Copenhagen ---And Beyond!!!

Gordon "Buzz" Brown heads for the Climate Conference.

Last time out I was banging on about the tenuous nature of existence.

Well folks get ready for some more homespun philosophy,

The Captain is about to leap up and grasp at the coat-tails of ecoism (pat pending on the ism there). Anyone who reads the news on the Handy Shipping Guide main page regularly may have noticed today that our game was, well, to be frank, a tad off form. The reasons for our lamentable performance, was due to several factors:

1) It’s Friday, nobody ever works as hard as they might on Friday

2) There was a distinct lack of News. This was in part due to the fact that, you’ve guessed it, nobody, including PR companies, media departments in shipping companies etc., works as hard as they might on Friday.

3) We lost all our power.

By this I don’t mean that the staff all fell to the floor limbs twitching, nor that the normal super heroic feats we perform here every day suddenly were beyond our grasp. This was much simpler. The electricity failed.

Then it started up again, just long enough for us to start work again and then bang.

The lights went out, literally.

Unfortunately the fault was more than a little elusive and, whilst all about went around to discover if we were in the middle of a general or specific power failure I was transported back to the heady 70’s, three day weeks, transport workers strikes and all that (sighs of pathetic nostalgia from all readers over 50).

Finally the fault turned out to be office specific. A tired piece of wiring was discovered and electricity board seals tampered with by expert hands that had been using and abusing customs seals for decades (allegedly), repairs made, and the twenty or so times the lights had literally gone out in a few hours were almost forgotten.

Not quite. For in the long moments of darkness and confusion it became obvious how dependant we have become on all the trappings of modern life in a civilised country.

Flick a switch you have light, turn a knob – heat, a tap –water and so on. There is always food in the shops and money to buy it, transport is easy, we complain about the tiniest things, not the right kind of biscuit or crisps available, the train is half an hour late, you know the sort of thing, you are likely as guilty as the rest.

And that’s when it came home to me how important this Copenhagen deal really is. Sometimes when you watch a football match and one side attacks incessantly with no luck you instinctively know they won’t score that elusive goal. They could play on for another half an hour but you just know that it isn’t written, it’s not their day. You know it and the teams out on the pitch feel it too.

For me that’s how Copenhagen feels, or rather the situation we are in. We have to do something concrete to reverse the effects of the problems we are causing ourselves and our fellow man. The problem we have is that we are these days led by little men. Somehow we have to ensure that everybody is on the same page on this one, and, unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to happen. Promises and speeches will be made but I can’t see the generation of PR savvy wasters, shysters and swindlers that pass for many of the strictly average politicians we are now cursed with can grasp the nettle and organise a night of celebration in the place the beer comes from.

The thing which may save the day is the overwhelming feeling I have that the man (and of course woman) in the street really wants to see dramatic changes in energy use and the consequential cutting of pollution. If the will of the people prevails we may be in with a chance.

And one other factor. I watched in awe the other night as two scientists, Austrian I believe, revealed the artificial trees they have developed. Looking vaguely like a tree shaped like one of those early machines used to present an illusion of a moving object as you peered through slits in the side of a spinning drum, a zoetrope. 

These tree contraptions grab carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in huge quantities. I believe the figure quoted was 60 million “trees” could absorb all the CO2 we produce at any one time.

The special plastic which catches the CO2 is then rinsed and carries on sucking the nasty stuff out of the atmosphere. So what happens to the CO2 you ask? Technology still needs a bit of work but apparently if they sort out this big underground storage idea you simply place the trees around the dumping site, the position of the trees in relation to areas of pollution is irrelevant, they simply grab the same amount wherever in the world they are, lowering the overall amount of pollution. The recovered CO2 goes straight down into storage in whatever form they mange to convert it to.

So don’t despair just yet, but let’s be clear, no matter how clever we think we are Nature, in all her glory is waiting out there for us to screw up. And if a little thing like the power going down for a few hours can cause such confusion, what are we, and more to the point, the next generation, going to do if we screw this one up.

Comments

[alex]

Very true. Saving environment is important issue.

[Captain P]

Trouble is Alex, the old enemy, apathy. People need to make a fuss and get politicians to take them seriously. I really don't want to point fingers but I read today the Chinese are nett importers of coal this year, and they're still building three power stations a week! How are they ever going to live up to the promise of CO2 and Sulphur Dioxide reduction?

[Wotchit321]

Alas, I doubt Copenhagen will sort anything. Because, and lets face facts, we are all out to look to ourselves, definitely at a national level. And besides, even if they suddenly did develop a cure for what ever is causing environmental change (if indeed it is us doing it, but thats another issue) then there will only be something else we are doing thats screwing everything up. It used to be sulphur emissions, then CFC's, now CO2. Next it'll be water and I dare say eventually oxygen. Because another thing about us humans is we are very big on dealing with symptoms, not problems. And our main problem is our complete inability to manage our own population. THAT is the key to the buzzword of the hour, 'sustainability'.