houses to save the world

We all know something's got to give. In Australia, our houses are getting bigger (and uglier) while our families are getting smaller. Petrol consumption and greenhouse gases are increasing as cities sprawl and large houses require air conditioning. Our economic standard of living is rising and many in the developing world want a piece of the action.

One part of the solution is surely more environmentally friendly houses, which means smaller, better designed, energy efficient, carbon-neutral, water efficient, solar-powered buildings made of renewable materials. Or at least some of these.

The exciting thing is that it is slowly beginning to happen, even if only on an experimental level or by die-hard greenies, and the designs are attractive and interesting too. Take a look at these "green houses" - perhaps my favourite is this New Zealand house built from old shipping containers.

Photo: Jetson Green blog

Check out more photos of the shipping container house, plus a house in Japan with polycarbonate walls, a passive solar urban kit home, office space and artists' studios in old railway carriages on building rooftops in London, and this house from an old barn in Belgium.

You're probably the same as me, unlikely to make a move from where you're currently living. But surely somewhere here is the way of the future.

the ice retreat continues

Climate change continues to present a challenge. The argument over its reality continues, but the converts continue to outnumber the sceptics. And the world economic situation gives the realists one more reason for caution.

But the alarming data continues to mount. Among the latest news is the retreat of the Arctic ice, with the mimimum summer area in 2007 the lowest ever recorded (see graph). While some say that we've been there before, researchers say this is not just a cyclic fluctuation. Rather, the loss of ice reduces the reflection of solar heat, increasing the heat retained, and hastening the rise in local sea temperatures, thus creating a vicious circle. The future may well be worse than the graph suggests.

Data taken from BBC report

Scientists are predicting that the arctic may be ice-free in summer in less than a decade, which will have enormous environmental consequences and will threaten many arctic species. As you'd expect, there are business interests that oppose doing very much about the problem; in fact some fear that human interference in the area can only increase as the ice reduces.

life after carbon reduction

I have commented before on the difficulty of moving towards more sustainable energy use. The first barriers to overcome are understanding the facts, informing public opinion and overcoming misinformation. But we definitely need solutions to problems like car dependence and alternatives to coal-fired power stations.

So it is pleasing to read in the press two alternatives that seem to have promise.

• A recent report to "clean-power developer", Carnegie Corporation, estimates that wave energy created around Australia's long coastline is four times the current generation capacity of the nation. An estimated 10% of this, or one third of the current power usage, could be harvested. This energy source, coupled with solar, wind and geothermal, makes it look likely that Australia could meet all its power needs in the future with renewable and carbon-neutral energy.
• Not long ago, the National Roads and Motorists Association (NRMA), released a report from its "Jamison Group", which has been researching the development of alternative motor vehicle fuels, in order to reduce oil dependence. The plan aims at reducing oil-based fuel usage by 50% in 40 years, via compulsory reduction in fuel consumption, changes to incentives and subsidies and development of alternative fuels such as biofuels. But ultimately, the requirement will be further development of electric cars (which hasn't always been enthusiastically supported by existing motor interests) and of the renewable energy resources to power them.

One wonders whether we can depend on 40 years of petrol usage, but electric cars are already viable, and even very competitive.

The seriously interesting Tesla electric roadster (photo from the Tesla website)

It now requires people and governments to support these measures, even though they will cost us in the short term - if any generation can afford to, and should, take a cut in wealth to buy a better future, it is us.

undoing 200 years of environmental harm

The Murray-Darling Basin is a very important river catchment in Australia. It covers a seventh of the land area of our continent, produces 40% of the nation's agricultural profit, and 70% of our irrigated agriculture. Yet much of the basin is arid, and much of the agriculture relies in rains falling in the eastern ranges and flowing hundreds of kilometres before it is pumped from the river.

Basin map by MDBC.

But almost 200 years of settlement, agriculture and land clearing, and a century of irrigation, have left their mark. Notable changes to the natural ecosystems include:

• Many of the basin's rivers have had their flows reduced to a trickle at times, changing the riverine ecosystems. Wetlands at the downstream ends of most rivers (including the important Macquarie Marshes) do not receive nearly the required amount of water to sustain large bird populations. And flows to the Coorong, an enormous estuarine area where the Murray reaches the sea, have been so reduced that the ecology is becoming more saline and the whole character of this water body is in danger.
• Extensive areas of land have been cleared, including critical land along the river banks, changing runoff patterns and decimating habitat.
• Chemical use in agriculture has led to high nutrient levels with consequent algal growth and occasional fish kills from pesticides or low oxygen levels.
• As a result, many native fish species, including the iconic Murray cod, have disappeared from many locations, and alien invasive species (including the destructive European Carp) now predominate.

Recently a "Sustainable River Audit" was completed and the results published. There is a lot of work to do:

• River flows in about half the basin's 23 catchments have been sufficiently changed to have a serious impact on ecology. (This is perhaps not as bad as I might have thought.)
• The loss of native fish species and replacement with exotic species has occurred at damaging levels in every one of the catchments, with only 3 categorised as being in moderate condition, and the remaining 20 in poor condition or worse.
• The numbers of macroinvertebrates (basically bugs and grubs) is considered an important ecological measure, because they are a major food source for fish. Their condition more or less reflects that of the fish.
• In all, only one catchment (the Paroo, in the arid far west, and therefore not so heavily "developed") remains in good condition, two other catchments (also in more arid areas) are in moderate condition. The remainder are assessed as in poor or worse condition.

Other factors affect river health: vegetation, channel erosion, location within catchment, climate, etc, and the first two of these will also be measured in future surveys.

There has been much talk about returning water to the river by buying irrigation water from farmers and more efficient water use, but this information suggests that the causes are much more than just over-use of water. Australian governments, national and state, have a record of doing studies and making plans, but generally sitting on their hands. The farming lobby has a lot of influence. We'll see how much is done about this.

Check out the Audit at the Murray-Darling Basin Commission.

global warming - the dirty war

Despite the fact that most experts have long considered global warming to be a fact, there are still global warming sceptics. Now some of the reasons for this are is starting to become clear.

An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald has outlined how:

1. Exxon Mobil has admitted that it has funded climate change denial groups in an effort to reduce pressure on the company about the impacts of its products (see also this report).

2. A number of claims that throw doubt on global warming have been shown to be untrue, for example:

• Famous botanist, David Bellamy, said in 2005 that according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland, most glaciers in the world were growing. However checking revealed that the Service's data shows they are actually retreating.
• A website claimed the American Physical Society (the premier body of US physicists) no longer accepted the truth of human-induced global warming. However the Society's website says the evidence in favour of global warming is "incontrovertible".

If all that was reported was true, there seem to be parallels with the dishonest and partly successful attempt by tobacco companies to stifle the truth about the links between smoking and lung cancer.

Like the Who sang: "Won't be fooled again!"

stopping people starving because of our greed

The world fuel and food crises are bad news, but they're not insoluble. Here's a bunch of ideas on how we might do it, and what you and I can do.

The experts think the following are likely to be among the solutions:

1. Science and technology may find a way. Ideas include developing genetically modified or other higher yield crops, even growing "animal-free meat" from animal stem cells. Improved on-farm technology which optmises water application and improves other farming techniques may be possible.
2. Practical help for poor farmers, to assist them purchase better fertilisers, build water storages and improve techniques would not cost a lot and could improve yields significantly.
3. We should look carefully at funding for biofuels, and ensure that their growth is in addition to food production and not in place of it.
4. Improve how the world trade and economic systems work, by breaking trade barriers and curbing speculative investments which create uncertainty.
5. Increase food aid to poor countries, which can possibly come from excess food in some rich agricultural countries.
6. Reduce the amount of meat eaten and fuel used.

But is there anything you and I can do now? Well, yes, there is:

• We can eat less meat and conserve fuel by driving less, more carefully and in more efficient cars. There is, and will be, strong pressure from meat producers to increase the amount of meat we eat, but this should be resisted - we'll probably be healthier and others will be less hungry.
• We can donate to overseas aid organisations like Compassion, Freedom from Hunger, Global Giving, Oxfam, Project Concern, TEAR, World Vision, or one of the many organisations on OneWorld.net.
• Support Make Poverty History and Jubilee Debt Campaign, and FairTrade products which guarantee growers receive a fair wage for the products.
• We can be willing to allow our material standard of living to drop a little to support these initiatives.
• We can support, and lobby, our governments to work together worldwide to bring about the solutions.

Read more about worldwide solutions - LiveScience, USNews, Wikipedia on "Food vs Fuel" and Time.

people starve because of our greed

Photo: Morguefile

I don't really know any way to soften this. People are starving because of the greed of western countries. Consider these facts:

• Over the last few decades, the developed world, through agencies like the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, loaned money to poorer countries for development, but with strict conditions. This "aid" tended to lead to farmers changing from subsistence crops to cash crops. It was said to more efficient, but some say it led to the farmers being dependent, and at the mercy of, big multinational corporations, and less protected by their Governments.
• Sometimes the cash crops led to increased prosperity, but sometimes the vagaries of world markets led to profits being much less than envisaged. For instance, two decades ago, many farmers moved into high value coffee production only to see an oversupply and consequent drop in value.
• Cash farming is based on the capitalist aim of maximising profit, so now that the world's supply of petrol is struggling to meet demand, production of biofuel is reducing the production of food. This is pushing up the price of food, sometimes beyond the ability of the poor to pay. 73 million people depend on food handouts from the UN to survive.
• Ironically, capitalist farming and food distribution depend heavily on fuel for farm machinery and transport (cash farming tends to result in food being brought in from other areas). It has been estimated that it takes about 8 litres of petrol to produce a kilo of grain-fed meat - thus feeding a family of four in the US on meat requires about half the amount of petrol as that used by the family car.
• Further, it takes a large amount of grain to produce a small amount of grain-fed meat (I have seen figures from 8 to 16 times). And it requires about 200 litres of water to produce a megajoule of most fruit and vegetables, but 2,500 litres of water to produce a megajoule of beef (CSIRO). Modern western meat production is highly inefficient at a time of impending food and water shortage.
• A billion people in the world live in poverty while another billion are overweight. The richest 10% consume about 10 times the food that the poorest 10% consume. (SMH).
• In summary, the western world's greed for petrol, rich foods and a high standard of living is not just an unfair distribution of wealth, but is a direct cause of food shortages and high food prices which leave poor people hungry.
  

So what of the future?

The world's population growth is slowing, but so is the world's food production. The pressure on the world's food supply will not come so much from the increasing population, because the highest population growth is generally in the poorer, low consuming countries (SMH). Rather, the pressure will come from the western countries maintaining their high consumption lifestyles as resources get tighter, and from developing countries raising the standard of living and becoming as greedy as the west.

But there are things we can do. I'll look at them in another blog.

climate change continues to bite in australia

The latest information continues to confirm the predictions of climate change models.

2005 was the hottest year on record across Australia, and the five year period 2003-2007 was also the hottest on record (Annual Australian Climate Statement 2007). The worst affected areas are in the southeast where both population and agriculture are greatest.

Graph by Aust Bureau of Meteorology

Much of eastern Australia remains in drought. Recent rainfalls have been slightly above average, but over the last 5 years rainfall has been low. But the biggest problem, as predicted by climate change models, is that the patterns of rain are changing.

• Some relatively unpopulated parts of northwestern Australia are receiving above average rain.
• However the southeast, including the Murray Darling River basin which produces 40% of Australia's agricultural production and 70% of its irrigated agriculture, has experienced its lowest rainfall on record overall (ABARE Outlook 2008).
  
• Streamflows in the Murray Darling remain very low, with the current drought the worst on record. 2006 had the lowest inflows on record, and while 2007/08 was "only" the sixth lowest, June 2008 was the lowest monthly flow on record (ABC News, Adelaide Now, MDBC).
• The river supplied the lowest volume of water ever to irrigated agriculture in the 2007/08 year (ABARE Outlook 2008).

It seems that climate change scepticism is increasing along with the temperatures, mostly based, as far as I can see, on isolated statistics, for example, that the hottest year on record was a decade ago in 1998, and it has been cooler since. The above facts seem to present difficulties to this scepticism, at least for us here in Australia. The worldwide data has been examined by Australia's premier scientific body, the CSIRO, which has concluded:

"1998 was the warmest year on record in the last 150 years. Although the eight years since then have not been warmer than 1998, they do include the globe’s second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh warmest years on record. The planet is not cooling."

Graph by CSIRO.

But in the end, we should base our conclusions on the full worldwide data set and the best expert opinion, which is summed up in the climate models and their predictions. I outlined this evidence in maybe, just maybe, we're starting to get this right.

perfumes, organic chemicals and other nasties

When they decided to replace the carpet in our office a few years ago, we had no idea how much of an effect it would have. I am not normally affected by chemicals, but the solvents in the adhesives (I think) gave me headaches and a heavy head for days, and stank to high heaven for weeks and weeks. One of my colleagues was pregnant, and we all wondered what the chemicals might be doing to the baby, but he was OK.

We who live in so-called advanced western societies seem to be increasingly affected by chemicals - not just the well known asthma or allergies to pollens, but all sorts of odd and debilitating sensitivities to chemicals like volatile organic compounds, solvents, adhesives, petrol, perfumes and deodorisers, and food additives. Some say as many as 15% of the population have adverse health impacts from these chemicals.

Those affected can have their lives seriously curtailed, and sometimes made a real misery. Here are some effects I have observed in others:

• re-carpeting an office (not the one mentioned above) left a worker so sensitised that several years later they were still unable to visit that office for very long;
• application of a sealant to a concrete driveway left a neighbour with a bedroom window close to the drive unable to sleep in the bedroom for four months;
• chemicals used in modern car interiors make it impossible for some people to travel in them without being adversely affected;
• use of chemical air fresheners in motels and hotels make them hazardous for some visitors;
• some washing powders and fabric softeners are perfumed, causing significant irritation and inability to sleep, for some;
• perfumes and after-shaves can cause some people to react, and have to move out of the room.

Medical science so far understands little about these sensitivities, and "cures" are a long way off. Those of us who are not affected need to become more aware of these problems and more sensitive to the distress of others. And it is easy to help:

• Do you really have to wear after-shave and perfume? Could you at least wear less, and choose a less perfumed brand?
• It is easy to find "green" and non-allergenic washing powders.
• If smokers don't smoke in confined spaces such as motel rooms, managers have less need to use chemical air fresheners.
• It would be wonderful if the manufacturing and building industries could develop and use less intrusive and unhealthy solvents, adhesives and chemicals generally.

Read more about Fragrances and Chemical Sensitivities, Allergies to Perfumes (people's stories) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. Anyone have their own story to tell?

San Antonio river walk

Rivers in urban areas take a hammering - they are straightened and concreted, trees are removed from their banks, pollutants from roads muddy their waters. It is very hard to retain a natural environment.

But urban rivers can at least be treated as assets for the benefit of residents and visitors. I doubt many cities have done this as well as San Antonio in Texas.

Descend a few steps from the searing heat of the streets and you enter a magical world of water, trees, and cool pathways. Cafes and bars line the banks, tourist barges glide along the water and under bridges, pathways and steps beckon you on.

car dependence

I'm writing this from Houston, Texas. I've only been here for two days so far, but first impressions are that the land is flat, the weather is hot - and the city is highly dependent on the car. There is very little public transport outside the city centre, the suburbs are well spread out, and getting anywhere from where we are staying in the suburbs requires a car. You see few pedestrians in the suburbs.

I don't travel overseas all that much, but last year I spent a week in the east end of London, where the population density is high, there were crowds of pedestrians, public transport has its problems but can get you anywhere pretty quickly, and there is a tax to deter cars from entering the inner city.

So I thought I'd check out how London and Houston compare to Sydney in term of car usage and population density. The classic graph for this is shown by Wikipedia:

I was pleased to see that all three cities appeared on the graph, and my observations confirmed. Houston has the lowest population density of the cities shown and by far the highest petrol consumption. It is an oil city, but you can't help feeling it will suffer the most when the oil prices rise even higher, and eventually the oil runs out. Reduced private transport will be inconvenient in London, but will make life very difficult in Sydney and almost impossible in Houston.

We need to be planning cities differently, I reckon.

gross inequality

Lately our local council has been conducting "clean-ups"- special removal of household waste. And so piles of "waste" - furniture, electrical goods, some building materials, etc - appear fleetingly on footpaths outside homes awaiting pick up and disposal.

One interesting outcome is the number of people scavenging through these streetside piles of discarded items looking for items they can use - building materials, scrap metal, furniture and toys that can be repaired, etc.

It's encouraging that some of the "rubbish" is recycled and re-used, but it points up the fact that our affluent society discards what would be treasured in a poorer society. Somehow we have reached a stage where either:

• we are so affluent we can afford to jettison products before their useful life ends because we want to upgrade to a more fashionable or better featured product, or
• we buy poor quality products that need replacing too quickly.

It all leaves a sour taste. There is such inequality in the world that we get to spend money on less-than-necessary stuff that we'll junk all too soon, while elsewhere people starve or struggle.

Then comes news of another burden our western society is placing on poorer countries. I have read in the past how subsistence farmers can be trapped into converting to cash crops, and then fall victim to fluctuating prices, uncertain markets and rip-off practices, and end up worse off than before.

Now it is being reported that the increased interest in biofuels in rich western countries, to prop up our petrol habits, is resulting in some former food crops having greater value as fuels, thus raising the price of food. Experts are predicting that, while many farmers may benefit financially as a result, many of the world's poorest may find foods becoming priced beyond their means.

Our western society already has en environmental footprint many times what the world can bear. Here is another way we impose ourselves on the more powerless, by denying them a productive life to feed our insatiable lust for self comfort.

George W Bush once famously said that the "American way of life is not negotiable". But unless we create some miracles of energy, water and food production and usage, the only choices will be for all of us in the west to accept a lower material standard of living, or cause great hardship and suffering to those worse off than ourselves.

Not a nice message, but necessary to consider.

earth hour, 2008

Last year, Sydney switched off many its lights as people joined in the first Earth Hour.

This year, cities and smaller settlements from scores of countries joined in. By all accounts it has been a great success. It's only a symbolic event, but awareness and willingness to change are the first steps.

Sydney city centre during Earth Hour. (Photo: Sydney Morning Herald)

Power generation represents one major source of carbon emissions (I've seen figures like 30%, but it would surely vary a lot), so cutting electricity usage by 5%, as was estimated in Sydney, is only token, but still symbolic.

Earth Hour at the local Anglican church - learning how to make simple changes
- when will someone invent a candle-powered data projector? : )

Of course the challenge is to turn this growing public goodwill into effective action, something our politicians often seem to struggle with. There are so many who say how large the problem is, but the economic costs of not acting will be even greater - the Stern report and other sources quoted by the European Union estimate that the cost of not acting now on climate change will be about 5-20% of global GDP, whereas the cost of acting will be less than 1% of GDP.

"All" it will take is for all of us to be willing to vote for, and continue to support, politicians who will make the painful decisions that will cost us now, to save our children and grandchildren far more. Surely we can do that much?

a prettyish kind of a little wilderness

We live on a small suburban block with a main road behind. But there are plenty of trees around and we have retained as many as we can. So we attract some wildlife .....

Our yard.

Rainbow lorikeets - loud, sassy and generally fearless.

Sulphur crested cockatoos - comical, persistent and messy eaters.

Eastern rosellas - shy and only rarely seen.

Crimson rosellas - also shy and not commonly seen.

Pigeons and doves - I don't really know the difference.

And my favourite, the magnificent and gentle king parrot.

With so many different birds, there are bound to be the occasional problem, such as a messy deck, and the occasional fight. Here two rosellas face up to an aggressive noisy miner.

And there's not just birds, but spiders ....

..... autumn leaves .....

..... and possums. This old brushtail mother possum was so blind she came out in daylight. She successfully reared a succession of babies until she died recently.

When I was a boy, living not far from here, there were few trees and most of the birds were small - sparrows, blue wrens, silvereyes and willie wagtails. But in recent years, the drought and the increased number of trees have brought the bigger birds into the suburbs.

There are organisations which can help us make our gardens more friendly for native birds, especially the smaller ones, such as finches, pardalotes and wrens. You can check them out - Birds Australia, Flora for Fauna, and Backyard Buddies.

seeing the light

There's no doubt we humans have learnt to do some pretty clever things, but you have to wonder how smart we are.

It has been predicted that the world's reserves of petroleum will run out in about 30 years. Certainly we may discover more, but the rate of discovery is declining while the rate of use is growing, and faster than was predicted. If we don't do something, the next generation will certainly be forced to.

To make matters worse, our dependence on petroleum and other fossil fuel energy (such as coal-fired power stations) is a major cause of global warming.

There are quite a few alternatives to consider. For some people, nuclear power is the saviour, but for others it is the worst of all options. It would be wonderful if we could harness the more benign nuclear fusion, but that is still some way off.

Electric cars may one day take over from petrol vehicles, and geothermal energy may one day be a useful energy source. But many believe our greatest hope is to develop the safe and renewable energy sources - solar, wind, hydroelectric and tidal.

At present, renewables constitute only a small percentage of the world's energy sources, with fossil fuels being dominant at 67%. But the use of renewables, especially solar, is growing fast.

The sun (here shown being eclipsed) is ultimately the source of all our energy
(photo from PDPhoto.org).

Japan, the US and Germany lead the world in the use of solar power. In recent news, Germany is to build solar energy plants to generate almost a third of its needs. This is remarkable, considering that Germany has significantly less hours of sunshine per year than countries closer to the equator. India, Australia and large areas of Africa and South America have the largest number of sunshine hours and hence the greatest potential for solar energy.

Australia is also one of the leading nations in the development of solar technology, has vast areas of high sunshine, yet many believe we have squandered our natural opportunities. Currently renewable sources provide only about 5% of Australia's energy, with solar being only a small part of this. Many people believe we could and should do much more if only Governments would provide the right incentives. Certainly the Sydney Morning Herald has reported that many people are willing to pay more for renewable energy. However Australia has a lot of coal, which earns a lot of export dollars, and the coal industry is a powerful lobby group.

So we may be the "lucky country", but it seems like we have a way to go to be the smart country.

maybe, just maybe, we're starting to get this right

The climate change argument has been going on for a while, but, perhaps mostly due to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", there now seems to be a groundswell of opinion that we do indeed face some challenging issues. Let's look briefly at the evidence.

is our climate really changing dangerously?

Large and small temperature changes have occurred throughout human history, and before. But the temperature rises in the last century are way greater than anything before, as these graphs show.

Global temperature for last 1000 years (graph by Australian Greenhouse Office).

Temperature & Carbon Dioxide in Antarctic ice for last 400,000 years
(graph by Australian Greenhouse Office). Current levels (at right of graph)
are higher than anything ever experienced in that period.

These temperature rises have been caused by increases in greenhouse gases, as shown below (don't worry if the fine print is illegible, the timescale is 1000 years and the graphs speak for themselves).

Global increases in 3 greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Australian Greenhouse Office)

are people really to blame?

The respected Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has modelled the changes in temperature, and demonstrated that, while there may be some natural causes, human causes predominate. This conclusion is as safe as scientific modelling, which we depend on in so many ways, can be. The major greenhouse gas polluters are USA 23.5%, China 14.6%, EU 11.6%, Russia 6.2% and Japan 5%.

will it make a difference to the world?

For many people, it will, unfortunately.

• Impacts are variable, but the trend will be towards more extreme weather events.
• Some lower-lying areas close to the sea (e.g. parts of Bangladesh) will experience increased and sometimes disastrous, flooding, and some inhabited islands (e.g. Maldives, Tuvalu) will disappear. In many countries, coastal communities will experience more severe storm damage.
  
• In some locations (e.g. Canada, Russia, northern Europe), increased rain and warmer temperatures could lead to increased harvests.
• However in many other areas (e.g. Africa, Australia, western USA), lower rainfall could lead to prolonged droughts and, in some places, possibly even famine.
• Environmental consequences will be severe, from shrinking glaciers to loss of habitat due to drought.
  

are we doing enough to turn things around?

It is clear that globally, we are not yet doing enough, as many governments fear making changes that will make them unpopular with voters. But things are beginning to change.

• Many European countries are moving towards realistic targets.
• Some businesses are thinking much further ahead than governments, and are planning their own responses.
• Public opinion in the US and Australia has begun to turn.

There is still a long way to go, as we all get used to living a little more austerely and responsibly, but maybe, just maybe, we're starting to get this right.

further reading:

Background information from the Australian Greenhouse Office.
CSIRO publications, including this report.
Information on Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth.
The winners and losers of climate change, by Alister Doyle (ABC radio).

the world can sleep easier tonight! : )

Many big show business names have offered support to the campaign to address global warming, but now some real muscle has joined the fight! Yes, Spinal Tap has re-formed, and is on the campaign trail, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It has taken the rock heavyweights a little time to realise the extent of the problem ("Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing." says film-maker Rob Reiner), but now the band is rocking out with their new single, Warmer than Hell, and a scheduled appearance at the London Wembley Live Earth concerts organised by Al Gore in his crusade against global warming.

Truly the world can sleep a little easier tonight. : )

earth hour - the sequel

Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/kelliejane/440679118/in/pool-earthhour/

It seems that I underestimated the effectiveness of Earth Hour last Saturday evening, based on observations in Sydney's southern suburbs. True, our Anglican Church, which has a youth service and dinner on Saturday evening, turned off its lights and had dinner by candlelight, but not many houses seemed to take part.

But even though only 65,000 houses and 2,000 organisations registered to participate, polls indicated more than 2 million people (half of Sydney's population) switched off their lights, with many turning off appliances and TVs as well.

Estimates of the overall impact are still being made, but in the normally brightly-lit CBD offices, entertainment venues, advertising signs and public icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House had lighting turned off, and energy usage for that hour was estimated to be 10% reduced. For photos and details, see the Sydney Morning Herald's report.

The originators of the idea, environmental organisation WWF, hailed the first Earth Hour as a success, and foreshadowed a world-wide Earth Hour in 2008.

earth hour

This Saturday evening, March 31, in Sydney Australia at least, many of us will be marking "Earth Hour" by turning off our lights between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm, as a sign of our commitment to reducing glonal warming.

In a way it's only a token, but the public and political recognition of the reality and consequences of global warming has jumped in the past year, no doubt due to Al Gore as much as anything else, so Earth Hour helps keep the issue in the public mind.