Chernobyl makes me mad

Pete, Nicola and their kids, Lola and Nell, like to travel the world but are trying to do with as low a carbon footprint as possible. This Mrs Angry post is written by Nicola

It's rare that I use TV to travel but I made an exception when a friend (who'd done some of the filming on What the Green Movement Got Wrong) urged me to watch BBC 4, thursday november 4, which is available at catch up for a while here. The programme enraged me, mostly because it dismissed the idea that here in the West we all have to learn to live with a bit less. As the population keeps on growing - and poorer people expect to share more of the good things of this world, such as electricity - this means we need more and cleaner fuels. In the film, using a couple of turncoat Greens it was suggested this could only be nuclear. (btw No, it does not). But Mark Lynas thinks it is, both talking from his office and on a surprising trip to still-uninhabitable-since-April 1986- Chernobyl.

Two summers ago in Yorkshire I met two Belarus girls, young teenagers - so 2nd generation "Chernobyl" children (around 60 per cent of the radiation spread into neighbouring Belarus with long-term devastating effects). The girls were on a month's holiday organised by the Chernobyl Children's charity, see more here.

You'll die anyway
Last night on TV a scientist told us that not many people died after the 4th reactor went into meltdown, but lots died from alcoholism and stress from fear of radiation! How I laughed (in an ironic way). The host mum of these two girls told me how the Belarus children's exposure to Chernobyl gifts them with a lifetime of chronic ill-health. They are unusually tired, many end up with thyroid problems. It may not be a stark death under a blood-stained blanket, but it's a dreadful legacy. And one we could blight many other people with if we turn again to nuclear as a magic bullet for tackling climate change.

Obviously lots of watchers (it's the first thing most Greens have watched since the news of the failure of Copenhagen's climate talks last December...) were unhappy with the show. I like this calm comment from Craig Bennett at Friends of the Earth. That NGO has also published a briefing about what they thought was wrong with the film, see here.

Go girls
I have an extra complaint about the way "What The Greens Got Wrong" is that it reflects its own premise - Greens are too conservative - by almost exclusively relying on white men in suits. Where are the women who'd talk a lot more sense?

I know so many mothers who are doing their absolute best to help their children become the adults who will be coping with climate change. They are teaching their kids to think and learn real life skills, plus rewarding tolerance and co-operativeness, etc. But they seem to be a missing species in decision making. Probably because they're back home putting the kids to bed. If you're interested in more thoughts on this see this piece in the Guardian (from 2009).

Losing our green glow

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

While we’ve been staying in Norfolk we are acutely aware that our impact on the environment is bigger than usual whether we stay in or go out. The house has no cavity wall insulation or loft insulation and though modernish is therefore expensive to heat. We are miles from a shop and though there is an hourly bus service (except on Sunday) it is all too tempting to get in a car and drive to the farm shop, or even one of the many supermarkets that ring King’s Lynn.

Pete has really lost his good green halo this week. He had to fill up the car with his first tank of petrol (he says he did do it once before when he was 17) and ordered and paid for 500 litres of kerosene mix to heat the house. Strangely he seems to like feeling normal, but I'm miserable about how easy it is to slot into eco-inefficient behaviour. Even if I huddle up in a blanket and read the electricity is on a regular tariff too so we’re not supporting renewable alternatives either. Obviously Pete and I could do something about these things if we moved here. Generally people in Norfolk have a high environmental impact – some way above the national average. (For number crunchers in Norfolk a person uses 5.69 global hectares [gha] compared to the UK average of 5.4gha. The target amount for everyone to have a fair share of resources is 1.8gha, a figure a little higher than a person in China currently uses and a great deal less than an American’s giant 9.74 gha).
Given their (possibly) careless use of resources it is likely that people in Norfolk will have to make drastic changes to their lives sooner than if they lived in a hillier part of Britain. If sea levels rise somewhere between the predicted 27 and 80cm over the next 80 years the coastal towns, roads and plenty of houses hugging the shoreline will be doomed.