In the run up to Christmas 2009 we had snow and a bit more after. That convinced me that climate change, however caused, could not be relied on to deliver mild winters or warm dry summers. Having experienced the wettest and coldest ‘barbecue summer’ one would not have expected, the wettest November for many a year and now a failed predicted ‘mild winter’, my purchase of snow chains last January now seems a good decision. Unfortunately the hope that my snow chains would act as a talisman to ward off the ‘Spirit of the Heavy Snows’ has not worked, but they got us all home late on the Wednesday before Christmas. On our outing to Hay last Wednesday I regretted not fitting them before the climb home and unlike half a dozen cars travelling later in the afternoon, we made it: just!
This has got be thinking about the way we cope with winter up here. A large number of our neighbours have 4x4 vehicles which are brilliant when the snows come, especially when the grit lorries don’t. Last Wednesday ( January 30th) we had a snow plough come along our lane but we never see a gritter. What’s more, while the snow plough clears the surface, it also blocks up our exit so the snow shovels has to come out. These are plastic and very efficient since the snow flies off, whilst old steel ones get clogged up and get very heavy. Chances are however that the remaining snow will have become compacted and frozen, or worse still, will have become slush and then frozen. Compacted snow is good for snow chains whilst tarmac with patches of ice will eventually damage the chains. The silly thing is that the third of a mile to the bigger road is usually the main problem since it is there that the grit lorry will have passed through.
For ordinary cars the presence of snow on the road up from the valley is proving a major obstacle. Why cars get stuck is probably a combination of factors. My two favourite theories explain some of it. Firstly, since we have had so little snow for the past 20 years some of us are not used to snow driving while the new generations of drivers have never had to cope with it. Keeping in a high a gear (usually second or third) for as long as possible is one of the techniques.
The aim is to keep moving without wheel spin or stalling the engine. Go into a lower gear and you will be very lucky if you retain traction. Last week I both stalled the engine and had wheel spin but somehow my luck held and I got up the final steep pitch by going up a gear. The round of applause from my four passengers was much appreciated as a came to a halt on our entrance slope. I was also pleased by the fact of how few expletives were necessary to achieve the ascent. Fitting the chains when I should have would have made things a lot easier but I hadn’t appreciated how different the snow covering would be after only a 100 foot climb.
My other lucky break was that I was not impeded by other stuck vehicles which could have meant a loss of revs or a tricky avoidance manoeuvre. Of course, twenty years back there weren’t so many cars making commuting journeys so the chances of meeting an obstruction were much lower.
This brings me to my other theory. I think that some modern cars without 4x4 are fair weather friends. Our car gets stuck on heavy dewed grass given half the chance. I always thought that front wheel drive was a good idea because the weight of the engine improved traction. That doesn’t seem to be the case now when aluminium engine blocks are involved. Could it also been that modern tyre widths mean that tyres don’t dig in as much? Whatever the reason our old Morris Minor took us through a blizzard over the Plynlimon section of the A44 back in the late sixties: a foolish enterprise we put down to the inexperience of youth. I doubt whether our present car would have made it to Builth Wells. Also, our old Vauxhall Viva seemed to do very well on snow, especially with 50 k of bagged coal in the boot!
So if climate change is now going to bring more snow in winter we will be perfecting our chain fitting skills and try to improve our judgement as to when to stop and fit them. In the meantime I will be investigating others cars to see whether there are better options when the time comes to change our vehicle. There seems little point however in having four wheel drive for just a few icy days each winter, not to mention the loss of fuel economy and increased road tax and insurance. If, as I suspect, a 4x4 is not a realistic option I will ‘get a grip’ on chain techniques and possibly upgrade to a tougher variety if need be. At between £50 to a £100 its a lot cheaper than a Chelsea tractor.
Dacier
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Monday, 4 January 2010
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Why Quality Meat Producers Should Not Feel Threatened by Meat Free Mondays
Eating The Planet?, is a report produced by a collaboration between Compassion In World Farming, and Friends Of The Earth, and puts forward the view that vegetarianism is not essential for feeding the rapidly expanding world population. By ditching intensive forms of industrial farming there would seem to be a good chance of producing enough food for everyone without destroying the planet. The snag for carnivores is that they should eat less meat. For a refreshing analysis of the issues see respected food writer Joanna Blythman who tells it like it is when it comes to meat and the planet Less meat, more veg
You may have already read the article by Mary Horesh on Meat Free Mondays and the other items on this site on that subject. This is now a growing debate and there is much more to be said and there are some who would prefer to blur the arguments due to vested interests. Some will say that this is all a vegan or vegetarian plot to stop us eating meat, while others will question why they should see their diet as part of the environmental debate. There is a long way to go before these opposing camps are put into the side aisles while the majority of us get some facts and figures. Some of those figures do not make pleasant reading and the statistics for beef production are no exception.
The three issues which make beef an environmental problem are water consumption, the sourcing of animal feed and methane. This means that the piece of beef on your plate is there because of combinations of several inputs which raise questions of sustainability. My personal view is that these issues are worth confronting because I not only want to maintain my dietary choices to include beef but I want to see those who produce this product locally to do so by sustainable methods while keeping our farming economy. Although many will argue that the land taken up for producing beef should be used for producing food for a vegetarian diet, there is considerable doubt as to whether the local climate would allow this.
Herefordshire Beef is a product which should be up there in the marketing bright lights as a sustainable quality product with excellent feed stuff sourcing and high welfare standards. Provenance is therefore all important as is educating the consumer in such matters. If price is the only criteria that the shopper applies then a niche product will never compete against the cheap, poor quality meat products on the market. Consumers have to be confronted with the true environmental and welfare costs such products involve. Alongside this the consumer has to be made aware that we eat too much animal protein in this country and by cutting back on meat generally, better quality meat could be bought for the days when meat is on the menu. A prestige and preferably regional market should be developed in which quality producers make sure it is their product that is purchased for the Sunday roast.
You may have already read the article by Mary Horesh on Meat Free Mondays and the other items on this site on that subject. This is now a growing debate and there is much more to be said and there are some who would prefer to blur the arguments due to vested interests. Some will say that this is all a vegan or vegetarian plot to stop us eating meat, while others will question why they should see their diet as part of the environmental debate. There is a long way to go before these opposing camps are put into the side aisles while the majority of us get some facts and figures. Some of those figures do not make pleasant reading and the statistics for beef production are no exception.
The three issues which make beef an environmental problem are water consumption, the sourcing of animal feed and methane. This means that the piece of beef on your plate is there because of combinations of several inputs which raise questions of sustainability. My personal view is that these issues are worth confronting because I not only want to maintain my dietary choices to include beef but I want to see those who produce this product locally to do so by sustainable methods while keeping our farming economy. Although many will argue that the land taken up for producing beef should be used for producing food for a vegetarian diet, there is considerable doubt as to whether the local climate would allow this.
Herefordshire Beef is a product which should be up there in the marketing bright lights as a sustainable quality product with excellent feed stuff sourcing and high welfare standards. Provenance is therefore all important as is educating the consumer in such matters. If price is the only criteria that the shopper applies then a niche product will never compete against the cheap, poor quality meat products on the market. Consumers have to be confronted with the true environmental and welfare costs such products involve. Alongside this the consumer has to be made aware that we eat too much animal protein in this country and by cutting back on meat generally, better quality meat could be bought for the days when meat is on the menu. A prestige and preferably regional market should be developed in which quality producers make sure it is their product that is purchased for the Sunday roast.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Would Wild Horses make you stop eating meat or is climatic disaster sufficient?
Comments by an omnivore prompted by the speech of Shadow Secretary of State (DEFRA), Mr Nick Herbert, at the Conservative Party’s Annual Conference: Cutting out meat is not green solution: 5/10/2009
I have been unable to find a complete version of the above speech and so there may be some details that would strengthen the argument Mr Herbert has presented but from what I can judge the argument is as follows. Eating less meat is not a green solution to reducing emissions and will not have an effect on climate change. Furthermore, the West should not try to dictate to India and China that they should not increase the amount of meat they eat and that technologies should be developed to reduce emissions from the meat production process. It would seem that Mr Herbert is getting at the campaign for Meat Free Mondays whilst placing some of the blame for the campaign at the feet of vegans and vegetarians.
Although the Meat Free Monday campaign only asks that we cut out meat once a week he is such a committed carnivore that he is quoted as saying that wild horses would not stop him eating meat. He is either missing the point or sees this moderate suggestion to forgo meat on a Monday as the thin edge of the wedge, since the campaign is not about giving up meat completely, however much the vegan and vegetarian community might like to see that happen. His speech challenges a lot of current thinking on food production and climate change and I would advise him to make sure he has all the facts and figures at his finger tips as, never mind the wild horses, there will be many of us wild omnivores, let alone wild vegans and vegetarians, who will be vigorously challenging his viewpoint during the election campaign.
All this got me thinking about dietary diversity and the amount of energy the production of food involves. Having an egg nog made from a fresh egg laid by a free range hen wandering at will in the woods would take little energy apart from that used by your body which had been derived from the previous day’s diet. Eating an egg as part of a mass produced cake delivered to your local baker from a plant somewhere in Europe strikes me as energy greedy. Taking up Mr Herbert’s reference to wild horses also suggested the following analogy. Let us suppose that somewhere beyond the wood there are plains where wild horses roam. This could be a tempting and substantial addition to the food supply, if only one could be caught. Whatever might be involved would certainly take a lot of energy to achieve compared with picking up an egg in the wood. The egg could be stored quite simply for quite a period whereas wild horse meat would have to be preserved unless a lot of meat was thrown away.
In the event of wild horse catching on, especially where population growth meant that more and more people would like some, ‘wild horse’ production might well increase, the grass of the plains could not keep up, and so a new industry would have to be created to produce the feed, preserve and package the meat and then move it to places where no such meat would otherwise be available, thus incurring more energy costs and so on. Welfare considerations for live transport, additives for fast growth and the prevention of disease would all eventually become part of the food chain, as would land clearance to make way for the mass production of the meat.
The analogy comes close to how beef production has grown over the years and where it is going. Instead of developing a new market for horse meat the growth in beef consumption could easily succeed in exacerbating environmental deterioration with increasing climate change impact. Whatever meat production is expanded, the laws of thermo dynamics remain the same as will be the changing patterns of land use which will be required. Can we really afford to expand either an existing industry such as beef anymore than find a new one to develop? It all adds up to the same recipe for disaster. Whatever the meat being mass produced might be it is hard to see how it can be done without affecting the climate and the amount of land available to sustain the world’s increasing population. This is where we are already going with beef production as new markets and products are found for expanding the demand. To claim that technologies should be developed to reduce emissions from the industry is not a solution and is reminiscent of the George Bush fiction that pollution need not be reduced at source, but will be dealt with by technology once it is being created. This simply puts off the evil hour in the short term thinking of politicians. There is not enough time, Mr Shadow Secretary, and it is better to get started on what we can do rather than pin hopes on things we haven’t yet learnt to do.
We must all strive to be fully aware of where our food comes from. Whether the meat is beef or horse, as responsible trustees of this planet for future generations, we should know whether the source is truly sustainable; we should know whether it was harvested to a high welfare standard and whether it was worth all the effort in culinary and climate terms. There would have to be no risk of either wild horse or mad cow disease. We should not eat any meat where vast tracks of forest have been cleared to grow the feedstuffs to sustain an unnatural population and where all kinds of pharmaceutical products have to be manufactures to create fast growth and prevent disease. In any type of diet we should certainly not want to see the product become so popular that the continuously expanding world population wanted more and more of the stuff while it moved onto green field sites for more and more living and manufacturing space: especially at a time when such space was shrinking due to climate change induced desertification and rising sea levels, causing the northern and southern hemispheres to become more and more overcrowded. In the short term the obese proportion of the world population, whether in the West or in India and China can presumably go on munching their way to an early and expensive grave without a word of discouragement from Mr Herbert.
By designating one day a week when other agricultural and horticultural foods can take precedence seems a small step towards making more and more people ask where their food comes from and what the consequences might be. As in most things, a bit of knowledge will encourage a wider world view. Unless we do some clear thinking, ignorance, in the end, will prove to be the ultimate mass killer. I realise that a report of a speech is not the same as being there but in what I have read so far I fear Mr Herbert has much to learn on the long journey ahead of him. When in Brussels, in the interests of dietary diversity, perhaps he should consider both the horse and, if there is one, the vegetarian sections of the menu. I was always told that travel broadens the mind, to which I would add, ‘...and so does thinking about what’s on your plate, how it got there, and what the consequences might be’.
Dacier
See:
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink
and
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/06/global-land-use/
It goes without saying that comments from Mr Herbert or like minded meat eaters are welcome.
I have been unable to find a complete version of the above speech and so there may be some details that would strengthen the argument Mr Herbert has presented but from what I can judge the argument is as follows. Eating less meat is not a green solution to reducing emissions and will not have an effect on climate change. Furthermore, the West should not try to dictate to India and China that they should not increase the amount of meat they eat and that technologies should be developed to reduce emissions from the meat production process. It would seem that Mr Herbert is getting at the campaign for Meat Free Mondays whilst placing some of the blame for the campaign at the feet of vegans and vegetarians.
Although the Meat Free Monday campaign only asks that we cut out meat once a week he is such a committed carnivore that he is quoted as saying that wild horses would not stop him eating meat. He is either missing the point or sees this moderate suggestion to forgo meat on a Monday as the thin edge of the wedge, since the campaign is not about giving up meat completely, however much the vegan and vegetarian community might like to see that happen. His speech challenges a lot of current thinking on food production and climate change and I would advise him to make sure he has all the facts and figures at his finger tips as, never mind the wild horses, there will be many of us wild omnivores, let alone wild vegans and vegetarians, who will be vigorously challenging his viewpoint during the election campaign.
All this got me thinking about dietary diversity and the amount of energy the production of food involves. Having an egg nog made from a fresh egg laid by a free range hen wandering at will in the woods would take little energy apart from that used by your body which had been derived from the previous day’s diet. Eating an egg as part of a mass produced cake delivered to your local baker from a plant somewhere in Europe strikes me as energy greedy. Taking up Mr Herbert’s reference to wild horses also suggested the following analogy. Let us suppose that somewhere beyond the wood there are plains where wild horses roam. This could be a tempting and substantial addition to the food supply, if only one could be caught. Whatever might be involved would certainly take a lot of energy to achieve compared with picking up an egg in the wood. The egg could be stored quite simply for quite a period whereas wild horse meat would have to be preserved unless a lot of meat was thrown away.
In the event of wild horse catching on, especially where population growth meant that more and more people would like some, ‘wild horse’ production might well increase, the grass of the plains could not keep up, and so a new industry would have to be created to produce the feed, preserve and package the meat and then move it to places where no such meat would otherwise be available, thus incurring more energy costs and so on. Welfare considerations for live transport, additives for fast growth and the prevention of disease would all eventually become part of the food chain, as would land clearance to make way for the mass production of the meat.
The analogy comes close to how beef production has grown over the years and where it is going. Instead of developing a new market for horse meat the growth in beef consumption could easily succeed in exacerbating environmental deterioration with increasing climate change impact. Whatever meat production is expanded, the laws of thermo dynamics remain the same as will be the changing patterns of land use which will be required. Can we really afford to expand either an existing industry such as beef anymore than find a new one to develop? It all adds up to the same recipe for disaster. Whatever the meat being mass produced might be it is hard to see how it can be done without affecting the climate and the amount of land available to sustain the world’s increasing population. This is where we are already going with beef production as new markets and products are found for expanding the demand. To claim that technologies should be developed to reduce emissions from the industry is not a solution and is reminiscent of the George Bush fiction that pollution need not be reduced at source, but will be dealt with by technology once it is being created. This simply puts off the evil hour in the short term thinking of politicians. There is not enough time, Mr Shadow Secretary, and it is better to get started on what we can do rather than pin hopes on things we haven’t yet learnt to do.
We must all strive to be fully aware of where our food comes from. Whether the meat is beef or horse, as responsible trustees of this planet for future generations, we should know whether the source is truly sustainable; we should know whether it was harvested to a high welfare standard and whether it was worth all the effort in culinary and climate terms. There would have to be no risk of either wild horse or mad cow disease. We should not eat any meat where vast tracks of forest have been cleared to grow the feedstuffs to sustain an unnatural population and where all kinds of pharmaceutical products have to be manufactures to create fast growth and prevent disease. In any type of diet we should certainly not want to see the product become so popular that the continuously expanding world population wanted more and more of the stuff while it moved onto green field sites for more and more living and manufacturing space: especially at a time when such space was shrinking due to climate change induced desertification and rising sea levels, causing the northern and southern hemispheres to become more and more overcrowded. In the short term the obese proportion of the world population, whether in the West or in India and China can presumably go on munching their way to an early and expensive grave without a word of discouragement from Mr Herbert.
By designating one day a week when other agricultural and horticultural foods can take precedence seems a small step towards making more and more people ask where their food comes from and what the consequences might be. As in most things, a bit of knowledge will encourage a wider world view. Unless we do some clear thinking, ignorance, in the end, will prove to be the ultimate mass killer. I realise that a report of a speech is not the same as being there but in what I have read so far I fear Mr Herbert has much to learn on the long journey ahead of him. When in Brussels, in the interests of dietary diversity, perhaps he should consider both the horse and, if there is one, the vegetarian sections of the menu. I was always told that travel broadens the mind, to which I would add, ‘...and so does thinking about what’s on your plate, how it got there, and what the consequences might be’.
Dacier
See:
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink
and
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/06/global-land-use/
It goes without saying that comments from Mr Herbert or like minded meat eaters are welcome.
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