Talks are in place to ratify a replacement to the Kyoto Agreement which is set to expire in 2012. So far, Kyoto for the most part has proven to be a load of hot air, with big players such as Australia and the US refusing to sign up to the agreement at all. Australia have now stepped in line, but it’s hard to believe that the Bush administration will ever sign up to Kyoto, so we await with baited breath to see if the American electorate push for a president who is forward thinking but lets be honest there is very little hope of that, so we sit here in Europe trying to reduce our little (in comparison) carbon footprints, whilst the US charge about with their size fifteens trampling all the pretty flowers…

I’ve been trying to decipher a puzzle that was posed by numerous websites stating that burning logs on a wood burning stove is actually good for the environment, because it is carbon neutral. This is widely acknowledged across the Web, but something about it seemed wrong to me. Further investigation found a site which pretty much dismissed that statement as being wrong. This led me to the conclusion that basically burning ‘deadwood’ would be a pretty environmentally sound activity, but if we all did it there wouldn’t be enough trees to go around. Simply put, nothing is environmentally sound because there are too many people on the planet. Instead of addressing climate change, and any other eco issue that is out there, I think we’re skirting around the real issue, which is we need to look at ways of reducing population growth because no matter how eco-friendly we all become there are just too many of us for the world to support. Up until we do this, at best we’re just treading water.

Sometimes you just feel that there is little point in even hoping that the human race will be able to run the planet economically without using up all the earth’s resources and turning it to a polluted hell hole. I figured that I could turn the following headlines into various posts and expand on them further, but I can barely be bothered today.

News on the wire is that the US Environmental Agency report that ‘BP PLC violated the Clean Air Act by making several unapproved changes at its Indiana oil refinery, significantly boosting emissions.’ Well that’s just great…

A plethora of reports in this week’s New Scientist (go buy it!) highlighting problems with the Kyoto, draining bogs in Sumatra to grow palm oil for bio-fuel releases carbon dioxide into the environment, up to 30 percent of what could be saved by the bio fuel in the first place. What great economy that is! Honestly if these people would engage their brains instead of their greed just for a second maybe just maybe…

What else? New Scientist again, this time highlighting another silly nuclear power station being built in Bulgaria, experimental blah, blah, blah, on a fault line??? Yeah, I have a nice little paragraph from the Bible which is quite apt (I’m not religious so don’t get any ideas) for all of you who think building this nuclear power plant is a good idea:

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. (translate Wormwood loosely into Ukrainian, if you’re bored)

And I don’t mean that God warned us, I mean that we’ve been warned through coincidence, history and what should be common sense.

The social commentary section of this website has been included to allow a platform to ‘vent off’ or gripe about all the things that drive us nuts in the world which do not fit in to the environmental areas of this site.

Although Suburban Chimp covers a wide range of environmental topics, including consumerism and social responsibility there are these odd topics that don’t quite fit in, but are also desperately important to the well being of the general populous. OK, so when I say ‘desperately important’ then I don’t mean desperate like climate change, desperate like people starving and living on $1 a day, but desperate in a different way. I need a sounding board, a flippant sounding board it may be, but a sounding board it is. Let’s move on to the main event.

Trains. Most environmentalists get this soft warm fuzzy when they start talking about trains, whilst most commuters get the symptoms of a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Basically trains in the UK could be better. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportune for me to spout off on the punctuality and cost of an ever increasingly shabby service, along with overcrowding and the reduction of scheduled services. (sneaky rant out of the way)

Regardless of all these negative aspects of train travel it is still the main option of travel for me to get to work every day and yet there is even more annoyances that one must suffer, namely the other passengers!

It seems that there is a whole bunch of people in society who don’t appear to have travelled on a train before, or have been let out in polite society before. Last night for instance the carriage sounded like an amusement arcade because someone was playing a game on their phone or games console with the sound on. What sort of idiot feels that this is appropriate behaviour? Same goes for the ‘creatures’ who test out new ring tones on the train. What is going on in their brains? Not to mention the beeping of constant text messaging, phone calls with irritating people talking loudly, stupid people having even stupider conversations and other people coughing, sniffing, practically dying on the train who sound like they are in desperate need of medical attention. Read a book, read a paper. If you have to get your laptop out and work, (type quietly) but shut the hell up and be quiet, nobody wants to hear you, or your gadgets. If you’re ill, stay at HOME we don’t want to hear you or get your germs.

I guess this is more about tolerance and perhaps I’m being intolerant here, but I think it doesn’t take a genius to work out if you are making repetitive noise over a long period of time you are basically irritating other people.

The Greenpeace ‘Guide to Greener Electronics‘ has been released and gives a big slap to Nintendo for ‘being first global brand to score zero across all criteria’. You’d think you would have to go out of your way to score zero, so it’s a disappointing result for the company. At the other end of the scale Sony Ericson, Samsung and Sony are the top three this year, so for us eco-types it’s looking like we should be asking for a PlayStation 3 from Santa instead of a Wii. In all seriousness I would have liked a Wii but with all the banging on about consumerism I’ve been doing, and now hearing the eco-credentials of Nintendo it’s something I’m going to have to cross off the list. Shame.

When I was in Norway I noticed that in every supermarket there was a machine, which you could put in bottles etc to recycle in-store, plus you’d get money back for doing so. Virtually all Scandinavians recycle religiously, unfortunately with only 4.5 Million Norwegians, they will not make as much difference that 60 Million plus people in the UK could make if they decided to make a difference.

People complain that recycling is hard, too difficult, pointless etc, but more people are starting to do their bit regardless of the buffoonian few. My question is why are there these machines in the UK? I can’t recall seeing one anywhere I’ve been and I find that quite depressing.

When I was a child my gran used to take her ‘pop’ bottles back to the newsagents and get money back. When did we all become so rich and pig headed that we didn’t need to do this any more? Consumerism is out of control and there is a price (no real pun intended here) to be paid for it.

Nevertheless, apparently these machines ‘are’ in the UK, but I would like to see more and I urge everyone to write to their local superstore manager via email to tell them this.

Learn more about reverse vending

Seems like the government is pushing forward with their inane belief that nuclear power is the way to go, with the news that British Energy has named eight potential sites for the ‘latest’ experimental nuclear power stations. This is a typical move of a government obsessed with pulling the wool over the electorates eyes, spouting stories that nuclear power is ‘clean’ and the best and ‘only’ way to reduce carbon emissions in the UK.

Friends of the Earth have dubbed the plans ‘crazy’ and I for one agree wholeheartedly. I’m sick of these mad scientists who take short cuts to temporarily solve problems. Basically what the government is doing is solving one problem of generating power in the short term by building these monstrous carbuncles, whilst creating dreadful, poisonous monuments of our millennia. The ancient Egyptians gave us the Pyramids, in thousands of years time all people may remember is that Tony Blair and the ex-sidekick, now PM Gordon Bennett Brown is repeating the mistake of building these things in the first place by coming up with the idea it would be good plan to build another bunch. You wonder how these people manage to sleep at night.

It is so much easier to waste billion of pounds of tax payers money building a new generation of nuclear power stations and waste even more money trying to work out what to do with the waste, (send it to developing countries and conveniently forget about it), than work out a sensible strategy for renewables. Frankly, building the odd wind turbine here and there isn’t really going to cut it.

What scares me is how straight away we’re told that it is going to be perfectly safe to build these things on the coast as sea defences can be created to hinder the impact of climate change. Great, so not only have they given up on the whole climate change issue, they are claiming they now know how bad it is going to be. Frankly anytime a mad scientists claims to know what is going to happen in the future, I start to worry, because these people do not know what they are going to have for their tea let alone anything else.

So, three cheers to British Energy and Gordon Bennett Brown.

Fair dinkum mate, Australia’s new PM Kevin Rudd has stated that he’s going to make climate change a priority and to sign the Kyoto protocol. It will be interesting to see if he keeps his initial promises. Simply signing up to Kyoto will not really achieve anything in the short term, it’s a complicated situation, but never the less, agreeing to sign up to it is a step in the right direction.

Kyoto

When I look at all the environmental and social issues that I could possible highlight, you soon realize that it is daunting task, as there is so much to talk about, yet (for me) so little time to devote to it.

Certainly Green issues are at the forefront of people’s minds right now, with governments and large corporations embracing things like ‘carbon footprints’, recycling, climate change, etc. I do wonder how devoted these people really are? Presumably as pressure is put on them from the electorate or customers then they have to begrudgingly act even if it is just initially on a marketing level. For instance how much more bad publicity do supermarkets need before they stop wrapping their fruit and vegetables up like Christmas presents? They say that the customers prefer it, but do they really? If much of the packaging was reduced, how long would it take the customers to get used to it and accept it? After all, we all have to eat. I know I wouldn’t change my supermarket because they stopped wrapping stuff up in a ridiculous fashion, to just go to a supermarket which did wrap things up because I thought it looked better. That would be stupid. OK, there are a lot of stupid people out there, which is why I’m not a great fan of ‘health and safety’ advocates, but that’s a different article!

This brings us onto consumerism in general. I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to over consuming, buying too much, buying stuff I do not need, not recycling enough. I am guilty as 95% of the first world is guilty. I’m trying to be better and I’m actively working to reduce my consumerism by just thinking more about what I do and do not really need. I think the talk of carbon footprints are admirable, but not a lot of use to Joe Public. Who honestly knows if 10 tonnes of carbon is good or bad? I do know, but only because I’m informed. I prefer to think about small things we can all do, which do not make much of a difference to an individual, but when everyone does it, a difference can be made.

In my line of work I occasionally get sent ‘gifts’ in the post from companies. One company who is giving it the big ‘I am’ when it comes to the environment sent me a corporate gift last year. It was an unnecessary corporate gift, (as mostly they are) a digital photo-frame. Yes, a funky toy from a marketing department and even though I don’t particularly hold any animosity to the company or marketer who sent this out, I did think that it was a particularly pointless, in fact worse than pointless gift. Digital Photo frames burn up electricity and offer us no particular benefit. Dreadful.

I can see the benefit of computers, fridges, washing machines and technology like that, although all could be deemed unnecessary by the eccentric eco campaigner. Anyway, I’m not really about going that far because I do not believe people are ready for that level of change. It is better to stick with the tiny, insignificant things that can and do make a difference, which we can all be a part of. You’ve heard them before but I will say it again. When a lightbulb pops replace it with an energy efficient one. Turn the TV off at night, don’t leave it on standby. Turn the heating down a degree, buy less stuff. Talking of which, it is ‘buy nothing day’ tomorrow, so maybe give it a go?

So BAA not content with a fifth terminal at Heathrow Airport, there is now talk of a third runway and a ‘six’ terminal before they have even finished the fifth. Up to 300,000 more flights a year are mentioned, (I’ve been reading the BBC).

The justification for this is that Heathrow is running at full capacity and all these additions are required to aid economic growth, blah, blah, blah. I used to live near Heathrow and I can tell you, pollution aside the noise is already dreadful and I really feel for millions of people who live in the surrounding area who have to put up with it. When a plane is flying over your house every few minutes it’s not much fun.

I now live closer to Gatwick and there is resistance to expansion at that particular airport too and since I’m a NIMBY, I agree that it shouldn’t be expanded.

Back to Heathrow. My maths is shocking, but if there are an additional 300,000 flights a year, and these are passenger flights and not freight (I don’t know the breakdown), how many passengers does this equate to? If we are really conservative with the figures and say that on average there are a 100 people on each flight, doesn’t that mean there is an additional 30 Million passengers per year, on top of what’s already coming into Heathrow? Can the Piccadilly Line really handle that, or the Heathrow Express? I’ll tell you one thing which won’t be able to handle it as it is already at breaking point- the road system. The A4, A30 and M25 are struggling already, congestion around Heathrow is already a complete joke and is only going to get worse.

Suburban Chimp say’s Stop Heathrow Expansion- Heathrow is big enough already, is causing misery to millions already, has had it’s day already, so find another solution.

And lets not start on the polution Pollution ramifications , just so we can ‘aid’ the economy, apparently.