Chris Till

Tag: Climate Crisis

  • The Earthshot Prize shoots for the Moon and misses

    I don’t want to be too critical of the Earthshot Prize; it did do some things right. But at the end of the day, the focus was almost entirely placed on innovation and green growth as our way out of this disastrous situation, rather than the real solution of slashing consumption and shrinking the economy. The parts about restoring nature were generally great; in particular the project to restore coral reefs by engineering corals that can cope with the increasing ocean temperatures. But then you had a project about reversing deforestation in Costa Rica, and it was predicated on the idea that it would attract tourists and lead to economic growth. So they fix one problem in order to exacerbate another one. There was another project in the Masai Mara doing a similar thing; protecting animals by getting wealthy tourists to fly around the world and spend their money on useless knick-knacks.

    I think the undeniably best thing about the series was the name. Earthshot is a great name for the scenario we’re in. It makes perfect sense to compare it to the Moonshot decade, because it’s exactly the scale of ambition we need. The parts of the documentary series talking about the problems are also good, but they got the solutions part almost totally wrong. Yes, we need some technological solutions, but fundamentally, it comes down almost entirely to living smaller and more local with less stuff and with better diets. Neither consumption nor population were mentioned a single time throughout the 5 part series or award ceremony. The fact that not a single youth activist was involved tells you all you need to know. The more I think about it, the more it feels like it was made for sceptical boomers. Perhaps the moon landing nod was even more intentional than I realised.

    Then there’s the prize money itself. Rewarding innovations with a million pounds each over 10 years seems like the wrong approach. Obviously, I believe governments should be in charge of the money and saving our world shouldn’t come down to the generosity of private finance. But, if you’re going to go down this path, at least do it better than this. Firstly, a million pounds is not that much money; and if you really believe in green growth as the solution to the climate crisis, and that these innovations can be key to our survival, then I would imagine you’d throw a lot more money at it than they are. I’m pretty sure there are enough rich people in the world who “care” about the planet to the point where you could raise billions for the prize pot relatively easily. Giving away only a million each goes against the urgent message about rapidly scaling up these businesses to save humanity.

    Ideas like a solar powered ironing trike are nice, but do we really need to iron our clothes at all? It is a nice story that the young girl in question was entrepreneurial but it’s too small to make a difference on a global scale at this late stage. Having said that, it should definitely be put into production. As long as people keep ironing clothes at least. The project that allows farmers to cleanly burn their crops in a machine rather than setting their fields on fire gave me a similar feeling. Why do we need to burn crops at all? I’m pretty sure it’s not necessary.

    There were so many moments I took issue with. They showed the ski slope power station in Copenhagen. But didn’t talk about getting rid of waste in the first place rather than burning it to make energy. They talked about global dimming in terms of reducing rainfall in some areas; but nothing about how dimming has limited warming and getting rid of pollution would actually increase warming. They talked about electric cars and an overall growth of vehicles. No mention of cycling whatsoever other than the ironing trike. There was a segment about tyre and brake pollution from cars and buses. Again, no mention of the key role cycling could play in reducing it. They show Singapore’s touristy green areas but ignore the huge roads and growth based economy. There was no mention of Bhutan’s model of economic stability and protection of nature over profit and GDP. At least they mentioned indoor and vertical farming. That’s something we definitely need to scale up urgently.

    The city of Milan winning the waste free world prize was by far the most bizarre award of the evening. All they’re doing is redistributing food to prevent waste. This is being done in various locations all over the world already. There’s nothing unique there that deserves money. Sanergy (creating fertiliser from human waste with insects) and Wota Box (fountain with filter which allows water to be reused many times) were clearly the better ideas. It’s hard to understand why they were snubbed.

    At the end, Prince William talked about how Earthshot is for young people. Well, it isn’t because young people want an end to capitalism and an end to economic growth. This does neither of those two things and you’ve just ended up patronising them yet again. Just like with climate anxiety, the establishment have proven that they don’t get it. They just can’t get past this failed model of treating the symptoms rather than the cause of our problems. Whether it be anxiety or our climate crisis, the root causes are capitalism and economic growth. Until they accept that, the young will see all of this as insult after insult.

    And the final insult is to give Earthshot 2022 to the kingdom of unrestrained corporate greed, the United States. The country that is going to drop all climate funding from Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan. The only thing remaining is to see how far over 1.5c we are in 12 months time (by the 1750 baseline). Hopefully it doesn’t go ahead because they realise by then that green growth doesn’t work. Probably wishful thinking.

    It will unfortunately happen again next year, but it really is debatable how long it will keep going. Prince William says it will award prizes every year for 10 years; but given how little time we have left to act drastically, what use will a prize be in 2030? Maybe they’ll need to take a page out of Bangladesh’s book and host the ceremony on a ship. Maybe one of the prize winners will be some kind of affordable houseboat. That would make sense by then. There will probably be huge demand.

    As a final aside; as we were watching the episode of Earthshot Prize about clean air, near the end, I heard the neighbour’s petrol lawnmower so I had to rush around closing all the windows. You couldn’t have timed it better. But with any luck, he watched the award show and decided to buy a battery mower to boost our economy.

  • We Live in a Beautiful Place Ruined by Cars and Pollution

    The beautiful South Downs with the English Channel in the background

    We have the sea a couple of miles or so to the south of us, and the hilly countryside about the same distance to the north. You would think that it would be a paradise for cycling in the UK, but unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the case.

    Between the hills and the English Channel are houses, roads and cars as far the eye can see. There are no bike paths, but there are drivers in huge cars who hate you because you’re on a bicycle. The air is thick with pollution from car exhausts, wood burning stoves, petrol lawnmowers, strimmers and chainsaws; even bonfires. I don’t know if the pollution gets worse every year, but it definitely feels like that. And it’s not even just when you’re outside that you feel it. During the summer garden work season, but mostly in winter, you get hit with it immediately upon cracking the window.

    It’s really unpleasant, and you really get an idea for how bad it is when you go out at night. I used to like going for bike rides at 10 or 11 at night when it was quiet. At that time, there were almost no cars and therefore no exhaust emissions. But even then, the crisp, cool air was still incredibly smokey. You can only get that kind of continuous daily pollution around here because of wood burning.

    In terms of open spaces, our parks are few and far between. They’re small, they’re basic, anti-cycling, unlit (and therefore scary at night); and have barely seen improvement since I was born 34 years ago. There aren’t really any nice sights that you’d find on a casual walk around the town either. It’s nothing like in Japan where you’re never far away from the next temple or shrine, or other beautiful piece of architecture or patch of nature.

    In terms of alleyways and other pedestrian infrastructure, they’re narrow, dirty, and dark with high walls. Not the kind of place you’d want to go at night, and not really during the day either. They’re also not cycling friendly as you might expect. It doesn’t compare well at all to somewhere like Singapore, which has its PCN (Park Connector Network). The car free routes connect up parks in the city, as you would expect. They’re wide and open, with space on both sides. It never feels closed in like alleyways here, and Singapore is far from a bicycle friendly city itself. The reason for the huge difference is that a town like Worthing was built to maximise every bit of space for homes and other development. Nothing was left unused. Preserving natural beauty was not considered. They only considered a future of cars and houses. Nature didn’t matter, cycling didn’t matter because cars now existed and were supposedly better in every way.

    It’s not hard to see how the way the town was designed and built has lead to one of the least progressive councils in the country, where nothing ever gets done. But the great thing is that, while it would be difficult to fix all of the disastrous design mistakes, there are things we could do to make the best of what we have. Banning private cars, banning wood burning, bonfires, petrol garden tools, private fireworks for example. If we only did these things, the difference would be massive and immediate. It’s not going to happen because of politics, but it can happen because of the climate crisis.

    Even just in the last week, we’ve seen widespread flash flooding across the country. We’re seeing it more and more this year and it does feel like something has to give soon. We have COP26 coming up, and while I have no faith in any political action at either the local or national level, as I’ve mentioned many times; it does present a huge opportunity for people to realise that politicians and corporations aren’t coming to save us. We have to boycott business and make the lives of politicians a living hell to the point where they don’t want to stay in office. That’s basically our only chance now.

  • Has Insulate Britain Achieved Anything?

    Edit June 2023: I have totally changed my opinion in the last couple of years. I think what we’ve seen with Insulate Britain, and then more notably Just Stop Oil is the only thing we could really have seen. Aside from collective boycotting and withdrawing of labour, which don’t seem possible yet; the only thing you can do is just cause a big scene. They’re incredibly brave to continue doing what they are, when the risk of violence from psychotic vigilantes is so high. But they feel that they have no other option, and so they have my full support. Especially in the face of a media that has basically stood still in their arguments since this original blog post was written, and actually back to the original XR protests in 2018. Now, here’s what I thought a couple of years ago.

    Before I begin, I want to make clear that I do support the aims of Insulate Britain protesters. I applaud their bravery in blocking motorways around the country, when the risk of violence against them is so high. But has it convinced anyone in the country who wasn’t convinced already? I would say probably not.

    We live in a country which has learned nothing from the covid-19 pandemic (which is still very much ongoing, contrary to popular opinion). Our commitment to the capitalist cause is unwavering and the vast majority of the country don’t have a clue about the impending climate disaster. People are still unwilling to switch to EVs, let alone getting rid of their cars for climate change. Not only that, they panic buy petrol and get into fights at filling stations, such is the sheer terror of having to live in a small country without access to a private car.

    Under these circumstances, it’s entirely unsurprising that Insulate Britain has been a complete disaster and doomed to fail from the very beginning. Even the leader couldn’t catch a break when he went on Good Morning Britain. The over simplistic media are always more interested in a juicy case of hypocrisy than the overall picture. Not that he was a hypocrite anyway since he didn’t own his home and couldn’t afford to insulate it even if he did. But the media never let an unfortunate detail like that get in the way of a great gotcha moment.

    So what have Insulate Britain achieved so far?

    • Made angry motorists even angrier
    • Been called hypocrites
    • Given the government an excuse to crack down even more on peaceful protest in a supposedly democratic country
    • Not convinced a single person of their agenda

    Probably the biggest thing they’ve achieved is to teach other organisations how not to do it, as well as giving them a PR boost. Extinction Rebellion are going to be seen in a far more positive light for blocking city centres following this disastrous campaign by Insulate Britain. XR warn people and authorities in advance where they’ll be and for how long (to avoid being accused of blocking emergency vehicles). They also either create a party atmosphere or provide some kind of interesting performance aspect that attracts the media to cover it. They think things through far more, and people will now start to recognise that after seeing IB’s approach.

    Don’t get me wrong, XR made some bad choices in the beginning and did some things that had a similar effect to Insulate Britain. However, they’ve generally improved over time and become smarter about choosing what types of action to do and what not to do. IB don’t seem to have learned anything at all.

    Imagine if XR had started by blocking motorways a few years ago when people were even less sympathetic to calls for climate action than they are now. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that someone would have been killed by a motorist. We’ve seen it close to home in Worthing a few years ago when a man was killed by a fellow motorist after he left his car to talk to talk about a road rage incident.

    So, what I would say to Insulate Britain protesters now is please find another way for your own safety. Go to town centres instead for example. Blocking motorways, airports, train stations and things like that will not work in this country. You’re putting your lives on the line for no reason. Mainstream British culture still has its fingers firmly stuck in its collective ears and is singing the la la song as loudly as anywhere in the world (even Australia).

    Edit: I just saw a clip of an interview with Roger Hallam (co-founder of XR) where he said he would do the same thing as Insulate Britain did (not let a woman through to visit her mother in hospital) and would block an ambulance if necessary. I find that a very odd thing to say when you have an opportunity to distance yourselves from IB as they have been doing recently.

  • Green Growth And Vaccines Are Both Delusions

    When you watch the mainstream media, you’ll notice this striking similarity between the climate crisis and the covid pandemic. The media can’t shake this firmly held belief that we have the solutions to both of these crises at our fingertips. The only issue is that unfortunately, neither crisis actually is actually being improved by these silver bullet fixes.

    Solar is good. But not without slashing energy use.

    To be clear, we do have the ability to solve these crises, as I’ve talked about ad nauseam. But the solutions are not vaccines and green growth. Conveniently enough, the solution for both is to end capitalism. Sadly though, the media will never tell you that. Or at least they won’t while we still have a chance to save ourselves. Presumably they’ll change their tune once it becomes obvious to everyone that it’s too late to avoid every coastal city in the world becoming a treasure trove for scuba divers.

    Boris Johnson at the moment is talking about how frustrated he is with world leaders not doing enough about climate change. So much so that he almost managed to convince me that he cares about the environment. Of course that’s ridiculous. If he was actually mad at other world leaders, he would be mad at himself for pretty much everything he’s ever said and done regarding the climate.

    Vaccines are good. But not without masks, distancing and paying people to stay home.

    What he’s actually angry at is the possibility that he’s going to look bad when COP26 is a disaster and it reflects badly on him. He doesn’t care if any agreement is based on a fake solution of green growth with a ridiculous target of Net Zero in 29 years from now. All he cares about is that he can take the plaudits for “solving” climate change in Glasgow. Anything that happens after that (eg society collapsing, life on Earth ending) would just be a coincidence and nothing to do with him.

    It would be really helpful if very soon we start to appreciate the real solutions, rather than glorifying fake ones.

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