Sam Iles's Blog

Very often you will hear people from the UK and other similar small European countries putting up the argument that “but, China and India and the US are causing the problem – what can we do?” in defence of their lack of action on climate change. However, this is deeply flawed and plain wrong. Here’s why:

Let’s first look at oil consumption (a major source of climate change related problems):

What this actually tells us is that China and India use far less oil per person than we do. In my mind, climate change is about a global effort to reduce carbon emissions and how can we blame China or India when they are clearly far more efficient than us? Is it right that the biggest country should be the one which is blamed?

To put this another way: one of the countries which uses the least oil is the Vatican City. Would we therefore instantly proclaim the Vatican to be the greenest country in the world? No, we would assert that they use so little oil because they are so small and therefore percentages and ratios need to be applied. Apparently we forget this simple logic when dealing with our own countries and consciences.

And now coal:

Clearly coal stats paint the UK in a slightly better light. However, this is simply because we use far more gas due to our convenient proximity to it. (Natural gas still emits a lot of carbon dioxide, too, remember.) And, when compared to India we still lag behind.

Now, what is being done to reduce oil and coal consumption? The main aspect of the battle is to source alternative energy. Take a look at these figures:

Is there anything more damning than that? Can anyone still proclaim that the UK can’t make a difference?

In fact, if we look at China alone for a moment, you’ll see they really are outstanding. In 2009, they built a wind turbine every two hours – and they are still rapidly building them. At the current rate, China will get all of its energy just from wind turbines by 2030. And, at the current rate that they are installing renewable energy capabilities, they will be completely carbon neutral in energy production sometime in the 2020s. And to people who might say “this is just because China is rich and so on”, Germany, a country similar to the UK economically and environmentally, gets 17% of its power from renewables. When Germany and China are achieving 17% and the UK is getting just 6.7%, something is very wrong.

At the same time, our own government has set a goal of 30% renewable energy in the same time period as China will achieve 100%. Again, can we really be said to be so great? At the current rate, the UK looks set to be burning coal and God knows what else when every other country is using clean renewables. My point is simply this: the UK is not some innocent victim of climate change wavering powerlessly at the mercy of the Big Three. In fact, we are in many ways far worse than the others. China has a clear path to completely green energy independence whereas the UK has some vague, pointlessly low target which it looks set to fail.

What needs to happen here is for the UK to set a clear plan of how it will become energy independent and totally green. And, not just a plan to be carbon neutral by the year 3000, but an aggressive plan. Studies and science tell us that the UK could achieve all of its power needs by just micro-generation (that’s turbines and solar panels on homes) alone. Throw in a few central facilities and it is entirely possible.

Yes, it is expensive to embark on huge schemes of power generation. But, it doesn’t need to be. In my opinion, it should have been law a long time ago that new build homes must have solar panels installed on the roof. Imagine the impact this would have. The government should commit to installing solar panels on all government owned council houses. The government should be zero-rating VAT on micro-generation products like solar panels. In fact, they should be offering huge subsidies on these products.

The government should be offering home insulation for free, to reduce to amount of required energy. Such a programme would cost £4bn a year for a few years and create 80,000 jobs and, may sound like a lot of money, but is actually a fraction of the UK’s energy expenditure now. Energy production from wind turbines costs exactly the same as new nuclear, so can hardly be argued as expensive. Also, something like solar panels are improving all the time. Every month, they become cheaper and more efficient (like all technology) and really do represent the future. However, the change needs to begin now. It is more than conceivable that the UK could be getting 100% of its energy from increasingly advanced green technologies by 2030. However, it really does have to start now.

Look at this entry in my calendar from last year:

Yeah, that’s right. On the 6th of April 2010 I became vegan after about four years of vegetarianism. And, veganism, oh how I do love you.

It all started when I read a book called Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. To call it a life changing book would be an understatement. Foer actually made the case for vegetarianism (himself being a vegetarian, not a vegan) but the way in which he described the conditions of chickens and cows kept for eggs and dairy really made me think. A quick Google while reading the book solidified my decision, and, I distinctly remember that the last time I ate any non-vegan-but-vegetarian food was when I turned the very last page of the book. If you haven’t read it, you should.

So thus began the journey. It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I can say with absolute and total honesty that I did not once want to eat cheese, et al, or relapse or regret my decision. I believe this is because I truly wanted to be vegan. This made it easy. I would suggest anyone else considering it to not consider it, but read their facts, make a decision, and do it. That’s the only way it can work.

Then, the food. Oh, Lordy, the food. To science, it’s known as NOM. I can honestly say that I have never eaten better. If you eat meat, you’re all, “oh, dinner, let’s have meat and potatoes like all nights”. It must get so boring. But, veganism forces you to cook. It forces you to use the best cookbooks out there. It forces you to discover plants and herbs and spices and flavours and cuisines you didn’t know existed before. I just love vegan food. I. Love. Food.

And, then there is the health. I feel healthy. I have plenty of energy. I have – according to a qualified nurse person – iron levels which are firmly “above average”. I have had what amounts to, oh, three spots in the last year (a increasing trend among models is to be the vegan thing to reduce the job ruining spots).

And, then there is the environment. My diet produces far less carbon dioxide. My diet uses far less water. I use less land. I pollute less. I am an anti-global warming device.

And, thirdly we have the little animals. Bless them. How many of your lives have I saved, I wonder? How many of you have not had to die for an industry for which apparently animals do not die. How wonderful.

As to the cookbooks, my favourites are as follows:

• Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. The ultimate vegan cookbook. Hundreds of amazing recipes, from soups to “sammiches”, enchiladas to “elephant nori rolls”, it literally is the book of vegan.
• Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by the same as above. 75 cupcake recipes. 75. Never in all my life did I imagine I could love anything as much as I love vegan cupcakes. Such inventive, unimaginable varieties.
• Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by the same as above. 100 cookie recipes. 100 this time! Never in all my life did I imagine I could love anything as much as I love vegan cookies. Serious nom to be had, here.
• Viva Vegan! by one of the above (Terry). 200 recipes from the Latin American countries. Latin American food is now my favourite food. I can’t even express in words the unrivalled awesome of the tastes, the textures, the nom. Buy this book if you are the vegan thing (or if you’re not).
• Vegan Scoop by Wheeler del Torro. 150 recipes for ice cream. But, not just any ice cream – VEGAN ice cream. I mean, vegan ice cream people. Of course, there are vanilla and chocolate (yawn) but things really get exciting when you start talking about curry ice cream and peanut butter ice cream and so many more.

So there. Those are my five favourite vegan cookbooks.

In addition to cookbooks, I should also mention the wonderful ‘Vegan Freak’ by Bob and Jenna Torres. This book really is awesome. They are both vegans and explain why they made the choice, all about being vegan and all manner of wonderful information. This book is a must read for any vegan or anyone thinking of becoming a vegan.

So there you have it. A year of wonderful, healthy, environmentally friendly and compassionate food and a year of vegan books.

I’ve enjoyed it so much and I can honestly say that I never look back and never regret it or wish I could eat a certain vegan food.

So, here’s to another vegan year – and all the rest of them!

Today, the UK government announced that they are bringing back the weekly rubbish collections. Labour introduced fortnightly collections in the hope it would force people to recycle more. The Tories, however, have decided to bring them back. Their reason, they say, is due to situations in some parts of the country where, due to the recent snow, people’s rubbish hasn’t been collected for a while. They say it’s terrible that Labour made this happen.

Um, what? How could weekly collections help this problem? The rubbish wasn’t collected because of snow. Not because it was the wrong week. Snow didn’t happen to fall right at the time of no collections. They say (and the media says too) that this was introduced solely to cut costs. There is no mention of the recycling benefits. None at all.

Also, if this was a cost saving measure, then why then do it now? When local councils face record spending cuts, why add an additional unnecessary cost?

It seems to me that the way to collect rubbish during snowfall isn’t to collect snow more often during the rest of the year, it’s to invest in smaller, snow capable vehicles. Remember, collections continue in many other countries with much heavier snow, but the Tories would rather ignore the real problem that we are horribly underprepared for snow?

I think the answer is simple. This is nothing but a popularity move. I for one think the idea of fortnightly collections is great. If you recycle properly, you won’t have a problem. People complain their bins attract maggots if not collected weekly – but your bin shouldn’t contain food anyway. If it does, you’re doing it wrong. But, a lot of people dislike the idea (who wants to recycle, huh?). And so the Tories have jumped on the opportunity of snow to keep the slaves happy and say, ‘hey, look! Remember how you all hate us because of these cuts? Well – we’re bringing back the bins!’ Please don’t fall for it, OK?

Climate change is a major problem that affects our very lives and potential to survive as a species. A rise in average global temperatures could have a catastrophic effect on the earth – yet little is being done. Governments often make vague promises to tackle carbon emissions, yet nothing happens. Well, I would like to explain to you an aggressive and effective approach to reducing carbon emissions which is becoming more and more popular across the world.

Some cities, countries and states have started issuing companies with ‘carbon credits’. This is an amount of carbon which a company may legally produce. A certain amount of credits are given to companies for free and they can then buy or sell credits to other companies. For example, a cleaner company (such as one who offsets carbon or uses renewable fuels) can sell its excess carbon credits and make money, and a dirtier company (one that uses old fashioned technologies or has a big demand for electric) buys extra ones to make up for the shortfall. Each year, the amount of credits which are issued for free gets reduced so that eventually companies won’t get any for free.

However, this system can be extended to people as well as companies. Let’s take the UK as an example and examine how such a system would work here.

Each year, a ‘budget’ for carbon emissions would be set by the government. This would be set by law and be a clear figure for how much carbon can be legally emitted each year. A good target would be a 10% reduction each year, making the UK a zero carbon country by 2030.

About half of this carbon budget would be split between all people in the country. Each adult would get exactly the same amount regardless of who they were and children would get a smaller allocation, given to their parents. We’ll talk out the other half of the budget later.

Each adult’s carbon account would then be depleted when using different products and services. For example, buying car fuel or buying airline tickets. Remembering that with a 10% yearly reduction, this scheme would last approximately 25 years, so eventually, most products and actions would have a carbon cost too (such as food and clothing).

People would be able to sell excess credits back to the government for extra money and people who need more could buy them too. They would be easily purchased from places such as petrol stations and energy companies. This is a very progressive scheme, too. Poorer people use much less carbon than richer people, so would redistribute wealth as poorer people effectively sell their credits to richer people.

The point of this scheme isn’t to punish people: it’s to encourage them to do the right thing. Taking the bus, for example, will save you money. Taking the train instead of the plane. Buying a hybrid car. Installing solar panels. It also provides an indirect incentive to energy companies to adopt renewable energy sources as they can say to their customers, ’switch to us, and less of your carbon credits will be taken’.

Obviously, this is a huge scheme to implement. However, certain aspects are easy. Car fuel and airline tickets, for example. Everyone buys these at the same places from the same sources, that managing such a scheme would be extremely easy.

That brings us to the other half of the carbon budget. This is perhaps the easier half to implement and the more popular part to implement with the public. The other half of the budget is given to companies. It works in the same way as for people, only with companies instead. Obviously, there is a great financial incentive to companies to become more environmentally friendly so that they can save money.

This scheme is about to be implemented in California, for companies only. And, whilst this is a great start, it is just one state and it does apply just to companies and not people. I think that this scheme is perhaps the only way to reduce carbon emissions quickly. We could literally see zero carbon countries within a few decades. This is far more aggressive than most government’s strategies. The UK’s current plan, for example, is to be carbon neutral by 2070. Climate scientists say that the absolute latest that the entire planet can be producing carbon is 2050. Something needs to be done now and I think this scheme could be just the solution.

Our climate is changing. Perhaps, irrevocably.

Life has a habit of adapting to meet changes in environment. This has happened again and again. Not everyone died when the dinosaurs did. As Ian Malcolm would say, ‘life finds a way’. That’s what’s great about evolution.

Right now, we are faced with a similar change in our environment and we need to adjust. But, all of these previous adaptations have a lot in common: lots of creatures die before evolution happens. But, it doesn’t have to kill us. You see, humans can evolve differently. We have the unique ability to think and predict and plan ahead.

People will be forced to adapt to changes like severe drought and flooding. Permanent flooding of coastal areas. Worsening access to food and water. In some places (countries around the foothills of the Himalayas) millions and millions of people will be without water.

Most adaptation will happen on a private level. People will move house, install solar panels to cope with energy cost rises, plant crops in their gardens to subsidise the increasing cost of food. But, ultimately in my view, this is the entire reason that one has a government.

The government needs to look at sea levels and make plan a for defences (as the Dutch and the Dutch alone already are). They need to look at how peak temperatures will affect their cities. They need to look at rainfall and flooding (do any major cities really have to sewage systems to cope with huge amount of rainfall?). They need to focus on energy and ensure it will always be available.

But, these are tasks that a developed government can do. It’s easy for the government of the UK to ensure food security for its people. Easy. It’s easy for the USA government to build defences around lower Manhattan (which is in danger of being submerged any minute now). The people who need most to do these things are, sadly, the ones least able to do it: developing countless. Developing countless are at the greatest threat from these changes, because they can’t make huge changes to infrastructure or create alternate sources of food and water. And the entire problem of global warming was caused by us in the west.

So, what can we do to help? Well, the immediate answer seems to develop them, right? A developed country can cope with these changes, so that’s all we need to do, right? Sure, but there are a few problems with this method. Firstly, when a country develops quickly, it will consume more of the resources that make climate change worse. It will mean more fossil fuels burnt in Africa, more meat consumed in Asia.

Instead, we need to evolve our behaviour and help evolve theirs. We need to teach them that they need to use green energy sources. To continue eating as they do now and not switch to a destructive, impossible western diet. Of course, this brings up a further problem: we would have to do these too. It’s no good telling other countries to do something and ignoring it ourselves. (This is, of course, actually a very good thing.)

The second problem with developing a country is that it isn’t that easy. As much as I’d like to click my fingers and say, ‘hey, look at that: Africa looks like Europe!’, it doesn’t work. Corruption, fraud, lack of money all play a part. I won’t get into a discussion of how to develop a country (that’s for another blog post), suffice to say: it’s hard.

So, is it all this simple to adapt our behaviour? Make a few personal and government decisions? Yes, I think so. But, the problem is, it isn’t happening. The USA government still subsidises insurance costs around the previous flooding occurrences in New Orleans. By making it cheaper to live there, you’re completely missing the point. You need to be helping people move away from doomed areas, not move into them.

But, who am I to inform government policy? (I just hope they’re all reading this…)

Remember The Last March of the Ents? It was an exciting moment. When faced with destruction, the Ents did something they hadn’t done for years and something very much out of their character. They rose up, and marched on Isengard to teach Saruman a lesson. And that they did. Since then, I like to think that they lived long and happy lives.

And – would you believe it – the forests of the UK face a similar plight. For you see, the government has decided to sell off nearly all of the UK’s forests to private companies. This is very bad news.

Now, I hesitate to compare the current Coalition government to the coalition between Sauron and Saruman, but… I shall. I like to think of the Tories as Sauron and the Liberal Democrats as Saruman. You see, Saruman used to love the trees of Fangorn forest. He used to walk amongst them and talk to the trees. I see the Lib Dems in the same way. They were fans of the trees. Their manifesto contained plans to further their protection.

Sauron however, didn’t care about the trees. You see, he had bigger plans. All he wanted was that ring. And Sauron used Saruman to get it. Sauron forced his ally to burn the trees to power his industry of war. Compare that to the Tories. It’s strikingly similar. Sauron wanted his ring, and used Saruman had to burn his beloved trees. The Tories want to make their damn cuts, and the Lib Dems have to agree to sell their beloved trees.

So that is what is happening. The modern day coalition of the Black land is selling the remaining trees of Britain. Yes, unconditionally selling our trees. Like Middle Earth, there was once a time when nearly all of the UK was covered in forest, now what little public woodland we have left is being taken from us for whatever use its purchaser sees fit. Anything. Cutting it down for timber, making a Center parcs, or installing a structure similar to Barad-dûr to suspend your giant eye from. This scares me like crazy.

Our forests are vital. They are havens to countless species of animals (dormice are already under threat of extinction in the UK due to habitat loss). They are incredibly important carbon sinks and oxygen producers. They provide thousands of people with places to walk and ride and study and whatever else they want. They are so, so important. I believe it to be the worst thing they’ve done yet. What it next? Selling roads? Selling schools? Children? Producing a super army of Uruk-hai in the basement of the government buildings of Whitehall?

I say we march on Isengard Whitehall. Who’s with me? (If we’re really fortunate, our quest may even yield the entwives.) What say you, Ent council?

Britain is now the fattest nation in the whole of Europe. Our appetite for fatty foods like chocolate and cake and meat has meant that we have more obese people than ever before and that our very perception of what overweight is has changed.

Being overweight makes you more susceptible to heart disease, stroke, disability, diabetes, a number of cancers and more. However, all of these things really are the own people’s faults. If someone will insist on eating copiously unnecessarily amounts of fatty food and then getting heart disease, I find it hard to feel sorry for them. Everyone knows that being fat isn’t healthy and that the way to loose weight is to ‘Stop Eating, Stupid’. But I digress.

My point is the other problems that this causes. Firstly, fat people take up NHS resources. Now, thin people obviously get sick too (just as someone who doesn’t smoke can get lung cancer). But, a fat person is much more likely to spend time in hospital. I find it bizarre that people who smoke or drink pay tax on these products in order to contribute to their care on the NHS, but fat people don’t.

Second, eating lots of food really isn’t fair when there are one billion starving people in the world. That an entire country can be so fat when so many other people cannot eat anything is perhaps the most evil and sickening thing in the world. Of course, not eating a doughnut doesn’t mean it immediately appears on some African person’s doorstep. It’s really more symbolic and generally just nice.

After all, not eating as much food will make a big difference in the future when we don’t have that much food. If every person in the world ate as much food as we did here in the west, then we would need two and a half planets to make that much food. How can you possibly advocate ending world hunger when you eat too much food for your own body? It is hypocritical and maddening beyond belief.

So. Fat people are bad. But, what to do with fat people? A tax on foods containing high levels of food seems like the solution to me. Let’s analyse it in a bit more detail.

A tax on fatty food would be applied to varying degrees based on how much fat is in the food. This would mean that different levels on tax would apply to cakes and chocolate and meat and so on. Even the smallest amount of tax on a product affects how much people will be willing to buy it. If meat cost 10% more than it does now, people would buy less of it. This is fact. When a tax on cigarettes was introduced that was an immediate and large decline in the number of cigarettes sold.

People don’t eat enough vegetables and fruits and nuts and grains and pules as they should and a tax would affect this, I am sure. Also, diet really is the key factor of weight loss. Multiple recent scientific studies have concluded that exercise actually plays no part in your weight. They say that people have a hugely disproportionate view of how exercise affects weight loss. People assume that running will burn of tons of calories when it really doesn’t. Running for 20 minutes will burn off just two cans of coke, which is incredibly insignificant when you consider that coke is just a drink…

However, there is one slight problem with this whole plan. This tax is, by its nature, rather regressive. If a poor person buys some meat, a richer person will pay the exact same amount of tax. Whilst we have numerous very regressive taxes in the UK (VAT to name just one), I am hardly someone likely to advocate introducing another. However, on this particular example, I don’t think it is such a bad thing. Here’s why: this tax wouldn’t be on all foods. If fact, most foods will remain tax free and will therefore be fine to buy. A person could easily sustain themselves entirely on tax free foods (as I, being vegan, would too). Also, surely this is the point of the tax. If a person felt that they couldn’t afford some of the high fat foods, then surely this is the point and not a bad thing at all? There is also one other solution. Take all the money raised by the fat tax and it to subsidise healthy food. Then, the problem is solved. Nobody could complain about this being expensive for them if the food they should buy is even cheaper…

This tax has already been implemented in Denmark (obviously) and seems to be working just fine. Working excellently, in fact. I think that there is little chance of the current Conservative government introducing this tax. But, if other countries follow the example of Denmark, perhaps we could see this happening after the next UK General Election.

This legislation is also hard to pass because of the many opponents to it – rich opponents. In America, the bug sugar using companies make up lies and spend millions of dollars on TV advertising trying to convince people this is a bad idea. In fact, Coca-Cola’s Chief Science Officer had said “coke isn’t unhealthy because it makes you happy”, which is probably the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.

Of course, the ideal solution would be that all people were issued ration books and that all foods were priced not by money, but by units of ration stamps based on their health and environmental impact. But I can’t see that ever happening. One can dream…

In the next fifty years or so there is going to be a big problem with food, where we will run out of it. This is for a few reasons. These include, but are certainly not limited to: third world development and Africa needing more food; climate change and it being harder to grow food, with entire crops being wiped; a rising population; and changing diets. It is likely that food prices will rise hugely and people will have to adapt to meet certain changes.

Now, I’m not going to get into all the causes (meat, et al) and problems and potential solutions (veganism, et al), just something which may be a result of all this.

During World War Two, food supplies were low and people in the UK were issued ration books to exchange for food. They were also encouraged to ‘Dig For Victory’, growing food in their gardens to supplement their rations. During this time, if you didn’t grow your own food then you went hungry. This made a whole generation of people who knew how to grow food and even how to grow it indefinitely without the need of ever buying seeds (which really is awesome).

This has fallen out of fashion nowadays (people of this generation, regrettably, die). But, I’d like to encourage you to give it a go, for the reasons that follow:

1) Reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is for two reasons. Firstly, digging up a bit of your grass and replacing it with vegetable yielding plants soaks carbon dioxide out of the air and also makes that rather wonderful gas oxygen. Secondly, the less food you have to get shipped from South America, the less carbon dioxide you make – yay!

2) Mo’ food, less money. You get more cheaper food! I don’t need to say more…

3) More space for wildlife. Wildlife much prefers nice plants than boring grass. It’s also great fun to farm organically – avoiding the use of chemicals and slug pellets (think of the hedgehogs). It’s great knowing what is on your food. It’s also great for little endangered insects like bees.

4) Help the global food crisis. Every single potato or bulb of garlic you grow means that one less has to be grown in some far off country and shipped to you. That’s fantastic.

5) Learning. You should probably get into the habit of it now. Some people predict a future within our lifetimes of ration books for everyone, all the time. If you grow food in your garden, and know how to know, then you really are one step ahead.

6) That warm feeling of doing something good. OK, so this one is rather subjective, but if helping global warms, the food crisis and animals is something you’re into, then growing food could be for you.

Also, this really isn’t a hard thing to do. I don’t have a garden, but I still grow vegetables in pots. A lot of vegetables work great grown in pots, and you easily do the same. Anything helps, even if you just commit to pushing some garlic into the mud and seeing if it grows.

This brings me to my final point: allotments. There are currently 300,000 allotments in the UK with 100,000 people waiting for one. Yeah, that’s 100,000 waiting to grow lots of food. That’s bad and perhaps you could write to your MP asking them to help provision more land for allotments.

But, even if you are still waiting for an allotment, you can probably find some room in your garden and I’m certain you can find a room to put a plant pot… Maybe, you can make it your New Year’s Resolution to grow just a little food for yourself.