Five Reasons to Build a Severn Barrage (Not)

Being opposed to things can become very dull. People who are Greenish or Reddish or a mixture of the two always seem to be anti-this and against that, fighting this development or opposing that policy, and frankly I've had enough. I want to be on board. I want to be on the team. I want to start saying Yes.

So how about the Severn Barrage? What's that? I hear you say. The Severn Barrage is basically a dam, which will stretch across the mouth of the river Severn between the Welsh city of Cardiff and the English coast about ten miles away. This particular stretch of the British coast has a huge tidal range (at most about 15m or, whatever it is, 45 feet between high and low tides), which means that hydroelectric turbines set into the dam will be able to generate 5% of the UK's electricity.

That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? In fact the whole idea sounds fabulously Green and lovely. I want to be a supporter. I really really want to say Yes to the Severn Barrage.

But I can't. I have to say, once again, NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! That's Nein, Non, er Nul Point.

It's a terrible idea. A monstrously Groanish, ghastly and despicable idea. Why? Oh dear, I'll have to add a (Not) to the title. I meant to have five Pros, but it looks like a fistful of Cons instead:

1. The people who want to build the Barrage aren't in it for the Green power. They're in it for the development potential upstream. With the tidal flow reduced the river will flood less and the water will be clearer, making it more conducive to watersports and luxury waterside apartment blocks. The Severn has never been a river that likes to stay within its banks - the Barrage will finally tame it.

2. At the moment the Severn Estuary is one of the world's most important stopover points for migratory wetland birds. At Slimbridge, a ways upriver from the proposed Barrage, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust is like a motel and gas station for tired geese. Any reduciton in the river's tidal flow will have an impact on the birds, but no one knows exactly what it will be.

3. Migratory fish species are already declining around the rivers of Europe. The salmon and the eel were once both plentiful in the Severn, and their decline is at least partially because of ever more efficient flood defences. Weirs block the main stream and floodgates prevent water flowing from the main river into its tributaries. Since few people now make a living from the fishery there are few who care whether fish live or die. A barrage, even if navigable by fish, can only make the situation worse.

4. The Severn Bore is one of Britain's natural wonders. Formed by the incoming tide as it piles into the funnel-shaped estuary, the Bore is a wave up to six feet high, which travels miles upriver. Surfers travel from all over the world to ride on this most determined of rollers, and at present the unofficial world record for the longest single ride on a surfboard is held by a veteran Severn surfer Steve King. The barrage would of course kill the Bore.

5. There are alternatives. One is to build lagoons which will trap water as it flows out with the tide and use it to power turbines. These wouldn't block the river, which is good news for the river. However, this means developers or investors won't have the incentives outlined in (1) above, so it ain't likely to happen. Another option is to invest more money in developing free-standing tidal turbines - like wind turbines underwater. These have been developed on a shoestring (no, not literally) by some of the UK's amazing renewable energy boffins, and a couple of models are being tested right now. Will the inventors find UK investors? Or will they sell their fantastic ideas abroad, while we continue turning our beautiful island into a giant waterside housing development in which rivers are lifeless pools and wildlife clings for dear life to the tiny patches of SLOAP (Space Left Over After Planning)?

Nature is soft, not hard. Rivers like the Severn are supposed to change with the tides and seasons. The regular flooding has given the Severn vale the rich agricultural land farmers have valued for centuries, but now we are only interested in bricks and mortar - which are hard and don't respond well to immersion in brackish water. We've tunnelled and bridged the Severn. Now the engineers want to finish the job and dam it.

Time to bring back the Monkey Wrench Gang.

Sunshade World? No! No! No!

Now and again people send me press releases they think I'll find interesting, but this one made me want to run upstairs and hide under the bed. Actually, to start with I thought this report, from a respected university not a million miles from my door, must be an April Fool that had got lost somewhere in the www. It began:

Sunshade World - a global warming solution?

I read on, and it became clear that this was no joke. Instead, a team of scientists had just devoted hatfuls of time and energy to creating computer models designed to help us understand what the world would be like if a giant sunshade were placed between us and the sun. Apparently such a scheme could be put in place in 25 years or so for so many trillions of pounds, so obviously we need to know what it will be like.

The good news is that, compared to the 'sky falling in' doom-monger's scenarios of runaway climate change, life under the sunshade would be quite pleasant. A bit less ice at the poles than at present. Rather drier in the topics. Possible catastrophic effects on plankton with potential global repercussions.

As I read and digested this, I tried to imagine these scientists going about their work, chatting over coffee and comparing notes, then I thought about all the other scientists all over the world who spend their time modelling futures and extrapolating data, which then gets turned into fabulous stories by the media and so makes its way into our tiny brains, where we try and come to terms with it.

And no doubt somebody, somewhere, is busy monitoring all these scientists, studying their carbon footprints and coming up with ingenious ways to make their future-mongering more efficient. And these people also issue reports telling the world how vitally important their work has been in cutting the climate impact of the climate impact studiers. And after a while someone says, you know, this Sunshade World really sounds pretty good, and then we're all in trouble.

You know what they say: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

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?