Artificial Trees pft! – More profit for fat cats.
This week there has been much talk suggesting that British scientists support the use of artificial trees to address climate change. The trees would work by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which would then be liquefied and stored underground using technology which is becoming known as carbon sequestration.
Carbon sequestration trials are currently underway to remove CO2 from the emissions from coal power stations, liquefy the CO2 and then pump it into exhausted oil wells. Many industry professionals are bullish about carbon sequestration – They would be, there are huge potential for profits to be made.
Even if carbon sequestration worked it would be a cop out because it would be passing the buck to the next generation and storing up trouble for the future. Before we consider storing vast amounts of CO2 underground we should recall that the British government still have no plans for the long term storage of nuclear waste!
We should also ask: Who would pay for the machines? Who will operate them? Who will be responsible for leaks from old buried CO2? What incentive will countries who do not operate CO2 sequestration system have to limit CO2 production? How much CO2 will be emitted to develop, build, operate and decommission the equipment? And lastly why spend millions recapturing CO2 rather than stopping emitting it in the first place?
The answer to CO2 build up is not bigger and stupider ideas it is to break the current economic model of over consumption conjoined with the acceptance that the world is humanities dustbin.
If we allocate the problem of over emission of CO2 to businessmen they will produce a profit driven solution. If we allocate the problem to engineers then they will provide engineering solutions such as artificial trees. If we allocate the problem to politicians then they will take an interim decision that gets them past the next election. The last time I heard a British government minister discussing nuclear waste he claimed that the New Labour government did have a policy for the long term storage of waste; the policy was to use short term storage until a policy for long term storage had been devised. – Yes, he actually said that! The arrogance and cynicism which leads a government minister to trot out such bollocks is staggering. Sadly I can’t recall who it was that said it.
Rather than relying on “professionals” to sort out climate change we could always do something ourselves.
We British complain that the Brazilians are cutting down huge amounts of forest every day but we don’t mention that England used to be covered in forest. Why not replant that forest? Sadly the space is now taken up with farm land, housing, shopping malls and Heathrow Airport but we could still plant trees on all the free land? The grass verges in the cities, the wasteland, everywhere, even parts of Heathrow Airport.
Trees are green
The professional statisticians will tell us that this will only absorb a small percentage of the CO2 required but this is a poor argument which we hear every time anyone makes any suggestion about ways to reduce or absorb CO2. It is not enough – of course it is not be enough – There is no one silver bullet.
I was talking to a friend last week and he asked me what I am doing to reduce my CO2 consumption. I lamely mentioned an insulated loft and recycling and he suggested I do more. I dismissed the additional measures as making too small a contribution but he made the point that if we all do everything we can then we will all become far more aware and this awareness will have knock on effects. It will motivate us to take the bigger decisions that are necessary.
When I was at school there was a campaign to save trees: “Plant a Tree in 73” followed by “Plant one more in 74”. A tree absorbs CO2 naturally and turns it into wood. Useful stuff wood, you can make chairs, tables and cricket bats from wood.
Maybe it is worth doing things individually. We may act one at a time but this can have an effect just as the trees in the English forests were cut down one at a time.
………..where’s my spade?
Art Photography
Selling England by the pound
Tags: aristocracy, Bank of England, big money, conditions, Duke of Westminster, Earl of Cadogan, Forestry Commission, forests, ideology, Julian Glover, london, marketing, nationalisation, out source, Political donations, Privatisation, ramblers, registered property, safeguards, save our forests, sell off, talking bollocks, tax, Thatcher, The Guardian, the tap, Tory, trees, Viscount Portman, Viscountess Townshend, will be made, woodland
Sell! Sell! - Bye Bye
I hear that the government want to sell off public forests. I guess we should have known that the Tories are still hell bent on privatising the entire planet. Surprisingly, Julian Glover in The Guardian seems to think this is a good idea.
Mr. Glover’s case rests on the the assertion that “The Forestry Commission only controls 18% of Britain’s woodlands and has by no means been the best guardian of them”. In other words, we haven’t got much left and the people who are supposed to be doing it are crap.
Julian Glover is TALKING BOLLOCKS!
Firstly we should be startled to discover that the state only owns 18% of woodland and ask why and who the hell owns the rest of it? A little hunting around reveals that the owners are the same people who own the Tory party. i.e. The British aristocracy. According to an articles in The Independent and the Daily Mail it seems that 36,000 individuals, that’s 0.6 per cent of the British people, own 69 per cent of the land and if we are talking about rural land those 0.6 per cent own 50 per cent of land.
As hopeless as New Labour were it seems that they were attempting to get an understanding of who owns the land. It seems that land that has not been sold or mortgaged does not need to be registered and so land owned by aristocratic families does not appear on public records. – One has to wonder about the tax implications for the wealthy land owners!
The argument that because the aristocracy have managed to hang on to the land which they expropriate hundreds of years ago we should therefore give them ownership of the rest is farcical. Its rarity value means that we should prize it even more.
I’d go further, rather than flogging off more land, the government should be completing the survey initiated under New Labour, figuring out who owns the land and asking the question: Why, in the 21st Century, a lot of people descended from the Normans still own Britain and how they could possibly be paying correct tax if their assets were not fully disclosed.
As for the argument that the Forestry Commission are doing a bad job, well perhaps they are. But if your garage does a bad job to you sell your car? If you plumber is hopeless do you sell your house?
The fashion these days is for outsourcing and this could easily be done with all sorts of functions where the government considers privatisation the only option. If the Forestry commission are not up to scratch and there is a private company that think that they can do a better job then fine; draw up a fixed term contract, have the two organisation submit tenders and allocate the contract as you would any other. It’s not rocket science.
But to lurch to the conclusion that the land must be sold merely reveals that the Tories have the same idiotic obsession with privatisation which Britain has endured under both Tory and Labour since the rise of Thatcher. When Thatcher came to power the state owned and incompetently managed far too much. There was an argument for privatisation back then but continuing this simplistic doctrine when there’s nothing left to sell but the land itself is vandalism.
The land should stay in public ownership because it belongs to the people of this country, because we treasure it and because we want our children to own and treasure it.
Of course the government will argue that they will put in place safeguards which will ensure public access and, no doubt, in the first decade or so, this will be true.
But private capital thinks long term and has patience. I’m now old enough to understand the modus operandi of big money. They will agree to all sorts of conditions just to get their hands on the deeds. Then they will work slowly and quietly over the years. Governments will fall, MPs will leave, new people will be appointed who are unaware that the land was ever publicly owned and who are completely uninterested in some fusty old rules protecting ramblers. Political donations will be made, young naïve MPs will rise to cabinet ministers.
One day some poor rural area will be shouting for jobs and a large corporation will be looking for a place to build its latest factory and if only it were not for those silly out of date restrictions on public access. The people will be too worried about their jobs and the politicians too eager to bring unemployment figures down and bit by bit the “safeguards” will be dismantled and the only people to remember that we, the people, ever owned our country will be historians.
Not that the people will lose access completely. The marketing industry will kick in and the little patches of woodland remaining will be converted to forest themed entertainment parks complete with visitors centres, car parks with wheel chair access, pay toilets and a shopping mall with a handful of trees dotted around between the Pret-a-bloody-Mange and Star Bucks.
Phew!
To continue on the topic of who owns the land the situation in London is no better. The metropolis is largely owned by the Duke of Westminster, the Earl of Cadogan, Viscountess Townshend and Viscount Portman and his family.
If we started wondering who owns the Bank of England the situation becomes even murkier. Like a fool I had assumed that it was me, the tax payer, but according The Tap not only am I mistaken but the official owners are a state secret.
Email your MP
Save Our Forest campaign
Trees In Silhouette
Rate this: