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John Beardmore

In message . com,
writes
John Beardmore wrote:
In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2006-11-29 00:25:37 +0000, John Beardmore
said:
In message , Andy Hall writes

More people,
equipment and road miles may be involved.

as may be less. Its really not difficult to see how that could occur.

Also you keep saying more vehicles, without offering any evidence that
this is the way it will go down in practice.

Well, equally, as Andy declines to give any detail, I don't see any
reason to assume it need be any lower footprint either.

It's really Andy who has pushed this agenda, but I'm not convinced in
the absence of a hard proposal, that he can know that there would be a
reduction in foot print, or that he cares much. It's not his priority.

As far as pricing is concerned, the market will decide. One element
of the market is price competition.

Well - the average consumer may feel they've been had if it does work
out more expensive.

I'm tempted to call the other examples of demonopolisation, such as
electricity, gas, phone.

Be tempted. But maybe this is more like delivered milk or groceries ?

You would be at liberty to choose a supplier who operates in the same
way as your existing one.

Which guarantees nothing about the change to multiple providers as a
whole.

whats this preoccupation with guarantees? Clearly life doesnt give
guarantees, wise decisions just give us the best odds.

Yes - my point is only that saying "You would be at liberty to choose a
supplier who operates in the same way as your existing one" doesn't
guarantee anything about environmental performance or answer my concerns
in any respect, and indeed if other services are run as well, it's
impossible to see how the aggregate footprint of moving that material
could be lower.

I also told you that the term "environmental impact" is whatever the
individual decides it is.

You may have told me that, but an MSc course in environmental decision
making tells me otherwise.

Which do you think I'm going to believe ?

I get the feeling its whatever you were told.

No - being told isn't enough. What you are told has to 'add up' and
make sense !

That depends on what you mean by "environmental foot print"

No it isn't. It's been understood for a long time, and has been refined
somewhat over time, but broadly goes like this.

Environmental Footprint is an indicator of consumption. It is
calculated in terms of the amount of area required to deliver the
things we consume, in such a way that there is no net use of
non-renewable resources.

If anything, Environmental Footprint estimates tend be
conservative indicators of resource use because it is virtually
impossible to build a complete list of all the things we use.

In the context of Environmental Footprint calculations, 'area'
means biologically viable land or sea required to grow the
required resources we live on, and to incorporate the waste
produced as a consequence of their consumption back into
that biological system.

The area units used are hectares with world average
productivity. This area may be analysed in terms of
requirements for cropland, grazing land, forest to grow raw
materials, sea for fish and seafood production, land for
housing, work and infrastructure, and land to fix carbon
dioxide emissions arising from energy use.

Because the area of available land and sea habitats are
known, this indicator enables comparison between the
footprint areas required by individuals, populations, or
processes, and that available locally or globally.

Are you going to tell us you dont see any issues with that definition?

Well - clearly it is prone to underestimate, but it seems to be a
pretty useful and largely quantitative way of looking at the problem.

Or that you think everyone agrees with it?

Well - environmentalists seem to. As they coiled the phrase, defined
it and refined the meaning, I think it's fair to say that as much as
most other technical term there is good consensus.

Of course you may choose to give it some other meaning altogether, but
I'm not sure that's any more sensible than calling a food mixed a
microprocessor.

While slightly different definitions used by different researchers may
give rise to slightly different methodologies, as long as the same
methodology is used when making comparisons, a fairly accurate relative
measure can be obtained for individuals, populations, processes etc, and
all methodologies give broadly similar results.

as long as the same definiton is used, the same errors will be present.

In indeed there are any - or at least any that aren't recognised as
inherent to the technique.

Anyway - if you've got any bright ideas for better ways to work it out
that's fine. If not, random redefinition is probably petty pointless.

To say "The definition is individual" shows a pretty complete lack of
understanding of the field.

it may be just an acknowledgement of the fact that not everyone buys
this approach.

Then they can say

'Footprint calculations don't work because...'

That's not the same thing as redefining what it is agreed to mean.

No - all work to reduce environmental impact is done in the context of
supporting life on the planet, ours included.

If thats true then these assessments arent worth much, given the way
Britain behaves towards the 3rd world countries it deals with. What is
the result of your assessments concerning trade with china, africa etc?

Who knows ? I don't spend my whole life doing LCAs.

But how does the action of UK PLC render the assessments worthless ?

LCA might indicate various things about all sorts of activities, and
these indications will be correct if the LCAs are carried out
objectively. They won't be 'worth' any less just because of the
character of the system or process analysed, any more than a voltage
will be 'worth' any less in a toaster than a TV.

For example, the United States is not signing up for Kyoto because
they believe that to do so would damage their economy. The Chinese are
not stopping building power stations, presumably for similar reasons.

Quite so, but none of this means we should do nothing.

The fact that much of the solution is not trivially delivered does not
mean that the problem that needs addressing has gone away.

its not that the solution is non-trivial, right now the issue is that
the solution isnt available.

THE solution ??

No-one has even proposed any method that
would reduce the worlds environmental footprint - and by that I mean a
system based in reality that is likely to work. There is no such
solution today.

There is certainly no single solution, but there are many things that
can contribute to a reduction. Recycling is one such.

Nobody has ever said there is a single 'magic bullet'.

With only 2% of the worlds population there is nothing Britain can do
today to solve the problem by acting within our own borders.

Except contribute.

Your arguments leads to the conclusion that

nobody should do anything because nobody can do everything

where as those with a little more presence of mind see that

if everybody does something, everybody can achieve anything.

The only
real solution si to devise methods that both can be applied
internatinally, and for which there is an incentive to apply them
worldwide. The real climate problem solvers are not footprint
assessments, but technology innovators.

Well - as I've said, fusion might get us out of a hole, but it seems
dumb to 'bet the farm' on technologies that may never emerge while we
are already doing damage at an alarming rate.

By all means try and find better ways to deal with the situation, but I
don't buy it that 'business as usual' is the answer.

It is because it gives people what they want. If you think this and
that need changing, convince people. If you can, if they vote for your
ideas with their wallet, theyll buy from business that offer what they
want.

Actually they seem to be voting for them in the European Parliament
as well...

The environmental lobby needs to go away and learn some economic
realities and then come with solutions that will allow sustainable
economies.

This isn't some problem owned by environmentalists for their amusement.

It's a problem owned by all of us that all of us have contributed to.

yes, but Andys comment above is still quite right. Enviro types really
have not got a handle on it yet.

Depends what you think 'IT' is ! There are certainly 'ITs' that the
'knit your own yoghurt' environmentalists miss, but equally there are
many that are over the horizons industry looks to too.

Just as awareness is now much better
than in the 70s, perhaps this interest group will come of age in the
future and come up with some real solutions.

This problem isn't going to be solved by a single interest group, or by
a 'them and us' mentality, but by characterising the problems and
looking for opportunities to fix it at all levels.

Cheers, J/.
--
John Beardmore