Environmentalists damaging environment again

Via the ASI, Michael Munger's excellent summary of why recycling is, in general, damaging to the environment.

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

There is no data

One of the criticisms often levelled at the bureaucracy is their inability to measure success and failure properly. They might set targets, but these are usually later found to be unsatisfactory measures or susceptible to corruption.

According to this article on the Nature Newsblog, a similar problem exists in the development world. Reporting on an (unidentified) conference, Emma Marris tells us

[Ghanaian conservationist, Yaa] Ntiamoa-Baidu looked at 50 random World Wildlife Fund programs in Africa. While 92% of project managers felt that their projects were helping develop the community, very few of these projects had built in any way to measure or show this. There is no data. And, according to Ntiamoa-Baidu, to convince politicians, donors and local people, you need the data.

Of course people find others measuring their success or failure a profoundly uncomfortable experience. The absence of data is therefore probably more by design than by accident. Which is why the free trade route to development is far more likely to be successful than hand outs or development projects run by well-meaning westerners.

BBC balance - Humphrys style

But if our elected representatives now regard global warming as the greatest threat to the world, the idea that they should ban nothing is a joke. You'll explain to your little boy in 15 years' time, "No, of course we didn't ban anything because we were liberals, we were libertarians ... and we wanted to enjoy ourselves ... Fuck you!"'

"Oh," ministers - of all parties - say. "Encouragement works best." Does it bollocks! Regulation works best: you order them to reduce the salt content of these foods by 50 per cent by next Thursday week ... The whole thing is scandalous, but we've allowed them to get away with it because, by and large, government is scared of the big supermarket chains and always has been.'

Source: The Graun 

It's interesting to think of these beliefs when you next hear Mr Humphrys interview an oil company executive or someone from a supermarket. I also remember him interviewing Ross Clark on the subject of red tape - a quite astonishingly aggressive interview for a book launch. Clearly his love of regulation momentarily (well, for the duration of the interview actually) got the better of his ingrained BBC balance on that one.

The guy is a deep green nutcase, paid for by you.

(As an aside, I've categorised this post as BBC and Greens. Is that tautological?) 

Toxic waste is good for birds

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth fame has one of his usual "whip up a scare" stories on Comment is Free today. The latest impending disaster is the decision of nPower to dump ash from one of its coal-burning power stations into some lakes in Oxfordshire.

Some years ago, RWE npower started to fill in the lakes with PVA [Ash], killing the wildlife and transforming a thriving ecosystem to a polluted wasteland. I saw this progressive strangulation of nature take place as I passed by on the train on journeys between Oxford and London. The lakes gradually disappeared to be replaced by toxic deserts dotted with a few hardy weeds.

Only a couple of the original dozen or so lakes now remain. One of them, Thrupp Lake, is set soon to suffer the same fate as the others, as RWE npower pipes in its waste from Didcot. The terns, the otters and everything will disappear from there, and not only will the land around Oxford have less wildlife, but people will also have been robbed of a source of inspiration as well.

Some years ago, my wife and I used to visit Musselburgh Lagoons for the birdwatching. The lagoons were something of a legend among twitchers because of the way rare species that were often seen there. Everyone who went knew exactly where the lagoons came from - they were formed and then filled in with the ash from Cockenzie Power station which is just adjacent to the site.

There's an web page about the lagoons here. And here are some excerpts from it:

Typical numbers [of birds] roosting in midwinter are:- 1600 Oystercatcher; 150 Curlew; 900 Bar-tailed Godwit; 400 Redshank; 2000 Knot; 2000 Dunlin; 80 Turnstone; 30 Ringed Plover; and the occasional Grey Plover, Black-tailed Godwit and Purple Sandpiper. Most of these roost at the lagoons...

Many gulls roost at the lagoons, with about 100 Great Black-backed Gulls and sometimes thousands of Herring, Common and Black-headed Gulls present.

The Ringed Plover breed on the old shore-line in the west and central lagoons and, despite the human disturbance of the area, 2 or 3 pairs succeed in raising a few young each year. The only other species that breed in the lagoons are Skylark, Shelduck and Wheatears, which bred for the first time in 1975.

The list of passage migrant species that visit is amazing too, and is far too long to list here. All in all, the situation at Musselburgh doesn't sound very similar to the eco-catastrophe Mr Juniper is predicting does it?  Perhaps he's mistaken?

Marketing

A commenter on the posting on packaging informs me that environmentalists are protesting about "the large amount of packaging used for marketing purposes". This distinction had entirely passed my by, and was certainly not mentioned by Jeanette Winterson in her whinge on Question Time. It's also not clear to me just how large this alleged problem is - what proportion of packaging is used solely for marketing purposes. Still, let's examine the case.

We first need to ask what is the problem with packaging used for marketing purposes. It is clearly not the fact that it is packaging per se, since, according to my commenter, environmentalists have no problem with packaging used to protect goods. This can only mean that the objection is, in fact, to use of resources for marketing.

This being the case, we must ask why they are directing their fire against marketing through the medium of packaging. Why not other forms of advertising and promotion? Do billboards not use resources? Does a TV commercials not involve flying film crews to exotic locations with a vast and ugly carbon footprint to match? What is it about packaging which is so uniquely wicked?

We need to know. 

Packaging

I was listening to "Any Questions" the other day, and was trying to stop my toes curling  - an involuntary spasm caused by the foolish inanities of Jeanette Winterson who is apparently a famous writer. Ms Winterson was telling us about protests which various environmentalist bodies had organised in order to protest at what they saw as the excessive volume of packaging produced by supermarkets. However, it can't be true that the packaging is unnecessary. Here's why.

The green argument takes two premises:

1. The level of packaging found in supermarkets is unnecessary.
2. This is annoying to customers
   

They reason therefore that supermarkets should not use so much packaging in future.

Let us observe however that supermarkets are greedy capitalist organisations. I don't think that anyone, least of all Ms Winterson, would disagree with this. We should also observe that supermarkets spend huge sums of money on packaging - which has become a multi-billion pound industry on the back of supermarkets' custom.

The question we therefore need to ask (and which Ms Winterson and her ilk need to supply an answer to) is: "Why are these greedy capitalists spending such large sums of money on something which is (a) unnecessary and (b)pisses their customers off?" Could it be that the packaging is, in fact, necessary after all? Could it be that it is actually protecting valuable products from damage or decay? Could it be that the supermarkets are actually the good environmentalists, and the Wintersons are in fact pushing us down a road that will see us wasting huge amounts of food, as happens in the third world?

Perish the thought.

 

More cackhanded greenery

The BBC wonders if a bit of over-strident campaigning by the greens alienated Japan at just the point where it was about to give up whaling. Result: lots more whaling.

It's starting to look as if environmentalists would actually achieve more of their aims if they just went back to their tofu plantations and kept quiet.

Episcopal hysterics

Further to my story on the greens getting upset over proposals to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere using genetically modified plants, here is another story to get our environmentalist colleagues choking on their herbal infusions.

Senior cabinet ministers are pushing for Britain to be the first nation in the world to get much of its power from the tides, as part of a massive new expansion for renewable energy. The Environment Secretary, David Miliband, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain and Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling want a giant £14bn barrage to be built across the Severn.

This would generate about 5 per cent of Britain's electricity without producing any of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Their move is not meeting any serious opposition within the Cabinet but will spark off a furious row with environmental bodies, which say that the barrage would devastate the estuary's wildlife.

You couldn't make it up could you? Can I suggest to all my environmentalist friends: You've been 'ad mate!

(Hat tip: EU Referendum) 

We didn't mean it!!

Roger Pielke Senior has an amusing post aboutthe rising sense of panic among environmentalists over the conclusions the IPCC is reaching about how to deal with the alleged impending climate catastrophe. He quotes a news release from an organisation called commondreams.org...

Environmental groups are [...] deeply concerned that the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers on climate mitigation, released earlier today, includes a recommendation for large- scale expansion of biofuels from monocultures, including from GM crops, even though monoculture expansion is a driving force behind the destruction of rainforests and other carbon sinks and reservoirs, thus accelerating climate change. The IPCC also recommend the expansion of large-scale agroforestry monoculture plantations. These plantations, which will include GM trees, are similarly linked to ecosystem destruction. Monoculture expansion is a major threat to the livelihoods and food sovereignty of communities many of which are already bearing the brunt of climate change disasters caused largely by the fossil fuel emissions of industrialised countries.

(My emphasis) 

GM as well as nuclear? What can I say, other than bwaaahaahaahaahaaha...!

Carbon trading

The man from Whitehall, we have been told, really does know better - not a conjecture that's borne out by this story in the FT.

The government department spearheading Britain's effort to reduce carbon output is driving companies and individuals towards paying for emissions cuts that do not take place.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is also about to publish final details of a trading scheme that was set up to encourage companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions which led to only four taking £111m of taxpayers' money between them.

And this isn't the half of it. The FT is mistaken when they say:

Defra is also set to publish soon details of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which was set up with £215m government funding to encourage 34 participating companies to cut their emissions.

This is not actually true. At the time the grant was made from the Treasury, DEFRA were telling them that they expected the financial benefits of the scheme to outweigh the costs for between 420 and 3100 firms. The clear implication was that this was the number of participants they expected. So the £215m was to encourage between 420 and 3100 companies to take part, not 34.

When DEFRA got round to actually asking companies if they wanted to be involved they got the grand total of 30 (!) responses from the 5000 questionnaires they sent. Now, confronted by this problem, you or I would scale back our demands for cash from the Treasury proportionately. A memo would have been sent saying that we now only needed £215m x 34/3100 = £2.3m, a saving of some £212m.

But in the crazy world of Whitehall, this isn't the way things happen.  The money was simply divided between those who bothered to apply, with the amazing payouts to the favoured four outlined above as the result.

And, as is traditional in the mandarinate, Brian Bender, the civil servant in charge of the DEFRA, came out of it all with a knighthood and the top job at the DTI. It's not clear if this reward was for the £212m he wasted on the carbon trading scheme or for his great triumph, the farm payments fiasco, which clocked in at an impressive £500m. If it takes the best part of a billion to get a K, it makes you wonder how much Robin Butler threw away to get his P.

The man from Whitehall really does know bugger all about anything. Except perhaps blowing money and building personal empires.

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow is going to save the planet on our behalf.

I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

"Maybe it was a two sheet day after all".