Turning the Parents Green? It's Eco Child's Play!

Thanks to Jennifer Lance for this thoughtful review on ecochildsplay.com:

http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/05/20/eco-kids-books-how-to-turn-your-parents-green/

Funny to think of Jennifer sitting in the wilds of northern California, in her off-grid, self-built house, surrounded by kids running about and playing American versions of the universal child games, reading this odd little book. Which was written, incidentally, in a south Bristol terrace built a year before Victoria died, with a view over the trees and rooftops and lots of sky in the window. In the summer evenings a sound like a cow snorting tells us a hot air balloon is overhead, the pilot turning on the burner to get that balloon over our hill.

It isn't what you'd call wilderness round here. Our wildlife is as urban as we are: the frogs in the pond and the swifts in the sky are city-dwellers, so are the herring gulls which started moving in when the Clean Air Acts were passed forty-odd years ago. The gulls are big, aggressive and unafraid, and they love it here. No one has any idea what to do about them, though the city has tried some strange and wonderful ideas, such as stealing the eggs and replacing them with fakes. They've tried introducing predators like peregrine falcons to scare them away, but the gulls are used to predators and don't take any notice. They've tried culling them, but more just arrive to take the vacant rooftop apartments.

We're entwined with nature, even here in the city, and all of our actions will have consequences we could never imagine.

Bin Tax: Pay the Kids not the City

We might not like the idea, but it won't be long before we're all paying for our rubbish to be taken away.* Of course we already pay for this service through local taxes, but new technology will soon enable rubbish collectors to weigh our bins and charge accordingly.

So what to do? Have a tantrum? Or become better binners? As readers of How to Turn Your Parents Green will know, most of the stuff we throw away can be recycled, so it's mostly just a question of doing this properly. If you sign up to the Glorious Green Charter included free with every copy of the book, you can put your kids in charge of monitoring bin usage. They will fine you for misdemeanours such as chucking drink cans in the wheelie bin** but these pennies will seem like money well spent when the real Rubbish Inspectors come to call.

Let's face it: kids like detail. They like yucky stuff. They're perfect for the job.

The book also provides handy tips on how to avoid creating rubbish in the first place, so why not save a few bob*** and peruse a copy? (preferably one you've purchased beforehand)

* Note for American reader(s): rubbish = garbage or trash; bin = trashcan; potato = potarto (should we call the whole thing off?)
** Trash can on wheels. Can perform 'a wheelie' but this isn't necessarily a good idea
*** No Robert here: 'bob' is an arcane word for 'shilling', a now obsolete bit of British currency

A Few Words from Mr Angry (or is that Ms?)

It's always nice to get a little feedback, and this morning a message arrived from someone bravely identifying themselves as Anonymous. Describing me as a **** idiot, my correspondent went on to explain that I knew nothing about anything and, in particular, that by mentioning the possibility of oil becoming more expensive I was effectively acting as a mouthpiece for the great liberal global warming conspiracy.

To back up their argument that I am a **** idiot (which I no doubt am, at least some of the time), Mr or Ms Angry pulled out an old chestnut called the abiogenic theory of petroleum formation. This theory, which was put forward in the nineteenth century and has since been rejected by everyone except a couple of rogue Russians and an astrophysicist, suggests that oil and gas are not fossil fuels, but that they derive from magma squeezed up through cracks in the earth's crust and transformed by complex chemical processes into oily hydrocarbons.

In other words, in the view of Anonymous, supplies of oil and gas are continually being replaced from below, and will never run out. There is no evidence for this whatsoever, but that doesn't matter with this sort of bogus science. Which would be funny except that people who know even less about the subject than I do tend to grasp at theories like this and cling on to them, and we don't need people's heads to be full of muddled ideas. We need people to be well-informed, and to think carefully about subjects like wind energy, nuclear power and so on.

The earth is rich with many forms of energy. Let's think about this in more interesting ways, not just make stuff up.

It Isn't Funny Being Green. Or Is It?

You may have arrived here from the website of the Guardian newspaper, in which case I hope you'll excuse the rather lo-fi ambience of this blog. My abilities as a Webmaster are quite limited. On the other hand you may have no idea what I'm talking about, so here's a ticket for a trip through cyberspace:

guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/08/climatechange.comedy

Anyway, the article is about the difficulties comedians face when they try to make us laugh about climate change, and after talking to numerous people (many of whose wise words had to be snipped away), I came to this surprising conclusion:

Climate change is funny.

Let me put that another way. I started out thinking that maybe the environment as a subject was too dull, worthy or scary to be amusing, but one or two ecologically-minded comedians put me straight. Think about - I don't know - squidging a rotting cucumber out of its plastic sheath into the food waste bin (don't have one?!! Tell your council to get on the stick!). Think of all the people all over the country trying to figure out how to get the cucumber mush out without it exploding all over the kitchen. Well it always makes me chuckle.

The problem for comedians, and the problem for anyone who is trying to get people thinking about global warming and stuff, is that people don't want to hear about it. I think people feel that if they laugh about climate change they're admitting that it exists. If they laugh at jokes about the environment generally they're siding with the environmentalists. And who wants to do that?

It's a bit like those long-ago days in the 1980s when liberal-type people turned against comedians who made jokes that were racist or sexist. I found an old book of sketches by The Two Ronnies the other day, which must have been from the mid-70s, and half the jokes were about Irishmen doing this or foreigners with funny-sounding names doing that. Then comedy went political and those jokes weren't funny any more. Perhaps they never were, but the point is our sense of humour changes with the times. We censor what we laugh at.

Right now it isn't funny being Green, but times are changing fast. With people like Marcus Brigstocke and Mark Watson leading the way, the age of the eco-comedian is upon us.

Adventures in Cleaning

It's all very well thinking and talking about this Green business, but what about getting stuff done? I have to admit that I'm more of a thinker than a doer, but my better half, the lovely Ms Peapod, likes to get her hands dirty. While I'm trying to think of something witty to say about Carbon (not very easy) she's toiling at the allotment, fighting slugs with her bare hands.

Cleaning is a subject I am certainly much happier pondering than doing something about. I think the world would be a better place if we all cleaned less, but the unkind might suggest that I just want to bring everyone down to my slovenly level. My argument is that our cleaning products are often dirtier than the dirt they're supposed to get rid of, because they're full of bleach and similar poisons. We wage chemical warfare on ordinary dirt and germs, and there is a lot of - what's it called? Collateral damage.

Because whatever you squirt around your house ends up either down the sink or drifting about as dust, and if the stuff is poisonous it isn't going to be doing you or anyone else much good. Is it?

Enter Ms Peapod, bearing a lemon. She had discovered somewhere that a lemon isn't just for squeezing - you can use the skin as a handy cleaning utensil, a kind of citrus scouring sponge. And to demonstrate she tackled a set of copper saucepans we got from a car boot sale. Just set to with that half lemon and the dirt fell away.

So successful was this experiment that she's now threatening to revolutionise our cleaning regime. There's talk of home-made washing powder - all you need's some borax and a few other bits and bobs, for heaven's sake! We already use vinegar for glass and stuff and new applications suggest themselves on a daily basis. Who knows where this will lead?

Are You Greenish?

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think all that many people would describe themselves as Green. I think the quiet majority of people are wary of Green politics and not very keen on carbon-crunching. They're not really convinced by the fire-and-brimstone sermons of Monbiot and co.

But many of us have Green tendencies. We love nature documentaries and walks in the country. We grow things. With a bit of encouragement we easily become fiendish recyclers. We'll turn the temperature setting down on the washing machine, so long as we know the clothes will still come out clean.

In other words, we're Greenish. Unfortunately professional Greens sometimes give the impression that anyone who hasn't sent their car to the crusher and vowed never to eat a carrot that has travelled more than 200 metres is a carbon criminal responsible for the imminent destruction of the world. Which is hardly encouraging.

Instead, let's give ourselves a pat on the back for saving those cans or for trying to bike to work, or even for noticing the first swift of summer.

Can You Really Make Paper From Elephant Poo?

Yesterday I went to the opening of an extraordinary new building at the Green Shop, near Stroud. It's a funny sort of place, hidden away behind a petrol station on a B-road. You'll be driving along and there's this Murco gas station, then you look again and behind it there's a funky wooden building with a grassy roof and more solar panels than you could shake a stick at.

The Green Shop has been going for twenty years or so, and when you walk in from the garage you can see this evolution. First, there's a typical garage shop, with sweets and newspapers - only the herbal tea selection is unusual. Then you go into a bigger space with lots of Green goodies on display, from books and gadgets to washing up liquid and wholesome beauty products. They have solar battery chargers and little machines for making logs out of waste paper. It's pretty cool.

Then you go through a doorway and into the Glorious Green Future. The new building is light, airy, super-efficient and all the rest. There are displays of Green paints (other colours available) and rainwater harvesting gadgetry and solar gismos.

The Great Green Jonathan Porritt snipped a ribbon to open the new building in front of a happy crowd of future-makers, and he said A Few Words. He talked about other people around the country who were in a similar line of work - finding exciting new ways of doing things and laying the foundations of a low-carbon economy.

By coincidence I was reading something last night about Greens and the economy. I've already said that I'm not a great shopper, and the writer of this article seemed to be talking straight at me when he said it was our duty as citizens to shop a lot and keep the good old global economy going.

It's true that in the old days Greens tended to be a bit sniffy about shopping, but those attitudes are disappearing fast, along with droopy sweaters and Compulsory Muesli. Nowadays it's about where you choose to shop. Do you trail around Toys-a-Saurus or pop into your local toy shop? Do you follow the herd around Tuskos or get a veg box/visit a farmer's market/buy what you can find in the High Street?

At the Green Shop and places like it shopping isn't a chore - it's a joy! You can discover new ways of doing things, find brands you've never heard of and get inspired. I bought a little notebook with paper made partly from elephant dung. Elephant dung! Every time I look at it I picture a great big pooping pachyderm, and my day is made that little bit brighter.