My Copenhagen Letter to Dirty Kev

I used to battle depression over the climate crisis. These days I'm having more trouble with anger towards "the establishment". Obama makes me want to hope, but I'm terrified that he'll do a Kevin on the climate too.

There's just over a month to go before Copenhagen and activism is in top gear. I went to a local 350.org gathering last weekend and just now I took advantage of Greenpeace's Dirty Kev campaign to send a letter to the federal government. The form letter is nice, but I had more to say:

Above is a form letter which I support 100%. Personally I wish to also express my anger and disgust at the way your government has handled the greenhouse gas issue over the past two years. Your action has fallen appallingly short of the inspiring promises and uplifting rhetoric we heard in the months either side of the election.

Professor Garnaut gave you sound, realistic advice which you arrogantly (or is it fearfully?) discarded. Your proposed CPRS does almost exactly the opposite of what is required to make a meaningful, morally-justifiable contribution to protecting the climate for my children. Your renewable energy legislation actually undermines efforts to reduce our nation's use of fossil fuels.

My family, along with thousands of others around this country, is prepared to pay actual costs, suffer actual hardship and make actual sacrifices to help realise an actually sustainable future for humanity. And what a wonderful future it could be!

Please: have the guts to face up to the reality of this climate crisis. We need genuine leadership to inspire this country to make strong decisions as individuals and communities. We need:
- radical improvements in energy efficiency
- deep cuts to energy consumption
- rapid phase-out of coal power
- to stop wasting money on CCS
- real investment in appropriate cost-effective renewable energy
- an actual debate on nuclear options (Gen4 designs, especially thorium-powered ones, and yes I'd have one in my back yard in preference to coal)
- a national decision to get off our arses and do something worthwhile

In closing, it's only fair to also thank you for your investment in education and internet infrastructure. I am in absolute agreement that building a sustainable, prosperous future requires the best possible education culture and world-class information technology infrastructure. But it will all be futile if we fail to turn around the global GHG emissions trend and get back into safe territory (currently estimated to be sub-350ppm) in the next several decades.

If you have even a mild concern about the climate and global warming etc, please make yourself heard now. There are lots of ways you can express yourself - sending Dirty Kev a letter is quick and easy.

Low energy

To quote Tim Hollo on his Crikey blog:

"There’s a lot of burn-out in the climate movement right now. A lot of tired people, a lot of grumpy people. I know - I am one!"

It's really hard to maintain the intensity, especially in the face of the CPRS farce.

Looking ahead: 350.org day of action on October 24th, and the Copenhagen conference. I'm musing about a rebuttal to the conservative argument that's been prominent lately, ie that human influence couldn't possibly be changing the climate.

6.57kWh/day!

Quick one.

Somewhere in March we took up the State Government's ClimartSmart Home Service and had a power meter installed. I thought it wasn't reading very accurately because the figures it was showing recently seemed quite a bit lower than the trend I'd been tracking through the regular meters.

But I hadn't read the meters for about six weeks. Did it just now - and our consumption has dropped again, down to just 6.57kWh/day for the past 44 days.

Apart from the fridge needing a bit less power thanks to cooler weather (1.2 instead of 1.5) we think the biggest drop comes from stopping our 4-yo son from having a pedestal fan blowing on his face all night, which he became accustomed to over summer. He liked it on the fastest setting.

I'll have to plug it in and measure its power draw to see if the numbers are in the right ballpark.

Water efficiency has become a lifestyle

It's a significant day for my part of the world: for the first time in a hundred months our regional water storage capacity is above 50%. At its lowest in 2007 we had only 16.7% and the government was seriously considering the need to truck or ship drinking water in to sustain the roughly two million people in the immediate area.

Thankfully that worst-case scenario never eventuated, and there have been a number of rain events that have brought the levels up bit by bit. Most interesting, though, has been the success of water conservation programs.

Under the most severe restrictions residents were urged to target an average per-capita water use of 140 litres each day - an enormous reduction from previous norms of around 300. By the time dam levels rose to 40% in July last year, we had stayed below "Target 140" for 52 consecutive weeks. Consumption dropped to as low as 112 litres per person today in one week near the end of that period.

Reaching the 40% storage level was the trigger for easing of restrictions and the revision of our target to 170 instead of 140. And what do you suppose happened to our water consumption?



I've trawled through the weekly press releases to obtain the reported usage stats since Target 140 was introduced almost exactly two years ago and graphed them against the target at the time. Blue line shows water consumption per person per day against the red line which is the target in place at the time: 140 and 170 respectively. There are 66 weeks reported for Target 140 and 32 for Target 170, both with a couple of weeks gap over the New Year breaks.

Visually, you might think that with the relaxed restrictions our water use went up dramatically. But in fact, the averages for each target period are 131.8 and 138.3 respectively - still under 140 even with the higher target!

Very shortly we'll be operating under a Target 200 regime. It's my hope that Brisbane residents have taken the water conservation message to heart and will continue to keep their consumption well under the nominal targets.

Because despite all the good news, our State Government still wants to dam the Mary River and is building desalination plants that will be powered by burning coal.

Oh well, it's a start.

Stats update

It's the end of March, about to start a new calendar quarter, and a good time to review data for the quarter just ending.

Here's an interesting figure: our 1kW PV array has produced exactly half as much energy this quarter as our home has consumed. On average, the array produced 4.20kWh per day since the start of January while we consumed 8.40kWh per day. Just a coincidence - but a nice neat 50% figure nonetheless. Got me musing about the possibility of doubling the capacity and going off-grid.

On average, we exported 1.84kWh per day to the grid, which is just under half of the energy produced by the panels. Doing the sums, we must have imported just over 6kWh a day from the grid to meet our household demands.

The new fridge has been pretty steady at just under 1.5kWh per day, or 18% of our total needs. And the energy-guzzling computer my employer provided has been kept in check with an average daily consumption of 0.38kWh, or around 4% of our total. It has taken some very aggressive energy saving measures to achieve that, but I'm reasonably happy with that result.

Just one more factoid to close out the post. This week our PV array crossed the 1MWh line for total energy produced.

Earth Hour? Try Earth Lifestyle

Awareness is the first step, I suppose, towards effecting a change in behaviour. So I probably should keep my inclination to pooh-pooh the whole "Earth Hour" thing in check.

Suffice to say: the amount of energy saved by switching off lights for one hour a year is going to make no noticable difference to the Earth or our continued existence on it, and giving people the idea that caring for the Earth requires us to give up electric light could backfire badly.

I pretty much ignored Earth Hour last night. Continued playing chess with my daughter, listening to some music. Our household energy meter said we were using around 200W total power - though admittedly the meter is rather inaccurate at those low levels.

My point? Conserving energy needs to be a core value that drives behaviour each and every day, not a once-a-year stunt.

Thorium links

Here are a few links to video presentations about the promise of thorium-fuelled nuclear reactors. There's a bit of duplication but each has some unique aspects and they differ in style.

Joe Bonometti and Kirk Sorensen (Google Tech Talk via YouTube)
David LeBlanc (Google Tech Talk via YouTube)
Robert Hargraves (WMV video)

Oh, and look! Jim Hansen (a leading climate scientist from NASA) advocates the development of thorium reactor technologies in an open letter to his new President, Mr Obama.

What if the energy/climate crisis was solved?

The reality of Peak Oil is pretty much indisputable as far as I'm concerned. If we can't find an equivalent alternative energy source in a big hurry, there's no escaping that the world is going to change dramatically. That's the underlying premise of the Transition movement.

But what if we do come up with an alternative energy source? One which doesn't change the climate, which won't be as destructive to the landscape as coal mining, which doesn't require practically eternal waste management to avoid poisoning the biosphere, which is affordable and practical, and which can scale up fast enough to address the twin crises of Peak Oil and Global Warming?

It's an incredibly tall order. But I'm becoming increasingly hopeful about the possibility of one particular technology, which I've written about before: the thorium-fuelled molten salt fission reactor.

Environmentally-conscious people have an almost instinctive reaction against anything "nuclear", and I understand that. On the basis of long-lived radioactive waste alone I also agree with it, in respect to the current fleet of uranium-fuelled reactors. But the fact is that thorium-based reactors have been designed and even tested which don't suffer from any of the major drawbacks of uranium-based systems.

Features include:
- Abundant, stable, safe raw fuel (100% usable ore vs 0.7% usable from uranium)
- Passive reactor safety (cannot overheat, not pressurised, no complicated mechanical control system)
- Proliferation-resistant (in particular it produces no plutonium)
- Produces very small amounts of relatively short-lived waste (~300 years, certainly manageable)
- Can burn high-level waste from other reactors
- Simple enough to mass-produce in a factory and deliver on a truck
- Electricity probably cheaper than today's coal-based prices

It sounds so good, why wouldn't it have been done before? Well it actually was done before in the 60's and 70's, but the US at the time was more interested in creating plutonium for their weapons program. Hence the molten-salt reactor research program was shut down. Research has now restarted in eight or so countries, including the US, India, France and Japan. Incidentally, Australia has the world's largest reserves of thorium, followed by India.

There is a fairly real prospect of this kind of mass-produced, cheap, safe (enough) reactor technology being available within 15 or 20 years, with known fuel reserves sufficient to power humanity for several millennia.

So what if that came to pass?

Well... it would help. But it wouldn't be sufficient to solve the problems of over-population, destruction of ecosystems, resource depletion and so on. In some ways it could actually make them worse, by providing humanity with the means to continue on with its awful business as usual.

So even if we did solve the energy problem there'd still be plenty of reason to keep working on sustainability in general. That's probably the way I'll be approaching the Transition work - it's absolutely vital if we don't find a new energy source, and it's still hugely worthwhile even if we do.

Transition

I've had a link for the Transition Culture website in the sidebar over there for ages, and for the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre, too. In case you've never clicked on them, I ought to mention that the Transition movement is all about preparing communities for a decreasing availability of oil. It originated in the UK but has started to spread around the globe. SEAC is at its heart a Transition initiative for the Sunshine Coast... but being about an hour's drive away from me it seemed rather contrary to the point for me to try and get involved in the wonderful work I hear they're doing up there.

It's beyond me to start something like that in my own area. And it's especially challenging here because Brisbane is nothing like the kind of conglomerate town and village structure of the UK and even the Sunshine Coast. It's one enormous sprawl, with a big central city council. Not on the scale of somewhere like Los Angeles, but still big enough.

So I've been watching and waiting to see how a Transition initiative might get off the ground in Brisbane, and finally it has started to happen. I had the pleasure this morning of meeting with some of those involved in the early stages of a Brisbane transition "hub", which will play a role in fostering, supporting and connecting transition groups all around the city. (That's my paraphrase, not actually endorsed by anybody.)

Not surprisingly, this group has been brought into existence through the work of people who are already recognised for their efforts along parallel lines - people from FoodConnect (a local CSA cooperative) and the actively green communities based in some of Brisbane's inner suburbs. Links have been established with SEAC and, it seems, with a similar group based in Sydney.

At this stage there's a lot of "networking" going on, literally finding out who's doing what around the city and joining the dots. Apparently there's a very handy permaculture gardener who lives in Bald Hills but tills the soil down in Morningside. I'm hoping to make their acquaintance in the near future.

This is all very welcome as far as I'm concerned. The quiet on this blog has reflected the lull in my life with regards this kind of community engagement. Hopefully the opportunity I've been waiting for has arrived.

How does my garden grow?

Beans have gone mad. Tendrils in all directions, nasty when you get one caught on your neck. They're covered in tough little hairs which are angled back down the stem, so it slips easily forward but is highly abrasive going backwards. But there's trouble brewing here... one of the six plants, one on the end, is dying. Either it's diseased or something destroyed its roots - every leaf on it is wilting and the stalk is turning yellow. Rather like what happened to some of our capsicum plants last year.

Passionfruit are good. At least the birds seem to think so. Damn birds have eaten the best of them. I've taken to picking at the first hint of a purple blush and then letting them ripen in the kitchen. Dozens of fruit on the vine and still more flowering and setting.

Basil is huge, but insisting on going to seed. Also afflicted with the wrinkly leaf syndrome that the hibiscus display, but it doesn't seem to kill the plant and the leaves still taste great. Oh but the small green grasshoppers all over it might be a problem.

Parsley has gone into recession. It was enormous, don't know what happened but it's died back to about a third its earlier size. Most of the stalks and leaves look healthy... so hopefully it'll stick around.

Chillies... ah, the chillies. With the kids in the house we don't get to use chilli a lot. Had the opportunity the other night to try one of ours fresh for the first time. Oh my dog. Honestly the hottest little pepper I've ever eaten. Great flavour. Looking forward to using those more. The bush hasn't grown much but it's still fruiting well.

Rosemary and chives doing great. Marjoram gone mad and stringy, needs a prune. Sage looks like lace, thanks again to the little grasshoppers. Chickory exploded into seed (not that we care much). Spring onions have not grown noticeably in months... they just sit there looking healthy but too few to harvest.

Pumpkin (we think). Something that volunteered from scraps in the chook pen. It started life at an opportune time, when the chooks were not able to be confined to their coop. Grew enough to poke a runner out the opposite side of the pen into the yard. Then I renovated the hutch and shut the chooks in for a couple of days. Every leaf inside the coop and even a flower or two was eaten back to the stem. No worries, the bits outside the pen are thriving and have just flowered.

Mystery marrow. More volunteers, this time from the compost which we used in pots to try and grow tomatoes and petunias. They have similar leaves and flowers to pumpkin but don't seem to want to take over the world like pumpkins do. Whatever, they're looking great. As are a couple of tomato bushes which managed to peek up around the marrow.

And finally, we have planted some citrus trees. Lemon, mandarin and orange, up the back between the shed and the chooks. Little fellas still, will have to wait a number of years for anything from them.

What chicks want

While I'm on the subject of chickens... In the past six months I've learned some things about chook psychology.

During the day time, chooks seem to like resting on the ground, especially in the dirt, but they want a good long view at ground level - presumably so they can see any potential dangers coming. Ideal spots include hedges and low shrubs. Cool, loose dirt or leaf litter provide comfort, interest and sometimes a hidden snack.

At night it's a different story. Chooks want to climb as high as they can get and will go to extraordinary lengths to find a good perch. I guess the logic is that when it's dark they can't see things coming to eat them, so they might as well just try and get out of the way. Chickens aren't smart at the best of times but once the sun goes down their brain really switches off. They'll flap and squark like crazy if you pick 'em up while sleeping, but they'll go right back to sleep wherever you put 'em down. If they haven't been eaten everything must be OK. Funniest thing is when their head slips out from under their wing and hangs down limp below the level of their feet.

All of that is useful when you're thinking about building a home for chickens. This day/night dichotomy is why I'm trusting a four-foot-high wire fence to keep out chickens which even with clipped wings made it up onto a six-foot fence to sleep. Fingers crossed.

All things chicken

1. About a week ago, our oldest chicken started laying. Lovely Henny Penny has been producing an egg each day. They're not magical or anything. They don't even taste any different to the free-range eggs we've been buying from the shops for ages now. But they're as fresh as they come and there's something special about food which comes from your own back yard.

2. Not sure if I've mentioned this (and too lazy to check) but we are back up to five chickens now. We bought two new hatchlings a few weeks back. Just to be clear, these are chooks six and seven, having "lost" one young chick and given away a rooster. We're trying to be more hands-on with this pair than we were with our second lot, hoping to foster the kind of pet-like relationship we have with Henny Penny as opposed to the touch-me-and-I'll-scream-bloody-murder attitude that Steggles and Nighttime have sadly adopted.

3. I haven't finished renovating the laundry yet. But I have raised the roof and added a second level to the chickens' hutch. Much to my frustration, the chooks wanted nothing to do with the hutch that I'd poured so much time and effort into - other than to use it as a stepping stone every evening to aid them getting up on to the top of the fence where they'd sleep for the night. (And in the morning they wouldn't jump back into the coop, no they'd be down into the yard and shut safely out of the coop where their water is.)

Now the roof of the hutch is at the same height as the fence, the second level is completely open on two sides (one long and one short) with the other long side closed off with a piece of shadecloth; they cannot jump up onto the fence any more and they have a nice big perch running the length of the hutch about 1.5m off the ground. Not only do they sleep on the perch and stay confined in the coop, but with the lower half of the hutch now open at the top they come in through the side door and jump up. And Henny Penny obligingly chose the nesting boxes as a good place to lay her eggs.

4. Much as we enjoy having our pets sharing our space, especially when the three older chooks do cute things like sit on the doorstep in the morning waiting for somebody to bring them something to eat, having chicken shit all over the outdoor bbq area is something we're not willing to live with. So this arvo I purchased more wire and some garden stakes and erected a no-frills 4-foot fence to exclude the chooks from our entertaining space. I used the large square-mesh wire because it's cheaper, uses less material, does the job and is ideal for climbing plants. Thinking of growing some peas. Bet the damn chooks eat 'em. Have yet to construct the gate.

5. Free-range chooks are spoilt for choice. With all those nice bugs and seeds and leaves to eat, they can turn their beaks up at lousy kitchen scraps. Sigh. There are some things they do enjoy: bread crusts and watermelon skins are the favourites so far. Most everything else gets left to rot. I've got fussy kids, fussy worms and now fussy chooks. At least the compost bin can't spit anything back out at me.

Too much to say

Ironically, it's been quiet here because there's too much to talk about. Or maybe it's because there's been too much talk about.

Since I started doing this the world's attention has been brought quite sharply to bear on most of the issues that concern me. There's so much high profile discussion and activity going on that my little blog seems rather superfluous. Which is great!

I just want to highlight a couple of local bits of good news.

1. Brisbane folk are now habitually conservative with their water. We managed to meet the 140L/person/day target under extreme restrictions and even now that the dams are heading towards 50% capacity we're still sitting well under the 170L revised target. I just read my water meter for the first time in 201 days, and our total household usage over that period averaged only 194L per day - actually less than the previous six months when we were watching like a hawk.

2. Politics is (generally) swinging in the right direction for sustainable civilisation. The election of Obama is of course globally significant, but even here at home we've seen the Traveston Dam project put on hold, willingness to regulate agriculture in order to protect the Great Barrier Reef, plans for floating desalination plants shelved, proactive measures from government to promote energy efficiency and GHG reductions, community gardens... heaps of stuff.

3. The combination of environmental/sustainability concerns and the economic crisis is driving a swing away from "consumerism". I so hate being thought of as a "consumer". I want to be a "contributor". But anyway, it seems that I'm far from alone in my back yard garden tinkering, chook raising, material recycling and "waste not, want not" attitude. Newspaper articles are even using words like "frugality" in a positive lifestyle sense!

So here's hoping that 2009 continues in this trend. There will certainly be bad news this year (I predict a sudden resurgence in the price of oil at some stage, going even higher than the peaks of last year) but there is also an atmosphere of hope. As I heard it said on a BBC radio interview yesterday, a crisis is an opportunity for change.