Monday, January 29, 2007

Are we friendly to the environment ?

NO is the short answer. What IS 'being friendly'? Don't answer that.

The world of nature will look after itself, so look out human beings. (GAIA theory, James Lovelock). Nature changes and adapts oh so slowly we may not notice in a lifetime. But then you may realise that it has changed if you look further back. We do not get snow at Christmas now. The Thames never freezes over and the ice caps ARE melting.

Burning wood is friendly. Coal or oil is not. This is because coal and oil took millions of years to produce. During that time it was absorbing CO2 while storing the suns energy. We have been releasing that CO2 and using the energy over a relatively short period of time.

Wood

I understand that our 'pink' diesel is one of the dirtiest fuels. It may be cheap but it is very UN friendly. Perhaps the addition of duty and tax will be a 'blessing in disguise' for the environment. We must be encouraged, not just by cost, but by availability as well, to use friendly fuel. 'Low Sulphur' and 'Bio' comes to mind. I do hope that the boat yards, private suppliers and British Waterways will be helped to make the friendly fuels available to us boaters. There has to be a profit in it.

Diesel

On a separate tack I find it appalling that pumpout cards are not available from the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust because there is no profit in it. The cards are used to activate the pumpout machines. Thankfully we do not have a 'black tank' to empty. We have cassettes which we can empty for free.

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