[TobyD]

If they're rich and choose to use it on a golfing holiday then that's absolutely fine by me.

Golfing is definitely not ok. Golf courses must be one of the most environmentally ruinous activities around.  They use vast amounts of water,  often in drought ridden areas as well as probably affecting drainage patterns, biodiversity...

[DAVETHOMAS90]

If they're rich and choose to use it on a golfing holiday then that's absolutely fine by me.

Golfing is definitely not ok. Golf courses must be one of the most environmentally ruinous activities around.  They use vast amounts of water,  often in drought ridden areas as well as probably affecting drainage patterns, biodiversity...

I find this interesting.

There are a few sides to the equation here. We tend to travel miles to our venue of adventurous choice. Considering many different factors, it would be really interesting to compare the relative impacts of participation/consumption across various pursuits.

We all have a role to play in consuming less. References to being "a conscientious flyer" strike me as suggesting being more aware than not of the impact of choices on climate.

.. and all very easy for me to comment on, when I only have myself to look after.

[Will Hunt]

Don't you want to work for a newspaper, Toby? Do you know how much water it takes to print one of them?

Nobody here ever eaten an avocado? How do you think it got here?

conscientious flyer

That oxymoron is where the problem lies Will.

If you want to be as blinkered and hard line as that, why not just tell anybody who's serious about saving the world to throw themselves under a bus?

[mrjonathanr]

What a petulant response.

[ali k]

But, but, here's me, who's not going to use my flight quota anyway, absolutely desperate to sell a commodity I didn't previously have to anyone who'll buy it. If they're rich and choose to use it on a golfing holiday then that's absolutely fine by me.

But if the stated aim is to reduce carbon emissions to zero then your choice not to fly should be used towards that goal - not sold on to the golfer so that the emissions happen anyway. That’s where this commodity differs from most others, and also where the risk of further inequality lies IMO.

And rather than a mere dismissal of "it's bollocks", please explain why it is a nonsense for the conscientious flyer to pay a company to sequester an equivalent volume of carbon when taking a flight.

If you can find me a way that guarantees the equivalent volume of carbon is sequestered, and in a timescale that isn’t decades or even centuries long, then I’ll be all over carbon offsetting!

[ali k]

P.S. Will I’m not trying to be preachy. I’m as hypocritical as anyone when it comes to my carbon emissions. I just find the argument that I can carry on flying or driving around and pay for that to be ‘offset’ somewhere else wholly unconvincing and prefer to live honestly with my guilt.

And I would like this transition to a low carbon economy to be as equitable as humanly possible - not society even more stratified into those who live with permanent restrictions and others who can afford to buy their way back to a ‘normal’ lifestyle.

[Will Hunt]

What a petulant response.

And your response was completely without empathy to the point of being potentially very insulting, not to mention completely failing to answer the question. There might be people who don't particularly want to fly but find themselves compelled to - perhaps to attend their brother's funeral so that they can be there for his wife and two very young children (not my example, but that of a friend). You're telling them that they aren't conscientious, even if they ensure that they sequester the equivalent carbon?

My point was that literally everything you do in a modern society has an impact greater than if you simply ceased to exist. You say that a conscientious person shouldn't fly under any circumstances, Toby says nobody should be allowed to play golf under any circumstances, but why stop there? Why allow any imported food beyond that absolutely necessary to sustain the population - we could all do with eating more turnips. Why accept that anybody should be able to go to a crag they can't cycle to? Why live at all?


Ali, the point about trading your quota would only work if the quota was sustainable. If it's sustainable, then why not use it?

[mrjonathanr]

Where did I say that you shouldn’t fly under any circumstances? Don’t make stuff up.

I said the problem lies in the idea of the ‘conscientious flyer’. We are all, sooner or later, going to have to accept lifestyle changes. Whilst carbon offsetting is undoubtedly a good thing to do, it is not sufficient to address the problem. If you are really conscientious, you will need to address that reality.

I am sorry your friend is in that position. I am sorry that my Mexican colleague has not been able to attend her mother’s funeral. I am sorry that my French colleague has been unable to attend her mother’s funeral too. I am pretty sorry that my dad and my uncle died last year. None of which has anything to do with glib phrases like ‘conscientious flyer’.

If you are that conscientious, you’ll be asking yourself some pretty hard questions about what it means to fly and when you might feel it to be justified.

[chris j]

But it is just sophistry isn't it? Carbon offsetting focusses on a very small part of the pollution (much like diesel cars were thought to be environmentally better 20 years ago, on a very narrow metric).

Does anyone here believe Branson's or Bezos' recent jollies to the edge of space were wholly environmentally acceptable because they did carbon offsetting? Or is it just lip service.

In some ways it's like the UK claiming carbon output is down by nearly 50% since 1990 (on a territorial accounting basis), whereas on a consumption basis we seem to have farmed most of the decrease out to imports from Europe and China...

Edit: in reply to Will, not mr jr...

Incidentally, with the mention of banning things, almond milk please before avocados. Environmental disaster for water usage (& bees)...

[TobyD]

But it is just sophistry isn't it? Carbon offsetting focusses on a very small part of the pollution

It seems to me that it's one of the many ways in which people try desperately to justify not changing their behaviour.

On a side issue,  given the planned phase out of gas boilers,  what are the relative merits of wood burning stoves to heat homes? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one either, incidentally. 

[SA Chris]

I read somewhere they caused a lot of pollution of a Victorian type, see if I can find it

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39115829

[Will Hunt]

On a side issue,  given the planned phase out of gas boilers,  what are the relative merits of wood burning stoves to heat homes? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one either, incidentally.

They're fine provided you don't mind fucking up your neighbour's lungs.

[ali k]

On a side issue, given the planned phase out of gas boilers, what are the relative merits of wood burning stoves to heat homes? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one either, incidentally.

Not sufficient to heat a full house unless other aspects of it are improved, like the insulation etc, and if you did that then you may as well use direct electric or a heat pump from renewables. Or you could have one in most rooms like back in ye olde days I suppose. And they're also bad for local air quality.

[TobyD]

I read somewhere they caused a lot of pollution of a Victorian type, see if I can find it

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39115829

That looks pretty grim,  I just wondered about their carbon footprint,  this article skates over it, just saying that they have a good reputation; I'm a little sceptical about whether they are but it'd be interesting to know. 

The study referred to here isn't on wood burning,  but its pretty depressing that the government response to it is to ignore it
https://inews.co.uk/news/hydrogen-climate-gas-boilers-green-renewables-1146693

[teestub]

On a side issue, given the planned phase out of gas boilers, what are the relative merits of wood burning stoves to heat homes? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one either, incidentally.

Not sufficient to heat a full house unless other aspects of it are improved, like the insulation etc, and if you did that then you may as well use direct electric or a heat pump from renewables. Or you could have one in most rooms like back in ye olde days I suppose. And they're also bad for local air quality.

Plenty good enough to heat the whole house if you get one with a back boiler to plug into your central heating. The air quality issues seem to be bad and are exacerbated by people not having their burners at the right temperature or using wet wood.

In terms of carbon alone (rather than air quality), you are burning something that’s 20-60ish years old and had been sequestering that carbon from the atmosphere in that time, rather than 200-300 million year old carbon that was previously locked away in the crust.

[TobyD]

On a side issue, given the planned phase out of gas boilers, what are the relative merits of wood burning stoves to heat homes? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one either, incidentally.

Not sufficient to heat a full house unless other aspects of it are improved, like the insulation etc, and if you did that then you may as well use direct electric or a heat pump from renewables. Or you could have one in most rooms like back in ye olde days I suppose. And they're also bad for local air quality.

Plenty good enough to heat the whole house if you get one with a back boiler to plug into your central heating. The air quality issues seem to be bad and are exacerbated by people not having their burners at the right temperature or using wet wood.

In terms of carbon alone (rather than air quality), you are burning something that’s 20-60ish years old and had been sequestering that carbon from the atmosphere in that time, rather than 200-300 million year old carbon that was previously locked away in the crust.

Ok, I've had a look at a few things; its carbon neutral in the long term,  but not in the short to medium term according to this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epa-declares-burning-wood-carbon-neutral-180968880/

It also depends upon where the wood is sourced,  and with what you replace it. 

[chris j]

In terms of carbon footprint, it will surely depend mostly where you source your wood - if it comes from a local sustainable source where they plant more than they fell, or if you're importing premium virgin rain forest... 

Air quality we could stigmatize wood-burners until they're socially as acceptable as running your diesel engine while parked outside an inner-city primary school?

[ali k]

Plenty good enough to heat the whole house if you get one with a back boiler to plug into your central heating.

Sorry, should have been more specific. Clearly it's possible to heat a house with a wood burner. Is it practical as a means to replace gas boilers? Not really. There would have to be a raging furnace in one room to provide enough heat and hot water for a whole house and family during the heating season (or multiple smaller ones spread across the house). And they'd have to be kept lit day and night, including in summer to get your hot water, unless you had a separate water heater which defeats the point really.

[teestub]

Agree it’s not a practical replacement for gas boilers as we wouldn’t have enough trees for everybody. Having stayed in houses where this is the only source of heat and hot water, it was less faff than I thought it would be.

[SA Chris]

My father in law lives in a medium sized house in a fishing village with no mains gas. Pretty much all the hot water / heating in his house comes from a wood fire in the lounge, or electricity (he has one electric shower and an electric heater in his bedroom). Doesn't make a fire for 8-9 months of the year, but needs to have one most days in the winter. Not saying it's ideal, but it is possible and it keeps him busy!

[Oldmanmatt]

If they're rich and choose to use it on a golfing holiday then that's absolutely fine by me.

Golfing is definitely not ok. Golf courses must be one of the most environmentally ruinous activities around.  They use vast amounts of water,  often in drought ridden areas as well as probably affecting drainage patterns, biodiversity...

I find this interesting.

There are a few sides to the equation here. We tend to travel miles to our venue of adventurous choice. Considering many different factors, it would be really interesting to compare the relative impacts of participation/consumption across various pursuits.

We all have a role to play in consuming less. References to being "a conscientious flyer" strike me as suggesting being more aware than not of the impact of choices on climate.

.. and all very easy for me to comment on, when I only have myself to look after.

Oddly, though, Toby is both correct and wrong. Whilst they are not as “ecologically sound” as, say, wilderness parkland, they still represent a more eco friendly patch of greenery in many urban sprawls and cities. Whether or not the consume more water than an equivalent area of housing development, or not, I couldn’t say, but most golf courses occupy an area that would fit several hundred houses or several thousand (potentially) appartements/flats, surely.

[Johnny Brown]

Quite. They also offer a more eco-friendly patch of greenery than most modern farmland, which is mostly disastrous for wildlife. But these are both Uk perspectives, whereas going on a golfing holiday does imply a location where a golf course is likely to be relatively less benign.

[SA Chris]

I know American ones are notorious for using excessive pesticides and fertilisers to get the greens looking immaculate.

I spoke to a guy at Muirfield and he said at the height of summer they have 14 people employed running full time on drive on mowers just to cut the grass!

[mrjonathanr]

Link to the IPCC report on climate change.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

[Johnny Brown]

As to the wider points about mobility; there have, of course, been huge population movements across human history but until very recently most people have lived and died very close to where they were born. Even in Western Europe owning any form of personal transport beyond a pair of legs was unusual until the advent of the bicycle in the late C19th. Very few people owned horses for personal transport. I don't think we're especially hardwired by history to crave mobility.

This might true for recorded history, but if we're talking hardwired as in evolution it is questionable; shank's pony is not to be under-estimated. One of the basic properties shared by all hunter-gatherer societies I've read about is the degree of mobility. In fact in the introduction to the book I have on the Mesolithic in Britain, the main point the author strives to impress is quite how mobile they were and how the degree of mobility is always far greater than the layman expects. The broad picture is of course that settled farming civilisations began c.8000 yrs ago on Mesopotamia and spread from there. In evolutionary terms that is basically an irrelevant period of time, particularly with respect to the preceding 2,500,000 years.

While farming and then money were of course the engines of technological process, the lack of mobility I would argue was a mostly unwelcome consequence. Health declined too, from hunter-gatherer until very recently, as a result of the limited diet from farming and poor working conditions (intelligence too, due to reduced challenge and increased number of niches available for 'useful idiots', as Harari terms the average worker drone). I think it's entirely normal for people, given a little time and money, to want to 'get away'. Sure international travel has enable that to happen on a different scale, but I think the inference that it isn't hardwired is plain wrong.

We've discussed it before, but Bruce Chatwin's book Songlines is of course mainly about Aboriginal Australians but also a great overview of nomadic cultures in general, drawing heavily on his abandoned manuscript for a book on nomads, and driven by a desire to explain his own wanderlust.