Living more sustainably

Over the last few years, I have been attempting to live more in tune with the planet's needs. I haven't given up meat or fish, but I certainly eat a lot less of both, and I gave up prawns about 15 years ago. I still make use of single-use plastic where I have no other choice, but my razor and toothbrush are now metal and bamboo respectively, and I don't buy any more than I absolutely have to. No more bags of crisps or Snickers bars for me, no more Thai desserts at Eurasie. Talking of which, I take my own crockery and cutlery every time we go so no more one-use plastic plates or plastic bags for me.

For dairy, I have really restricted my cheese intake - I like nothing better than a pizza or a large block of tasty cheese - but now it's a rare occasion where I indulge. The same goes for milk, I rarely drink it having accustomed myself to the slightly different tones and flavours of soy "milk". I recently found I can even make soy yoghurt in precisely the same way I used to make dairy yoghurt. It's not as pretty as dairy yoghurt - it's slightly more grey - but the flavour is excellent.

Finally, we've made a significant change to our holiday this year. Last year, we went to Japan for a couple of fantastic weeks, and it was a brilliant holiday with Finn; this year, we're taking a completely different tack and exploring Scandewegia - by train. It has several benefits - 1. Fona doesn't have to drive anywhere, not even to the train station; 2. It affords us the leisure to really appreciate the world we're passing through, in far more comfort and proximity than on a plane; 3. The carbon benefit is significant. We're planning on making the following journey:

1. Bordeaux - Paris
2. Paris - Karlsruhe
3. Karlsruhe - Hamburg (on a sleeper train)
4. Hamburg - Stockholm via Copenhagen
5. Stockholm - Oslo
6. Oslo - Gothenburg
7. Gothenburg - Malmo
8. Malmo - Hamburg
9. Hamburg - Strasbourg
10. Strasbourg - Bordeaux

For a total of roughly 5,300 KM, or about 3,290 miles.

Flying to Stockholm (STO), then Oslo (OSL) and back to Bordeaux (BOD) might cost us less money (actually, not -  I just did a search on the Bordeaux airport and going to those three destinations was going to cost nearly €10k, particularly if we didn't want to go via Istanbul). The big takeaway though is that flying would have a carbon impact of roughly 1.8 tonnes of carbon. If we were to drive all that way, it would be about a tonne; taking the 57-hour total train ride will be 0.065 tonnes (figures according to https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com).

None of us can make a significant difference in how this planet is feeling, individually. However, if we were all to be a little more conscious of the choices we make, rather than just clicking on a website, or filling our trolley in the supermarket with stuff we'll throw away it will be a better planet to leave our kids.

Bowling for gun deaths

Recently decided to watch Bowling for Columbine again "inspired" by the latest disaster in the US of a three-year old shooting a baby in the head. 



Cory Doctorow also reposted an article from Boing Boing from 2003 wherein Michael Moore tries to defend himself against the gun lobby's attacks on his film - archive.org version

I've just got to the bit in the film, about 50 minutes in, where he describes the gun deaths around the world and wanted to see if things had got better or worse in the 13 years since the film was released. My figures came from Wikipedia, as so many things do, and I cross-matched the numbers from that page with requests to Google saying "France population 2009" and so on.

My figures are not very accurate. Most of the time I've rounded up in the decimal point was more than .6, but I didn't want to make the figures worse than they are; I just wanted a rough idea.

It seems things are getting worse. For each country, I put the deaths reported in Bowling for Columbine, then the total deaths reported on Wikipedia. Those deaths are per 100,000 of the population so I just took the millions value for population, added a zero and multiplied by the deaths reported. Please let me know if my maths is wrong.

Gun deaths

Germany
2001: 381
2010: 1.24 82 = 1,017

France
2001: 255
2009: 3.01 65 = 1,956

Canada
2001: 365
07-11: 2.22 35 = 777

UK
2001: 68
2010: 0.25 63 = 157

Australia
2001: 65
2011 0.86 22 = 189

Japan
2001: 39
2008: 0.06 128 = 77

US
2001: 11,127
2011: 10.3 312 = 32,136

To make it clear:
For France's figures for 2009 you get "2009: 3.01 65 = 1,956"
This means 3.01 deaths by gun fire per 100,000 people. France's population in 2009 was listed as roughly 65 million, so I multiplied 3.01 by 650 (adding the zero to make the 3.01 number pertinent to millions), which gives a depressing 1,956 deaths by gunfire in my extrapolation.

What has depressed me further here is look at the increase in less than 15 years:

Germany 2.67x
France 7.67x (!)
Canada 2.12x
UK 2.3x
Australia 2.9x
Japan 1.97x
US 2.89x

Saving water

My six-year old son told me earnestly yesterday that I should take showers instead of baths, since a bath used twice as much water as a shower. In theory I agree, except that since I have MS my balance is shot and taking a real shower is a somewhat worrying experience, let alone standing in a slippery bathtub with one arm raised like some kind of demented ape. Having said that, for just getting wet for the sake of getting clean I completely agree, however nothing beats the sybaritic experience of just laying in a bath of hot water, reading a good book (Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk). Given our aquatic origins I would think that this is a natural state for us and so far more relaxing than even being supine on the sofa. While a bath takes twice as much water as a shower in my son's example, an hour-long shower would doubtlessly use more water and allow for less reading (I believe showers over a certain length of time are referred to as "waterboarding" in some countries). So while I have doubtless used more water than I should, my general sense of wellbeing has improved in a way incomparable with the amount of water wasted. Now, must turn off more lights to make my carbon footprint smaller again...