Wow, these short winter days slip by fast don't they? Sorry for the lack of recent postage, been a little busy over the last few days. Until recently I had quite a nice system in place: I would apply for jobs with the council to keep the benefits office happy, the applications forms wouldn't arrive until after the closing date, I'd throw them in the bin and carry on getting up at noon.
Over the last couple of weeks however, the system has broken down and this morning I received a phone call offering me a well paid, 9-5 office job with one of the city council's housing ALMOs.(1) So on 3rd Jan 2006 I will return to the working world, for a while anyway.
Of course another strategy would be for me to start playing the lottery. Even though I've also seen it as nothing but a tax on the poor(2) a news item I saw the other day made me think I should try my luck. The story concerned the confirmation of the first female, European suicide bomber. So terrorist organisations are starting to use suicide bombers who don't fit the standard profile, pretty sure I wrote about that in both my blogs(3) some time ago.
Anyway, enough of this self indulgent nonsense, let's turn to something else. Blair's performance at the CBI perhaps, where two Greenpeace supporters and some 'radioactive' confetti forced the PM to deliver his address in some cramped little room instead of the grand conference hall.
Noble protesters or eco terrorists? Who cares. The actual issues concerned here are far more important, namely, where are we going to get our energy from in the future? Having definitely ruled the nuclear option out a couple of years back Blair has now retabled it but, come on, is anyone really surprised, it is Blair after all.
There's a lot of talk about energy generation today, or a lot more than there used to be anyway. Unlike many other contemporary, 'hot button' topics, with their myriad ethical and practical complexities, this one seems pretty straight forward to me.
fossil fuels
produce insane levels of pollution,
limited resource,
solar, wind and hydro
clean but inefficient and weather dependent,
unlimited resource,
nuclear power
super efficient,
no immediate pollution but ludicrously dangerous and expensive waste disposal,
always some risk of meltdown,
limited resource,
Basically none of these are good enough because, in the end, their cons will always outweigh their cons. Dependence on any of these sources of energy is a compromise where we pay for our energy in more than just cash. As I often say however, it's just not good enough to bitch about stuff without suggesting an alternative, so here it is.
First off, end all farming subsidies, don't give farmers a single penny of tax payers money. You may be forgiven for thinking that our agricultural industry, backbone of the nation and guardians of our green and pleasant land would then disappear. Keep reading.
Now instead of those farmers competing in global markets against foreign farmers with lower overheads, they supply the nation with power by growing biofuel crops. This would provide them with a local and guaranteed buyer for their crops. They could even use the crops to power and fuel their own homes and machinery. Meanwhile, with the subsidies gone there's more tax money for public services and those elsewhere in the world struggling with abject poverty are given a better chance of growing their way out.
This would also end our reliance on foreign oil and gas thereby removing a boot or two from our government's neck when it comes to international diplomacy. Biofuels are carbon neutral, ie. they give off CO2 just like fossil fuels, but because that CO2 came from the atmosphere in the first place there is no net increase. In a stroke this system would smash all emissions targets set out in international agreements.
Much of the cost of fossil fuels comes from difficultly finding the stuff, the dangers of retrieving it and the vast effort of transporting it. With biofuels growing like any other crop and being produced and used locally, these costs vanish meaning cheaper energy.
Just imagine, if you can, that the crop used to do all this has uses other than biofuels as well. Say, for example, it had over 50,000 potential commercial applications(4). This being the case not only could our newly booming agricultural industry supply energy but it could also form the basis of countless new, local small businesses. Towns regain a sense of individuality; jobs become more varied and available; small scale and closely linked businesses mean people have more in common in daily life and a sense of community returns.
In short, since the industrial revolution we’ve been on a bit of a bender to see just how far we could go. If we now use the fruits of that experience to apply the approach we used before the boom of technology, we can maintain and even improve our standard of life while solving many of the problems the last century or so has brought us.
Just to be a complete and abstract dreamer let’s say that this infinitely wonderful crop also happens to be one of the fastest growing plants known to man, with some of the healthiest seeds and little need for pesticides or fertilisers.
Blair’s always banging on about his legacy, desperately hoping that he can do something that will pull him out of the shadow of Iraq. This I, of course, just about impossible, but if he were the guy that ended pollution, saved farmers across the globe, and delivered stronger, healthier communities with better services for the same amount of tax, yeah, that might do it.
As I said above, it’s no good bitching about something unless you’re prepared to offer an alternative, a viable alternative. Now perhaps what I’ve outlined may appear to fall short of this requirement of validity but actually, it doesn’t. That plant does exist, and humans have been using it for more than ten millennia.
It’s called cannabis.
footnotes
(1) ALMO: Arms Length management Organisation. Basically a private company that takes over certain duties of the city council but is also entirely owned by the council. Apparently this is a way to produce unique and tailored organisations to deal with problems specific to each area. Seems to me it’s the responsibility that’s being kept at arms length, ie. it’s a clever way for the council to take credit when things go right but avoid blame when they go wrong.
(2) Generally the poorer you are the more likely you are to play the lottery, while the richer you are the more likely you are to use lottery funded projects. In the past it would have been obvious that the working class were paying for the leisure activities of the middle class, with those lines now blurred and gone the effective reality is harder to see.
(3) Check out http://iamaterrorist.blog.co.uk
(4) 50,000+ commercial uses reported by BACH, an international business association that promotes hemp industries, researches and produces information on hemp and advocates legal reform.
BACH (Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp)
PO Box 71093
Los Angeles,
CA 90071-0093
USA
