British Wine, Another Threat From Climate Change

Photo by Ricardo Cárdenas

Monday, September 24, 2007

British Wine, Another Threat From Climate Change

Damage to the planet may already be inevitable. Two billion people could face water shortages, 10 per cent of animal and plant species could become extinct, disease and malnutrition could spread and affect those most vulnerable, and, what’s worst, British wine could flood the world’s markets.

Meanwhile, right-wing fundamentalists are still investing huge amounts of resources in confusing the public and the environmentalist movement doesn’t seem capable of crafting feasible effective proposals to deal with the problem. The latter is directly linked to the movement’s manichean ideology and reductive logic about the supposedly root causes of the problem (e.g., “too much carbon in the atmosphere”).

Shattering the great green myths

From The Times Online

✴Traditional nappies [diapers] are as bad as disposables, a study by the Environment Agency found. While throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of energy, clean water and detergent.
✴Paper bags cause more global warming than plastic. They need much more space to store so require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops.
✴Diesel trains in rural Britain are more polluting than 4x4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander, when Transport Secretary, said: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive”.
✴Burning wood for fuel is better for the environment than recycling it, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered.
✴Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher.
✴Someone who installs a “green” lightbulb undoes a year’s worth of energy-saving by buying two bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain.
✴Trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon, were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas.

Other Myths:

✴Walking is always better than driving. Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
✴All Biofuels pollute less than fossil fuels.Rapeseed biofuel produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and maize have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.