[Liverpool] Fwd: FOSDEM X: 6+7 February 2010

[Richard Smedley]

Simon Johnson wrote:
>     Tip - stop f***ing up the planet with CO2 & never
>     fly again. There is *nowhere* in Europe not easily
>     reachable by train.

> We shouldn't have to sacrifice fast travel to reduce CO2 emissions.
>  
> There's no reason whatsoever why planes couldn't run on liquid hydrogen, 
> produced through a combination of renewables and nuclear energy.

No reason? UK has less than 2% renewable energy,
despite 30 years of campaigning for it. Nuclear
power presents pollution, birth defects, cancer
clusters, & astronomical clean-up costs as the
price of low carbon leccy.

If we ever get cold fusion it may be a different story...

> This would give us fast transport in a way that has precisely zero 
> emissions.

There would be massive emissions in just building
the infrastructure for this. A more realistic
approach to future trans-continental travel
would be a mix of sea, & lighter-than-air
(i.e. airships :)

> The trick to being green is /not /to change people's behavior. That's 
> far too hard to do. The trick is to make whatever they're already doing 
> less damaging.

We've changed our behaviour every generation for the
last 2 centuries. Read the Woodlanders to see
how different life was when my grandfather was
young.

I agree ppl don't welcome radical change, but
it's the only sane choice. Not consuming impossible
amounts of finite resources isn't a change for the
worse, it's an opportunity to build a better world :)

As Rupert Read (Green candidate for Norwich North)
said in a letter to the Spectator this week:

"The irony here is that the changes that we need to make to stop runaway 
climate change are in most cases the very changes that we need in order 
to make our world a better place. A huge drop in pollution, a 
relocalisation of our society, less stress, revived community spirit and 
the like. It is extremely unfortunate, to say the least, that in your 
desire not to have to change anything about the way that society 
operates, you are missing the chance to make the very changes that would 
make us as a people happier."

  - Richard