Have you seen the movie Happy Feet? It was a blockbuster last year, and with good reason. It’s very funny. Produced in Australia the film is set in Antarctic waters. But in political correct times there does of course have to be an issue with 'mystic beings' degrading the environment with marine debris.
Imagine what happens to the 6-pack ring carrier that holds cans of beer or coke, thrown away carelessly from a cruiser. In the movie little Lovelace, the young Rockhopper penguin, wears it around his neck as a souvenir. Alas! Poor little Lovelace is growing fast and the ring around his neck is getting tighter. So tight that later on a killer whale whose teeth got caught with the necklace thrashes Lovelace in and out of the Antarctic waters leaving him hanging on for dear life.
Well, now the other side of the story has been told by one of the major manufacturers of this ring carrier, Illinois-based ITW Hi-Cone. The ring is non-toxic and photodegradable within days and couldn’t strangle Lovelace at all. But nevertheless the ring carrier:
…has been in the environmental spotlight since the late 1970’s. People often associate it with animal entanglement. But it has been illegal under federal law to distribute non-degradable ring carriers since the (US) EPA crafted regulations in 1994 at the direction of Congress. All three major manufacturers of ring carriers currently produce them with 100 percent photodegradable plastic.
Photo-degradation means that the sun will break the bonds of the plastic polymers, because scientists have put weak links in place. Therefore the ring carriers lose 75 percent of their strength in a few days and fall apart completely in four weeks. The movie's Antarctic setting, with its thinning ozone layer, would expose Lovelace’s necklace to even more ultraviolet radiation and speed up the photodegradation. For all its entertainment value, Happy Feet is nonetheless another example of poor eco-science.
Our Senior Fellow in Transport, Professor John Hibbs OBE, alerts me to a new extension of regulation in the bus industry. The Certificate of Professional Competence is already a requirement for any business engaged in public road passenger transport, but from September it will be made a requirement for drivers too.
At a cost of £240, new drivers will be required to take a four-hour theory test, even though that will cover the NVQ that many companies already demand of their drivers, and naturally (since this regulation emanates from Brussels) it will cover not just safety but subjects such as 'customer care', 'transport in the economic context' and 'role in the company'. Existing drivers will have to undergo 'periodic training', involving 35 hours attendance to meet the same criteria.
Well, I love the idea that my bus driver should be trained to drive safely, but this seems to be over-egging it. It won't improve on what responsible operators already do. What it will do is load the industry with extra costs, which the large groups will be able to bear but smaller operators will not be. So new competition will be thwarted, and today's legions of perfectly well qualified part-time drivers will find themselves out of work because their hours don't justify all the cost and training. The impact will be most severe for the small firms, usually personal or family businesses, that today provide private hire and contract services of various kinds, who (thanks to current fuel prices and of course taxes, work on tight margins already.
92. "Genetic modification is dangerous and should be banned."
The reverse is true. Genetic modification offers the opportunity to solve problems in ways that are far less dangerous than what we already do. GM crops, for example – often demonized as 'Frankenstein foods' by NGOs looking for a good scare campaign – can enable us to produce more food and safer foods in environmentally friendly and less intrusive ways.
To produce enough food at present we have to make extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers which leach into the environment, and we have to use energy intensively to protect our crops from adverse weather. Genetic modification is bringing us crops that incorporate natural pest-resisting properties without the need for chemicals. They bring crops that can fix atmospheric nitrogen to fertilize their own soil. They offer crops more resistant to adverse weather, better able to resist excessive cold, heat, drought, floods, or salinity. In each case GM makes use of something nature has already developed, and applies it to more useful crops. The result is more food production, particularly on marginal land, and with less environmental impact. It can also give us foods that last longer, stay fresher, and are less likely to carry diseases.
But genetic modification is making much more possible. We can now get crops and animals to produce large quantities of cheap vaccines, enabling us to protect millions of children in poorer countries from life-threatening or disabling diseases. The 'golden rice,' genetically modified to incorporate vitamin A can save millions of children from the blindness which results from its deficiency. And genetic modification can enable us to modify anopheles mosquitoes so they no longer act as hosts to the plasmodium which causes malaria, the biggest killer of all.
The mindless scare campaign against GM foods has already cost the lives and the well-being of countless children across the world. We should embrace the technology that offers a better future for all.
One major aspect of climate change scare mongering is epidemics. For example, the WHO and other scientists with a strong green bias claim that US energy policy is "indirectly exporting disease to other parts of the world" - causing probably 160,000 deaths per year.
However, infectious disease specialists from the Paris-based Pasteur Institute are defending the US against such claims. They demonstrate that Tiger mosquito-borne outbreaks, for which the WHO blames global warming, are actually caused by simple transportation. Malaria is not a tropical disease at all but simply one that affects the poor most .
The thing is that the WHO counts on ignorance and loss of memory to drive public opinion into climate scare scenarios. Malaria is one example of this. Most people have forgotten that Malaria was once quite common in Northern Europe – including Germany, Holland, and Britain – and was only completely eradicated there as late as the 1970s. The Pasteur doctors argue:
The globalization of vectors and pathogens is a serious problem. But it is not new. The Yellow Fever mosquito and virus were imported into North America from Africa during the slave trade. The dengue virus is distributed throughout the tropics and regularly jumps continents inside air passengers. West Nile virus likely arrived in the U.S. in shipments of wild birds. These diseases are spread by mosquitoes and therefore difficult to quarantine.
In the same way, that Malaria was probably slightly less active in Shakespeare’s England during the ‘Little Ice Age’ - although he mentions the disease in eight of his plays – it might well be slightly more active in our times due to mild warming. But this is by no means a decisive factor and people will always find ways to adapt to these new conditions.
91. "We have to live more simply and restrain our extravagant lifestyles, or pollution will overwhelm the Earth's ability to cope with it."
It sounds fine in theory. If we all bought locally, went back to horse-drawn carts, and stopped our acquisitive drive for more, surely we could reduce our footprint on planet Earth and allow it time to heal itself? Probably not. Rich people might fantasize about the simpler, less stressful life, but the poor want to get rich. In the Asian sub-continent and the Far East, they want to get as far as they can from starvation and subsistence, and lead the lifestyles they see us enjoying.
In China and India they are using Earth's resources hand over fist, burning energy at an unprecedented rate. It is not environmental quality they seek, but the wealth that offers a better life. The Chinese will build two new coal fired power stations a week for a decade, maybe two, and probably burning cheap, sulphurous coal to generate their electricity. They do not wish to be told to curb their ambitions and live more simply.
The scapegoat targets like 'food miles' and budget air trips make a negligible contribution to the pollution humans cause. The biggest contributors to that include agriculture and power generation. Even if the whole planet, rich and poor alike, made binding agreements "to live more simply," it would only succeed in lowering the quality of life for many, probably without making any significant change to the planet.
The answer is not simplicity but technology. Rich countries can afford to live cleanly, and can develop the technology to make this possible. We can produce clean power, clean engines and clean industry, and we can be wealthy enough to afford these things. Instead of living more simply, we should be developing and rewarding this advanced technology and doing what we want to do in a way that has less impact on the planet.
It is time to set the railways free. It's plain to see that despite the privatization of the railways in the mid-1990s, government interference has only worsened, to the point where David Briginshaw (Editor-in-Chief, International Rail Journal) writing about privatization around the globe states:
"In Britain, for example, we have the worst of all worlds. The government is now controlling franchisees so strictly that all the innovation that arrived with privatization has been squeezed out and the government now exercises far greater control over the passenger operators than was the case with state-owned British Rail."
The government, according to Mr Wolmar, has painted itself into a corner: if passenger numbers fall then the financial demands placed on train operating companies (TOC) by the government mean many may depart the rail industry. If numbers increase, then there will be demands that the infrastructure is improved and expanded, something which will cost the government a lot of money, and something they don't want to spend money they've not got on. The current problems found on the railways are only set to worsen over the coming years due to the political interference that has now seeped into the day-to-day running of the railways. But this crisis is one that could be avoided, and easily: we need to privatize the railways once and for all.
The current system whereby TOCs are separated from the rolling stock and the track they use means that any sense of control over their operations has been totally lost. It is time to allow companies to purchase rail lines, and rolling stock. Vertical integration (much feared by the left) is the simplest way that the railways could be saved. If monopoly of service is feared then competition needs to encouraged by allowing new rival rail lines to be constructed (or, indeed, old rail lines brought back into service). The railways need to be depoliticized, and given the opportunity to flourish.
85. "Curbs on budget airlines are needed to protect the environment."
Budget air flights emit a tiny fraction of the CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' that are put out from all sources. They are insignificant compared to the emissions of agriculture, road transport and power generation. The problem is that these make very difficult targets for NGOs to pick upon because we cannot do without those big three, whereas they feel free to call budget air flights an unnecessary luxury.
NGO spokespersons usually gloss over the minor contribution of budget airlines to total pollution by describing the emissions from air transport as the "fastest growing" source. If this is true it is only because they start from such a low base. Even at the highest estimates for the growth of air traffic by the mid-century, analysts calculate their contribution might rise from 1.5 percent of the total to about 3 percent.
In fact budget airlines generally emit less per passenger than the established airlines. This is because they typically fly with a higher load capacity, flying more people for the same fuel. Even without the punitive taxes demanded by eco-lobbyists, airline passengers already pay very high taxes which in many cases cost more than the ticket itself does.
Budget airlines have made air travel no longer an exotic prerogative of the rich, but have made it accessible to ordinary people, with all of the opportunities this presents. Critics deride 'holidays in the sun,' but neglect to point out the opportunities people now have to visit and explore foreign cities and to experience for a time the cultures of other nations. The more that people know about other peoples and places, the more rich their own life is likely to be.
The responsible way forward is not to make air travel once again something only the rich can afford, but to develop the technologies that can make it cleaner and more efficient.
Yesterday morning I attended an exhibition of plans for the redevelopment of the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth, south-west London. I was impresssed – both by the plans themselves and by the amount of people the developers had there to discuss the project with local residents.
It's a long overdue scheme. Wandsworth is a great place to live: a lovely residential area with good links to central London and the lowest council tax in the country. But it's a town without a centre. The high street is run-down and full of speeding cars; on one side is a misguided sixties development, on the other the disused Ram Brewery. Minerva Plc's plans would renovate the brewery's historic buildings, and replace the rest with housing, retail space and a new public square – as well as opening the River Wandle up to pedestrians. More controversially, they are going to put up two 'skyscrapers' (29 and 39 storeys respectively) at the northern end of the development.
I love skyscrapers – they look fantastic and I can't understand why London doesn't have more of them, especially given its lack of space. Yet many local residents don't share my enthusiasm. Indeed, some would apparently prefer the town centre remained a dead space full of empty industrial buildings. This a peculiar (but common) sentiment I've never been able to get my head around – I once took part in a TV discussion about residents who wanted to preserve a disused, ugly and inaccessible coal-mine rather than have anything new built. Such resistance to change is perverse.
There is one legitimate worry about the new development: transport. The trains from Wandsworth Town station are already nightmarishly overcrowded at peak times (will Network Rail ever lengthen the platform?) and the roads are not much better. Yet it strikes me that the developers are doing their best on this front – after all, the people who are going to buy from them want decent infrastructure. Minerva have set aside room around the development for widening roads and junctions, and made substantial funding available to Transport for London.
So the private sector is doing its bit. The public sector is dragging its feet.
79. "We should discourage use of private cars by making them more expensive to drive."
Private cars are already hit by vehicle excise duty and fuel tax, in addition to parking fees and congestion charges. The money raised from these is part of the general budget, rather than earmarked specifically for transport purposes.
It is true that each car adds to pollution, but much less than they did a decade ago, and diminishing as new models incorporate new technology. Most of the pollution from cars is caused by older and badly-tuned models. A sustained campaign to improve those would achieve far more than a campaign to raise the costs of motoring generally.
It is also true that each car adds to congestion, but again, a sensible policy to reduce congestion at peak times and on peak roads would achieve more than a general increase in costs. Reducing the need for a 'school run,' for example, would cut congestion substantially.
The anti-car lobby does not seem to appreciate the benefits of private motoring. The extension of car ownership has opened up so many choices for so many people. It enables them to work from places ill served by public transport; it enables them to shop at places which offer more goods and at lower prices. It opens up the country, and even the continent, to ordinary people who had so limited travel opportunities before the spread of car ownership. It brings a degree of independence to people.
Planners might want to move people in blocks between chosen points, but the private car is far more flexible and versatile, allowing people to make different choices. Instead of pricing motoring beyond the reach of all except the rich, we should be promoting the technology which can make car engines use cleaner and less scarce fuels, and the techniques which can spread out their use to avoid the congestion that overcrowding causes.
Yet another prominent scientist has joined the chorus against crop-derived biofuels, as Lewis Page reports.
Dr Richard Pike, chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has said that biofuels are a "dead end" and "extremely inefficient", and that the government was wrong to impose a requirement for 5 per cent biofuel content in motor fuel by 2010.
Dr Pike points out that "the 80 tonnes of kerosene used for a one-way commercial flight to New York is equivalent to the annual biofuel yield from an area of approximately 30 football pitches." At this rate it would take the whole of Britain's farmland just to run Heathrow.
It really is time to stop this nonsense. To produce these crops people are farming intensively, using more fertilizers and pesticides. In poorer countries people are cutting down virgin rainforest to plant biofuel crops. Poor people are finding corn and wheat priced out of their market, and the tanks of 4x4s are taking the food from the plates of poor families.
This is very straightforward. Biofuels are bad for the environment and bad for poor people. Like much so-called environmentalism they are based on bad science and ill-thought out consequences. They are popular with legislators and agri-businesses for rent-seeking reasons. The case against biofuels has been made overwhelmingly, and they should now be stopped. If we can derive fuel from waste biomass or algae, or from genetically engineered organisms, we should revisit biofuels. But until and unless that happens we should immediately withdraw the commitment to biofuel targets. This is tokenism gone mad and should be stopped and replaced by more useful and less damaging activity.
Have you seen the movie Happy Feet? It was a blockbuster last year, and with good reason. It’s very funny. Produced in Australia the film is set in Antarctic waters. But in political correct times there does of course have to be an issue with 'mystic beings' degrading the environment with marine debris.
Our Senior Fellow in Transport, Professor John Hibbs OBE, alerts me to a new extension of regulation in the bus industry. The Certificate of Professional Competence is already a requirement for any business engaged in public road passenger transport, but from September it will be made a requirement for drivers too.
The reverse is true. Genetic modification offers the opportunity to solve problems in ways that are far less dangerous than what we already do. GM crops, for example – often demonized as 'Frankenstein foods' by NGOs looking for a good scare campaign – can enable us to produce more food and safer foods in environmentally friendly and less intrusive ways.
One major aspect of climate change scare mongering is epidemics. For example, the WHO and other scientists with a strong green bias claim that US energy policy is "indirectly exporting disease to other parts of the world" - causing probably 160,000 deaths per year.
It sounds fine in theory. If we all bought locally, went back to horse-drawn carts, and stopped our acquisitive drive for more, surely we could reduce our footprint on planet Earth and allow it time to heal itself? Probably not. Rich people might fantasize about the simpler, less stressful life, but the poor want to get rich. In the Asian sub-continent and the Far East, they want to get as far as they can from starvation and subsistence, and lead the lifestyles they see us enjoying.
It is time to set the railways free. It's plain to see that despite the privatization of the railways in the mid-1990s, government interference has only worsened, to the point where David Briginshaw (Editor-in-Chief, International Rail Journal) 
Budget air flights emit a tiny fraction of the CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' that are put out from all sources. They are insignificant compared to the emissions of agriculture, road transport and power generation. The problem is that these make very difficult targets for NGOs to pick upon because we cannot do without those big three, whereas they feel free to call budget air flights an unnecessary luxury.
Yesterday morning I attended an exhibition of plans for the 
Private cars are already hit by vehicle excise duty and fuel tax, in addition to parking fees and congestion charges. The money raised from these is part of the general budget, rather than earmarked specifically for transport purposes.
Yet another prominent scientist has