Friday, July 28, 2017

HAPPY HOLS

Find the podcast on iTunes or at susbiz.biz


I’m Anthony Day and welcome to the Sustainable Futures Report.
Yes, this Sustainable Futures Report for 28th July is the last one until 1st September. Welcome to my patrons. And welcome to listeners in the UK, the US, Canada, across Europe, in the Far East and in Australia. 

In Brief
Quite a lot to catch up on before I close down for a month. Apparently co-housing makes you happy but some people are quite cross and railing at the British Government’s transport policies. They’ve also announced a new energy policy, which does seem to have confused the BBC somewhat. Is wind power all at sea, and if you’re recycling - you certainly should be - are you doing it right? Michelle Marks can advise. Across the pond President Trump has made another appointment, there’s controversy about chlorine-washed chicken and Juliana has a new friend in James Hansen. If you’re going away this summer, NOW is the time to travel responsibly and NOW is also a website to tell you how to do it. I close with my holiday booklist and an introduction to sustainable Shakespeare.


Greenland Ice Cap
But first, a special welcome to my one listener in Iceland. Is it getting warmer up there?

The reason I ask is that the BBC reports that Scientists are "very worried" that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could accelerate and raise sea levels more than expected. When the ice melts in the summer it exposes the surface of the sea. While ice and snow reflect sunlight and heat back into space, the water is darker and absorbs heat which contributes to global warming. Now algae are beginning to grow on the ice, making it darker and less reflective. 

Currently the Greenland ice sheet, which is on land and not floating in the ocean like the north polar ice-cap, is adding up to 1mm a year to the rise in the global average level of the oceans. If it all melted the average sea level would rise around the world by about seven metres, more than 20ft. Even a millimetre, when spread across the vast surface of the oceans represents millions of tonnes of additional water which could be caught up in a storm surge or tidal wave. Current research has direct relevance to major coastal cities as far apart as Miami, London and Shanghai and low-lying areas in Bangladesh and parts of Britain. In fact the majority of major cities in the world are close to oceans or estuaries.


Home Sweet Home
Co-housing can make you happy and live longer. 
That’s the theme of a TED Talk by Grace Kim. Certainly the people I met at the LILAC co-housing project back in March seemed very happy. There are many successful co-housing projects across the UK and across the world. You can find out more in the 10th March Sustainable Futures Report and Grace Kim’s TED Talk is at ted.com/talks. The complete link is below.



Travelling in Hope
HS2
In the last few days the government has made several important announcements about transport. The first was the award of contracts for HS2, the high speed rail line from London to the Midlands, and later to Manchester, Leeds and beyond. The confirmed route was announced for Phase 1 as far as the Midlands, but the Phase 2 is subject to change. There is wide opposition to the scheme, and not only from those who complain that the line will blight the countryside and their homes. In a letter to the Guardian Jonathan Tyler points out that the project will starve Network Rail of experienced staff and financial resources. In fact it will starve the whole economy of skills and resources and the latest news that the line is already over budget and will now cost not £30bn but £56bn has led to even louder choruses of protest.

Michael Byng, the rail consultant who created the method used by Network Rail to cost its projects, has calculated that each mile of the initial section from London to Birmingham will cost more than £400m, almost twice the official figure. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the BBC the calculation is “just nonsense”. As journalist Nils Pratley commented, “Let’s hope his department bothers to publishes a transparent reply, including workings.”

Even the Institute for Economic Affairs, a right-leaning think-tank, is sceptical about whether HS2 will have any benefit for the North. It’s also on record as saying, “It is astonishing that the Government has given the green light to HS2, despite the project’s astronomical costs and its so-called benefits being near universally discredited. There is a need for improving transport capacity, but HS2 is a wildly inefficient solution.”

Many people are asking whether HS2 is the best way to spend £56bn of public money.

And from a sustainability point of view it’s calculated that HS2 will make virtually no difference to the nation’s carbon emissions. But that’s without taking into account the carbon footprint of construction.

Rail Electrification
The government also announced that they would cancel rail electrification projects planned for the Midlands and the Northwest and of course the Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - Hull upgrade has been on hold ever since the Great Western electrification ran way over budget - still vastly less than the cost of HS2. This was met with some anger in the North when the government then announced its support for Crossrail 2, an underground line crossing London from northeast to southwest and costing some £30bn. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said, “They’re not governing for the whole country.” 

Transport Secretary Grayling justified abandoning the electrification plans by explaining that new technology could provide trains that could run either on diesel or on electricity, so overhead wires were no longer necessary for the full length of routes. Or trains could run on batteries or hydrogen. As far as I know there are no hydrogen-powered locomotives and battery locomotives have only been used for shunting. Electro-diesel locomotives and multiple units, which can run on electricity or on diesel, have been in use in some areas of the UK for years, but they are an uneasy compromise. Under electric power they have to haul around the weight of a diesel engine and its fuel: running as a diesel they still have the weight of the electric transformer. And surely electrification is part of phasing out diesel to improve our air quality and reduce the nation’s carbon emissions.

No Petrol or Diesel Vehicles
This week, like France a couple of weeks ago, the government has announced that no new petrol or diesel cars may be sold after 2040. It's a bit of an empty gesture because air pollution is a problem now, and one that the government has repeatedly avoided despite being successfully prosecuted in the Supreme Court several times. Norway will ban petrol and diesel cars from 2025. Roger Harrabin, Environmental Correspondent at the BBC pointed out that this ban has actually been UK policy for some years. It seems the only purpose of the announcement was to generate headlines. Which it did.



Energy
The Wind Farm at Sea
This week there’s been lots of news on energy, starting with a floating wind farm which is being installed 15 miles off Peterhead in northern Scotland. These floating turbines can be installed in waters too deep for structures fixed to the seabed. It’s interesting that the project is led by Norway’s Statoil, an oil company which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.

New Policy
The government and Ofgem, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, published “Upgrading our Energy System: Smart Systems and Flexibility” So the government has finally recognised that managing demand is an essential part of managing energy. They talk about a smart grid, about the internet of things and about energy storage. They mention appliances like freezers or washing machines which can be smart enough to turn on or off depending on the demand - and price -for electricity at a given time. They talk about batteries which would allow consumers to store cheap energy and use it or sell it back to the grid at times of high demand. They mention the work of Moixa, intelligent battery suppliers, who have been carrying out trials in homes. Of course you already heard about them in the Sustainable Futures Report of 3rd February when I calculated that a typical unit would pay for itself in 17 years. Of course this all depends on the feed-in tariff and the price of electricity. Other demand management options were discussed by Professor Andy Heyes in the Sustainable Futures Report of 16th June. Remember, you heard all it here first.

The BBC was a bit bemused by the technicalities and reported in its bulletins that we were all going to store electricity in car batteries. That gave me visions of garages full of hissing lead-acid cells, but what the report was actually referring to was batteries in electric cars. If they were connected to the charger they could discharge a small amount back into the grid to help meet peak demand. A small contribution from a few hundred thousand electric cars could make a big difference.

Challenge
The Government has announced an investment of £246m for the Faraday Challenge, which is focusing on the design and manufacture of better batteries for electric vehicles. 

The Legal Perspective
Apart from the technical aspects of smart grids and distributed generation, the legal environment for energy storage, especially large scale storage, is restrictive. A recent article published by lawyers Walker Morris, Battery Storage: Opportunities and Challenges, addresses some of these legal issues.







Recycling Comes Round Again
Last week I reported on a study that showed how recycling had little effect on reducing the world’s carbon emissions. Maybe so, but recycling is still a good thing to do. By recovering materials we avoid using the labour and energy and creating the associated emissions involved in mining or growing new supplies. We prevent used products from littering the earth or polluting watercourses. But for recycling to be effective it needs to be done properly. Most important is to segregate waste streams, because only a small quantity of the wrong material can contaminate a whole batch, meaning it has all to be sent to landfill. This is important at the domestic level, but increasingly important for businesses as landfill taxes rise. Michelle Marks of Coral Mountain explains how much contamination is too much in an article on LinkedIn.



Meanwhile, across the pond…
In Denial
President Trump has nominated a well-known climate change doubter to the top science job at the Department of Agriculture.
Sam Clovis will serve as undersecretary for research, education and economics. Clovis, who does not have a science degree, according to a Washington Post report, takes over a position that it said has generally gone to someone with an advanced degree in science or medicine. He has called himself a skeptic, telling Iowa Public Radio in 2014 that he is “extremely skeptical" of climate change and claimed “a lot of the science is junk science.”
“It’s not proven; I don’t think there’s any substantive information available to me that doesn’t raise as many questions as it does answers,” he said. 

Why did the Chlorinated Chicken cross the pond?
British minister Liam Fox has been in Washington this week talking about post-Brexit trade deals. The issue of chlorine-washed chicken has come up. He says it’s a trivial detail, others say it’s far from trivial and a guide to the problems that new trade deals will bring. The issue is that washing chicken carcases in chlorinated water is common practice in the US but prohibited in the EU. The reason for this is stated that the chlorine wash can be used to cover up poor hygiene practices elsewhere in the supply chain. If chlorine-washed chicken is imported into the UK from the US post Brexit it could undercut British farmers who will continue to operate to European standards so that they can continue to export their chickens to the EU. The principle at stake is that trade with the US - and other countries - could be conditional on our relaxing the quality standards currently specified by the EU. It will cause problems for the producers and is unlikely to benefit the consumer.

Incidentally, new Environment Secretary Michael Gove has said that chlorine-washed chicken will not be allowed into the UK.


Juliana’s New Friend
And the other story from the US is about the continuing Juliana case. You remember, the action against the US government by a group of children claiming their futures have been put at risk by the government continuing to allow the use of fossil fuels. James Hansen, formerly of NASA and one of the world’s most respected climate scientists, has produced a report which will be presented in evidence when the case comes to court in February. In the Earth Systems Dynamics journal he says that future generations will need to remove carbon dioxide from the air and that reducing emissions is not enough to limit global warming. Better agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation and improving soils, would be able to achieve most of the CO2 extraction needed to prevent global-warming's most dangerous consequences. But this will only work if there are immediate and effective measures to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel use.
I’ll be following the case.




Where are you going on holiday?
Before you go you might have a look at itmustbenow.com.
On the website they say, “NOW is a Force for Good with a mission to boldly advance sustainability, social responsibility and principled business practice. Our aim is to achieve a complete paradigm shift within the travel industry.” It looks like a good idea, although so far I’ve not been able to find much more about it. 

If you work in the hospitality industry have you heard of it?



And now, the Book List
Last week I promised to tell you about the books I plan to read in August. 
I also asked for suggestions and patron Manda Scott came back with 'No is not enough' by Naomi Klein. “But only,” she said, “if you’ve already read Klein’s 'This Changes Everything’”. I haven’t. I’ve heard of it. It’s on the list.

No Impact Man - Colin Beavan. I mentioned this last week. It’s about a family living off grid in a New York apartment. There’s also a DVD.

Good Cop Bad War - Neil Woods. Nothing to do with sustainability. This is the account of a retired police officer of his part in the war on drugs. Despite achieving hundreds of convictions he believes he made little difference to the drug trade and that the solution is state control of the drug supply, not prohibition.

Your Life in My Hands - Rachel Clarke. Another first-hand account, this time about the life of a junior hospital doctor.

How to Stop Time - Matt Haig. This one’s fiction. It’s about a man who’s 400 years old but looks 40 and feels 40, and his struggle to convince the world that he really is only 40.

And for something action-packed, fast moving and historically fascinating choose Manda Scott’s own Rome: The Eagle of the Twelfth

More serious? Try
Thank you for arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jay Heinrichs. Arguments which lead to raised voices and personal abuse only serve to drive the parties further apart. If we want to promote sustainability, change minds and ultimately change governments we need more powerful techniques. Read this book and find out how.

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton looks a pretty daunting title. I chose it as the book to take away with me for the weekend for two reasons. One, it’s a lightweight paperback and easy to carry. Two, it would probably send me quickly to sleep. Actually it’s very easy to read, and like Jay Heinrichs' book, has useful insights into how to promote a cause.

I’ll report back on as many of these as I manage to read when the Sustainable Futures Report starts again in September.

Sustainable Shakespeare
But hey - maybe you don't want to sit and read a book. Go and watch a performance by the Handlebards, currently on tour across the UK. They are two troupes of four actors; the boys and the girls, and they will travel 1,500 miles exclusively on their bikes, towing all their luggage, props and scenery in trailers, presenting Shakespeare as they go. They say, “Climate change is real… ..In our fifth year as a bicycle powered environmentally sustainable touring troupe, we're continuing our journey to becoming the world’s front-runners in sustainable theatre.”

This year the girls are performing As You Like It and the boys present A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s certainly a challenge for four actors to play all the parts in a Shakespeare play. That’s why if you sit too near the front you may find yourself in a starring role.

Full tour dates and details at handlebards.com 


And finally…
You probably heard about the Knightscope robot. It’s a sort of electronic bouncer, designed to help maintain security at a shopping mall in the US. Unfortunately its artificial intelligence was not sufficiently intelligent to stop it bouncing down some steps into an ornamental pond where it quietly died. Robots not taking over the world just yet, then. Mind you, if we think computers will take over the world with an army of humanoids we’re probably looking in the wrong direction

And that’s it until September. 
Have a great break if you’re having one and we’ll get together in a few weeks. Meanwhile, if you’ve not already done so, have a look at patreon.com/sfr

I’m Anthony Day, already thinking about the next Sustainable Futures Report.

But I can relax for a while - I’ll go and do my VAT return.






Friday, July 21, 2017

How Can I Help?


Here's the Sustainable Futures Report  for Friday, 21st July. Find the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or at susbiz.biz

First of all, let me welcome my newest Patron. It’s Terrill Flandro. Thanks, Terrill, for showing your support for the Sustainable Futures Report at patreon.com/sfr and becoming a Foundation Supporter. More about Patreon at the end of this report.

Welcome Terrill Flandro.

As usual, links to my sources are on the blog at www.sustainablefutures.report

HOW CAN I HELP?

What can I do about climate change? Does it make any difference if I recycle? How can I affect global challenges when there are multinational corporations which seem to be set in the opposite direction? Can we really do anything about population, pollution and climate change? How can I help?

These are all questions which come up time and again when people realise how large the challenges which face us are. I thought I'd use this report to try and answer some of those questions and I was inspired to do this partly by a quotation repeated by Paul Holbrook at the recent Community Energy England Conference. He said, “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

So let’s look at how we can be not one in a million, but one of a million like-minded people determined to get things done.

Four Key Actions
You may have seen headlines in the press recently about the things you should do to protect the environment and reduce climate change and the things that you can do but will not make much difference. They were based on an article published in Environmental Research Letters entitled:
The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions.

Some of the research that I do for these reports is quite tortuous. It may start out with a Sun headline, (Oh, OK, perhaps The Guardian then), but it can end up almost anywhere. In this case this Environmental Research Letter is based on work by Seth Wynes who is currently at the University of British Columbia. He produced this paper while he was an MSc student studying under Kim Nicholson, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) in Lund, Sweden. That’s why you can find all about this, including video and excellent infographics on her website at kimnicholas.com.

So what does this report tell us we should do? The idea that caught many of the headlines was: “Have fewer children.” Bit late for some of us. And it’s certainly not as simple as that.

Let me quote the full abstract of the article, which I think I’m entitled to do under the Creative Commons licence.

Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less). Though adolescents poised to establish lifelong patterns are an important target group for promoting high-impact actions, we find that ten high school science textbooks from Canada largely fail to mention these actions (they account for 4% of their recommended actions), instead focusing on incremental changes with much smaller potential emissions reductions. Government resources on climate change from the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia also focus recommendations on lower-impact actions. We conclude that there are opportunities to improve existing educational and communication structures to promote the most effective emission-reduction strategies and close this mitigation gap.

So in summary there are four things you should do, in order of impact:

  1. Have fewer children
  2. Get rid of your car
  3. Avoid air travel
  4. Live on a plant-based diet

The report also demonstrates that most public information emphasises actions like changing your lightbulbs, recycling and washing laundry in cold water which are good in themselves but have a marginal effect on carbon reduction.

Smaller Families
According to http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_uk_average.html the average annual carbon footprint (CO2 equivalents) for a UK resident is around 13 tonnes. I couldn’t immediately see how that could lead to a saving of 59 tonnes per year by not having a child. This is based on a 2009 paper by Murtaugh and Schlax published in Global Environmental Change. (I told you this was tortuous.) Their thesis is that you and your partner are each responsible for one half of your child’s lifetime GHG emissions. But wait, that child will on average also have children and you will be responsible for one quarter of each of those children’s lifetime emissions. And one eighth of your great-grandchildren’s emissions, and so on ad infinitum. That’s how they get to 59 tonnes per annum. They postulate that each child adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of the average female (and presumably the average male as well,) which is 5.7 times their lifetime emissions. 

But is this right?
There is some controversy over whether Wynes and Nicholson have interpreted Murtaugh and Schlax correctly. There is a link on my blog to an article headed “No, Having One Child Does Not Add 60 Tons Per Year to Your Carbon Footprint”. I’m going to do some more digging on this and see if I can set up an interview. 

Lose the Car
The next most important way of reducing your carbon footprint that they recommend is by giving up your car. That saves far less than the suggested 60 tonnes from having fewer children, only 2.4 tonnes per annum, but far more than anything else. Driving a hybrid car is better than driving a petrol or diesel car and driving an electric car is even better. But driving no car at all is best, because living car-free reduces the need to build more roads and parking spaces, and supports higher-density urban design, which more efficient cars do not.

Don’t fly
Air travel - a transatlantic round trip costs 1.6 tonnes of CO2e - is a pretty easy saving for many people, especially if they don’t have grandchildren in Australia.

Go Veggie
And then there’s the plant-based diet, which saves 0.8 of a tonne each year. I have to admit I’m not a vegetarian and certainly not a vegan. My problem is that I like meat and I’m not much good at preparing vegetarian food that I find appetising. Something perhaps I should look at again. 

Do have a look at Kim Nicholas’s website for the full report and the other carbon-saving strategies that they examined.





Spread the Word
One of the clearest messages that comes out of all this is that spreading the word and making people aware of the issues is an important action. Lobbying politicians and joining campaign groups helps too. Talk to your employer. A while ago the Sustainable Futures Report covered the Green Supply Chain. Is that relevant to your work? We can live the talk and do all the low and medium impact activities like changing lightbulbs, recycling, washing in cold water, changing to a hybrid and so on. Our lifestyle can be a talking point and conversation starter so we can pass on the wider message.

Action this Day!
Here are some other things you can consider:

Join a local community energy group. 
These non-profit organisations exist all over the world and set up solar farms, wind turbines or small hydro schemes to provide energy for local users. The electricity is typically sold for less than the major energy companies would charge and the revenue is sufficient to repay the cost to the shareholders with interest; usually more than you would get from a high-street savings account. ethex.org.uk  coordinates share issues for community organisations and you can find investment opportunities on their website. If you are considering investing you should take appropriate professional advice and be aware that past performance is no guide to the future as the sun can go in, the wind may drop and rivers dry up.

Support charities such as Solar-Aid.org 

They say:
“598 million people in Africa alone have no access to electricity. Without electricity families have no clean source of light, leaving millions to rely on expensive and dangerous alternatives such as homemade kerosene lamps. These lamps are a poor source of light; they emit toxic black smoke, eat up to 15% of a family’s income and are extremely hazardous.”

Solar-Aid is distributing solar-powered lanterns throughout Africa.

They say:
“With a solar light, everything changes. These little lamps are safe, clean and affordable. They give off hours of light in the evening so families can earn, learn and feel safe after dark. Just one lamp can transform the fortunes of an entire family and is the first step on an energy ladder to full electrification.”

You can find out how to support Solar-Aid on their website. You can also learn more about their progress from the new book of their founder at jeremyleggett.net.

Join a car club. 
Car clubs are not specifically mentioned in the Wynes/Nicholson report, but they will surely help you to make savings, especially as most of them offer hybrids and electric cars. But of course it’s still a car and still needs all the infrastructure from roads to parking spaces. Get a bike? Fine in fine weather. Go by train? How long will it take for HS2 to recoup the carbon emissions created in its construction? In my view it will never do it, and in any case I don’t expect to live long enough to see it open, but that’s another story.

Why Climate Change Matters
Let’s just take a moment to review why climate change is such an important issue. 

Famine
Back to Environmental Research Letters. An article published this month and co-authored by scientists from the UK Met Office, shows how climate change could impact maize production. Maize is a staple food crop across many regions of the world and reduced maize yields could threaten global food security. Nearly 60% of maize is produced in the USA and China, so the scientists looked at the effect and the probability of extreme water stress on the crop in those areas. Using computer simulation they demonstrated that the present day climate is capable of producing unprecedented severe water stress conditions. They warned that adaptation plans and policies, which are typically based solely on observed events from the recent past, may considerably under-estimate the true risk of climate-related maize shocks. 


Financial Pressures
Schroders is a global investment manager with $520bn under management. This week they issued their take on climate change. You can find the video on YouTube. Climate change, they said, will be one of the defining themes of the global economy in the years and decades ahead, through regulation and physical risks. It will determine how fossil fuel reserves are valued, how growth develops in markets and it will affect every organisation and every part of the economy. It will not be easy to achieve the planned 80% emissions cut by 2050. World leaders signed up to a 2℃ global warming limit at the Paris conference, but their commitments won’t achieve that and their policies are weaker still. Changes must be far more radical than seen so far. Schroders will demand greater transparency from companies on how they deal with climate change and will vote against those that in their view are not taking the necessary actions.

Clearly, while there are organisations that are still dilatory, denying and greenwashing there are also major players out there that will call them to account.


Trump Backs Out
You’ll remember that Donald Trump stood firm at the G20 on his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. George Monbiot, author and columnist, tweeted, “If Trump puts tariffs on steel imports #G20 will impose "immediate sanctions". When he tore up US climate commitments, they merely sighed.”

After talks, President Macron of France indicated that he thought he had changed Trump’s mind. Others are sceptical. What Trump actually said was:

“Yeah, I mean something could happen with respect to the Paris Accord, we’ll see what happens. But we will talk about that over the coming period of time. And if it happens that’ll be wonderful. And If it doesn’t, that’ll be OK too. But we’ll see what happens. But we did discuss many things today including the cease fire in Syria, we discussed the Ukraine, we discussed a lot of different topics. We briefly hit on the Paris Accords and we’ll see what happens.”

So let’s see what happens.


And now for some good news.

North Sea Cod is no longer endangered so we can now enjoy our fish and chips with a clear conscience. Look out for The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) "blue tick" label.
This indicates that North Sea cod caught by Scottish and English boats is "sustainable and fully traceable".Go easy on haddock, though. That’s still threatened in many areas. 

Much to the surprise of many, inflation has fallen in the UK. An important factor was a fall in the price of oil. Not good news if it makes people by more oil.

Inequality in the UK has declined. The division between rich and poor is not as wide as it was. There are regional variations, however. For example the average wage in the southeast is 25% higher than in the Midlands. Is that sustainable?

And finally…..

Two stories to close. Last week I reported that the new Tesla battery factory had a significant carbon footprint caused by its employees commuting to work. Forbes magazine considers a bigger picture. They report that The Union of Concerned Scientists found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.

However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says "But electricity is generated from coal!", they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.


Did I mention Patreon?

I follow Climate State on Patreon and they’ve just revealed an article from 1912 in Popular Mechanics which predicted that CO2 emissions from coal burning would warm the planet. There are articles from 100 years ago about extreme weather as well. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as we say in Yorkshire.


And while you’re on Patreon have a look at my page at patreon.com/sfr. Join my patrons - hi there, patrons, thanks for your continued support - and you’ll usually get early access to the Sustainable Futures Report each week. Other benefits are listed on the site.

Thank you for listening. This has been the Sustainable Futures Report and I have been Anthony Day. Well I still am.

Next week will be the last report before my August break. I have no idea what it will be about, so if you have ideas please send them to mail@anthony-day.com. I will tell you about the books I intend to read over the holiday. Again, if you have suggestions please pass them on.


And that’s it. I’m Anthony Day. That was the Sustainable Futures Report. And there’ll be another next week.