Climate Change
In preparing Crawley Council’s budget for 2010/11, we engaged in a new and quite sophisticated form of public consultation. This was through using an approach with the rather clumsy acronym of SIMALTO (Simultaneous Multi-Attribute Level Trade-Off). Using this method, consultees could indicate their preferred areas for service growth or reductions, applying a limited range of resources.
The whole process was useful in understanding public priorities and areas that were thought to be less important. It was interesting that there was not much priority support for the Council making a contribution to limiting and mitigating climate change. The survey did not have the means to highlight the reasoning behind this so perhaps a guess is in order.
Perhaps it is believed that as individuals or single organisations, we cannot make much of a difference or that climate change is not a real threat. A variant would be that climate change is not principally driven by human activity.
I have to disagree with all three propositions. We can all make a difference in our consumption of energy and the greenhouse gases that we generate. There are more than six billion of us and our collective actions can make a decisive difference in either a positive or negative direction.
Global temperatures have been rising alongside an increase in the atmospheric concentrations of Carbon Dioxide. It is no coincidence that both trends have run alongside our increasing population, industrialisation and use of energy.
Locally, we really can make a difference with our own contributions. The Council has achieved significant reductions in its use of gas, water and electricity. Business car mileage has been reduced. New housing and enhancements to existing stock make our properties increasingly energy efficient.
We can always do more while taking care about the practicality of some apparently ‘green’ decisions. One important area is with vehicle fleets. Electric power can sound attractive but there are still many of the limitations that existed in the 1970s around range and performance in modern traffic.
Some electric vehicles on our roads are still using lead-acid batteries which are hardly high technology or environmentally friendly. More advanced batteries are in use but sometimes with a relatively short lifespan and limited recycling credentials. Then there are the components used in these vehicles such as rare earth metals with special magnetic properties. Known supplies of these materials are limited and in some cases 90% or more of the sourcing is from China.
We need further technological advance to create sustainable outcomes. I have confidence that we will achieve this but in the meantime, we need to conscious of the limitations of some of the solutions that are on offer.
Bob Lanzer
21st July 2010