The Greenscam Part II

Last year we deviated from the ICT content of the blog for one post on the Greenscam (ie the desire of companies to use Green issues to flog overpriced stuff or make guilt sales). This has shown no sign of abating, and so, having been pinged by Improbulus on a Green meme-web, we decided to re-visit in true Broadstuff style. Hence the diagram below:



Firstly, to recap on the impact, this is from the first article last year:

Total Manmade % of Global Emissions - c 5% - or 0.1% if you include natural water vapour as the main contributor to the greenhouse effect
Total UK proportion of that 0.1% - c 2% (The US is about 25%, China 15% etc etc)

Of the UK's proportion, the bit the consumer is responsible for (directly plus indirectly) is about 180 M tons out of about 550 for the UK overall - i.e. c 33% (being very generous, this is direct plus indirect after all) - so where is HMGov putting its weight today - right...that 33% who can't hire lawyers, lobbyists etc to escape - i.e YOU. And the "£$%^ Media comes out with supporting stuff like this.. When there is an obvious 80/20, clearly a focus on the 20 is the key!

Why? Because, that 20% is vigorously promoted by commercial concerns who pay for advertising etc etc of course.

And so the stage was set between the well promoted, easy to do, at best harmless but usually useless stuff the greenscammers want the punter to buy, and the far less sexy but far harder (or downright unpleasant) stuff that actually works.

So, lets go through the boxes on the 2x2.

Start at the bottom right, as a public service - if you are buying a Pious (Toyota Prius) to be Green, think again - ANY new car, even an environmental one, costs considerably more to make (mining metals, engine casting, bashing the body into shape, moulding (oil based) plastics etc etc) than any difference in fuel costs between it and a standard car over a standard lifetime. Buying second hand is best, a classic even better as they hold value and are also greener as - by and large - they have stood the test of time and reliability. The Pious is in fact probably more expensive in Green terms than a Hummer or other SUV, because of the highly specialised and in some cases toxic materials used. You have to look at the end to end costs

Far harder is to do expensive stuff that makes a real difference - such as reconfiguring your house for passive heating and energy. Its hard, expensive, and unsightly. And there is no payback, either economically (ROI on Green Conversion is measured in decades) or in status. Now you would think, if HM Government, our Greener than Thou Oil companies, or our Energy Providers were genuinely concerned about all this, they would offer grants to speed conversion up - but no, HM Govt would far rather build Nuclear Reactors than the far cheaper and faster subsidy of house conversion. Mr Brown professes to be on "our" side, but by their deeds shall ye know them (and whose lobbyists have their short and curlies).

(An aside - the one thing any country should try to do in a world of increasing energy tension is reduce its dependence on foreign fuel supplies, and a way that does that - and helps reduce overall energy emmissions - is reducing energy usage from inefficient centrally generated electricity - so why is the UK currently going in the opposite direction one wonders?)

So, anticlockwise again to low cost stuff we can do thats useful, and that is quite easy - stop buying stuff with long and expensive supply chains and packaging. Stop buying food that has flown halfway across the world and/or that is out of season. Drink water out of a tap. Wear an extra sweater indoors in winter and turn the heating down a notch. Use the train, not the car. Walk a few miles instead of driving to the fancy gym. Don't use peat on your lawn or concrete it over. Don't buy a massive, energy burning HDTV set. Don't buy that second home in Tuscany and fly there twice a year.... As you can see, these things, although useful and in theory quite easy to do, are totally unthinkable to the average chattering classer.

Which leaves us at bottom left - given that the useful "green things" to do are unpalatable, the market rushes us expensive guilt based alternatives - boutique, home delivered organic vegetables rather than walking round to the local greengrocer, cute "eco-ethnically sourced" tat for the home made by cheap craftsmen in poor countries and sent halfway around the world, overpriced marginally more efficient lightbulbs that are actually more costly to run....you get the picture. Easy, maybe worthy, able to grab the green mantle - but largely useless in terms of being "Green".

And being specifically British, as we are a British blog after all - we use a fraction of the energy per capita as our US cousins (2% of global output compared to their 25%), so spending all our spare time hectoring them to reduce energy by 10% would be more effective than reducing ours by 100%, thus relieving us of the need for any nasty compromises

Thus, I am changing my green strategy from all that hard self denial stuff to badgering our American readers to go Green For Me - a tree in every US readers yard - you know it makes sense

I shall have to think about who to ping in turn, so will return - if I'm still alive..... I know many people who will wish to attack me with pieces of (organic) vegetable matter....

OK - have thought about who to ping further, based on the simple rule of them being the last 4 UK bloggers I was in conversation with (in various medii ) today - Will McInnes, James Cooper, Leisa Reichelt and GiaGia

You're supposed to write about the ways in which you're consciously "green", and also the things you know you should do in a more ecologically friendly way but don't.