It's the penultimate week of the Climate Change MOOC and another interesting experience. This week we covered the mitigation of carbon emissions, adapting the built environment to climate change and the human resistance to renewables, i.e. NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard!
I learnt that the world's primary energy consumption is 470 exajoules, that's 470,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules - wow! That's a big number but in terms of a 'currency' that we might understand, it equates to each person in the world using 2kw of power all day, every day. I know that's a lot but somehow it doesn't sound as much as 470 exajoules. Whatever, one route towards reducing carbon emissions is for each of us to reduce our current consumption of electricity, much of which is produced by burning fossil fuels. The other route is to make more use of renewable energy. Now I don't think either of these two routes should be news to anyone. But like all simple statements of WHAT has to be done, there are rarely equally simple statements of HOW it should be achieved. Why? Because, in my opinion, the HOW is down to each of us individually and there is unfortunately a view held by many that the solutions to climate change are someone else's problem.
Attitudes need to change and we were introduced to Montgomery Primary School in Exeter, which is the first Zero Carbon Passivhaus school in England. Now not only do I think it's a good idea for new buildings to be Zero Carbon, but building a primary school that way means that young children are introduced to how WE ALL need to respect and sustain our environment. The school claims to have an electricity bill of £0 per year and the excess electricity from its solar generators provides a small income to maintain the equipment - wonderful!
We also learnt how construction methods in the UK's urban environment need to adapt to the expectation of warmer, drier summers and much wetter winters. This could involve adopting some of the practices currently employed in Mediterranean countries. We were introduced to a wealth of information on this subject and I suppose new building practices can be introduced 'forcibly' by regulation. There will, however, be an inevitable impact on cost.
The final part of this week's course was about NIMBYism - Not In My Back Yard! If we're honest, there's a bit of NIMBY in all of us. We love the idea of renewable energy so long as it doesn't affect our personal space. In other words, we're selfish! Now there are all sorts of ways that governments can try to counter NIMBYism, including siting wind turbines, for example, away from the 'back yards' to offshore environments. Another way is better communication on the need for renewable sources. If all else fails, providing community benefits packages to the affected areas can be an incentive to accept renewable energy installations. But social research has shown that even these methods do not effectively address people's innate resistance to change. My view is that the seriousness of climate change has not really been taken onboard. We have to recognise the 'back yard' is now the planet, not our own cozy little communities. National boundaries are, after all, man-made inventions that only man respects. Weather systems have no boundaries and therefore carbon reduction strategies have to be global. That doesn't mean that the environment where we live should not be important to us. Of course it should. But NIMBYism per se mustn't be allowed to get in the way of the development of our global society.
That's my thought for the day and I look forward to Week 8!
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