ll choose Green over Groan.

Isn't there a bit of a surfeit of preaching, eco-championing books on the market at the moment? What makes yours different?

I hate preaching. I have a big problem with your puritanical, humourless Green. This book looks at the classic Green subjects from unusual angles, and from a slightly mad perspective. You’ll read about pedal-powered TVs and discover why teachers love to laminate. You’ll fall in love with your milkman and run away from growbags.
Best of all, ‘How to Turn Your Parents Green’ encourages younger readers to take action - to hit parents where it hurts by making them pay for Groanish behaviour. Come to think of it, the more eco-warlike members of any shared household could draw up a Glorious Green Charter and fine people who chuck cans in the wheelie bin.
The truth is, most Green books rely on the good will of readers. This one is built on much firmer foundations.

Was it hard to research? What was you starting point?

I’ve been writing about Green subjects for a long time, so it wasn’t so difficult to get hold of the information. There are books and websites packed with facts and figures, dos and don’ts, and ways to change your life. What I wanted to do was present the information in a way that was accessible, fun and surprising. Doing that was difficult.

Which bits were hardest/easiest/most fun to write?

Getting the tone right was tricky. Then I read ‘Matilda’ and thought, I know, I’ll take some tips from Roald Dahl! The most brilliant moment was when I hit on the character of the Groans – overweight, hedonistic, self-centred adults whose overwhelming laziness and desire for an easy life lies at the heart of our social, economic and ecological woes.
For some reason the section about Energy was the hardest, I think because it involves Carbon, which is not an easy subject to be witty about. Just the word Carbon makes me want to rush out and drink lots of cider.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed doing the chapter on turning your garden Green, because it gave me the chance to rant about the hideous blight of decking and promote Low-tech Gardening Solutions.

There is a serious message behind it all isn't there?

The book starts off talking about global warming but develops into something much wider in scope. There’s a very important connection between environmental troubles and social problems like obesity, but we tend to talk about them as separate issues. I’m interested in the wider subject of ecology, not just global warming.
But ‘How to Turn Your Parents Green’ is primarily a call to action. Yes, sabotage that patio heater. Stand guard over nettle patches. Give packaging to the supermarket manager. Make a fuss about those cycle lanes that squirt you into heavy traffic when you least expect it. Don’t eat blueberries. Flush less. Dance more. Pester for the Planet!

It looks beautiful - are you pleased with the illustrations? Where did they come from?

When I saw Oivind Hovland’s pictures for the first time I had to rewrite half the book because my text didn’t do them justice. Oivind is Norwegian but lives here, so I suppose that makes him a Norstolian, and he has a peculiarly Norstolian vision of the world that comes through in his strange and wonderful pictures.
He did the most fantastic cover illustration for the Bristol Review of Books, showing Chatterton and a wrecking ball, so the Esteemed Publisher signed him up. Which was rather brilliant.

Are you a Grumbelicious Groan, an Eco-Worrier or a Lean Mean Green Machine?

Like many people, I’m a bit of a mixture. Yes, I’ll squidge rotting cucumber out of its plastic sheath into the brown bin, and yes I ride a bike whenever I can, but in other ways I’m quite Groanish. I refuse to buy products which are vastly overpriced because they’re being marketed as Organic Chic, and I can’t bring myself to give up having a car. As for being an Eco-Worrier, I’m afraid that’s my natural condition.

What's next for you?

I’m going into hiding to escape the mob of angry parents outside my front door. To placate them I suppose there’s always the sequel: Parents’ Revenge – Now it’s the Kids’ Turn for the Green Treatment! (the title needs work).

Interview by Joe Spurgeon, November 2007