Carbon rationing, (2005 Conference)

[Nick Grant]

OK then I'll kick off.

On reflection a week later, what has stayed with me from the conference is the excellent Mayer Hillman talk. (try Google if you missed the talk).

I found Mayer's argument that carbon rationing is our best bet to combat climate change quite convincing, on a theoretical level.

However I don't buy the analogy with wartime rationing where everyone pulled together with a common spirit and the popularity or otherwise of introducing rationing was a non issue. Looting and black markets aside, the main difference is that by the time we actually feel the threat of climate change (rather than intellectually acknowledging that is is likely/inevitable) it will be too late to be useful.

By the time we feel the scale of the problem, Carbon rationing will be irrelevant and the only rationing likely will be high ground, food and water.

I'd be interested to hear what other's think.

Meanwhile I want to say that I left the conference surprisingly inspired. Mayer's plain speaking (with recent discovery of the F word) were a refreshing change from the usual political discussions about 'sustainability'.

I suggest we ask ourselves if we are on the Titanic or off the Titanic and either enjoy the ride to disaster (visit those exotic places whilst we still have cheap air travel) or get serious about reducing our carbon emissions.

Not using a car or aircraft is probably a requirement that will be hard for me to swallow but there is no excuse for those of us supposedly signed up to the cause (AECB members, Government etc) to not prioritise serious carbon emissions reduction in all our designs and purchase decisions.

I am happy to laugh at Clarkson boasting how few miles to the gallon his favourite car does but I get seriously down when I see 'eco-building' after 'eco-building' fail to meet Building regs for insulation levels with eco-style winning over eco-function time after time.

I doubt even doing our best will have much effect but I don't know an alternative.

Anyone else moved by Mayer's talk?

[Rosemary Burton]

Yes -- a very powerful and moving talk --  if only we could have spent two hours discussing that instead of the dull non-debate just before. (Sorry to be negative about that but it was deeply tedious. But many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the conference happen. It was inspiring.)I wanted to ask Mayer what he thinks the turning point will be --what it will take to bring about carbon rationing, and when. We see more and more posturing and read more and more rhetoric but it's as if all the fine talk exists in isolation from how we (and government) actually behave. The usual triumph of style over substance seems to prevail both in government policy and in bolt-on eco-features. I agree that the wartime rationing analogy doesn't quite work -- by the time things are bad enough for everyone to pull together it will be too late. Can we do anything about the vocabulary? People are generally familiar with calorie-counting -- is there some way of making carbon-counting similarly accessible? And how about all AECB members signing up to some sort of carbon reduction commitment? Make it a condition of membership. Starting from where we are now (using calculation method from Mayer's book?) we each aim to reduce our personal total by x per cent (on a sliding scale to be decided) with figures published annually in the members' directory. Quite a commitment, and probably calling for radical reorganisation of lifestyles and work patterns in the near future but, as you say, are we on the Titanic or off it? A similar challenge could be issued to government ministers. They may say they are too busy with terrorism right now and need their chauffeur-driven limousines, but, as their chief scientist says, climate change is supposed to be an even greater threat than terrorism. Do they believe him?

[Nick Grant]

I have ordered Mayer's book and tried to find a definitive carbon calculator but not so easy. Had some leads from John Willoughby, Peter Warm and David Olivier but has anyone found the ideal spreadsheet!!!

Please dont post links to hundreds of calculators, Google does that, instead has anyone done the legwork and found something good? Needs to be transparent and tweakable, ie a spreadsheet rather than a magic program.

Lots of issues such as how do we rate green electric - see other discussions challenging the idea of giving it a zero rating.

In relation to rating our businesses, Pete Warm has been wondering how we 'charge' carbon on to client's carbon account. ie most of my mileage is site visits for work which hopefully lead to great advice that reduces the impact of thousands of people passing throught the project visited??

Perhaps Mayer Hillman flying to Washington could lead to enormous carbon savings??

Do we think of fixed costs (office heating, cooling, IT etc) and variable costs (site meeting, product manufacture etc)?

These things always end up more complex than you imagine, or can someone see an simple way through to move us towards a system as Rosemary suggests?

Even if we dont resolve the accounting issues it has to be a good thing to try and quantify our impact so we reduce it.

[Chris Herring]

This bit of news, for those who missed it as I did,  seems very pertinent for those of us who thought carbon rationing hadn't even reached the political agenda.

Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government, and Elliot Morley, Environment Minister, are both now calling for personal carbon quotas.  See the link for more details.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1827599,00.html

[David OLIVIER]

I think once we have ration cards we'll find that the situation varies widely from one household to another. I calculated that my car driving emits 0.9 tonne/year CO2 despite a lot of driving to site associated with building my own house whereas space and water heating (rented house before I finish bldg. my own) emits 3 t/yr. Anyone else in same situation would have to tackle their space heating even before they tackled their car use (NB I use a lot of trains for business travel).

Glad that these two have accepted principle of personal quotas, i.e. rationing. I agree with Mayer that it's too late for education or taxation alone to work - but one has to hope the rationing will be accompanied by education on practical energy efficiency action - as other countries have already had - not the present UK situation where 99% of the population and Newsnight and C4 News seem to think the answer is bolted-on gadgets.

David.