[December 2020] - This is How We Save The World

[George Mochrie]

Thanks very much to one of our contributors for our next film: "This is How We Save The World". It's a speech given by Robin McAlpine of Common Weal detailing his plan for a Green New Deal for Scotland.

I found it very detailed and very interesting, particularly to see how such a thing could be applied specifically to our neck of the woods. Often the phrase "Green New Deal" is a soundbite, something said to give a particular impression but is left largely undefined. It's very refreshing to see someone actually exploring the nitty gritty of what would be required to actually implement such a plan. For those who are interested there is much more information in their online library here.

I will point out that while Common Weal is a political organisation, Planet Sutherland as an organisation is not politically partisan. Please don't misinterpret posting this video for discussion as a blanket endorsement (or otherwise) of their wider political agenda.

What do people think about this plan? Is it practical or desirable? Are there any gotchas or anything that has been missed? How do we go about actually making such a plan happen? If this isn't the answer then what is?

[Peter Moffatt]

I heard Robin McAlpine's talk in Inverness last December, I have looked at lots of stuff on the Common Weal website, read the 'Common Home Plan' book, and just listened to the talk again on the video. It seems to me that Common Weal shares many of the aims and concerns of the Transition movement, with which I am involved as a director of Transition Black Isle, and of other like-minded organisations such as Planet Sutherland; and also that the Common Home Plan is the most detailed and well thought out, as well as probably the most ambitious, of the numerous 'Green New Deal' plans currently in circulation.

I admire the plan as a set of visionary, yet detailed and costed, proposals which if implemented, would completely transform the economy and social fabric of (it's implied) an independent Scotland, and make Scotland a world leader in mitigating the effects of climate change and the misuse of resources, as well as vastly enhancing the lives and livelihoods of the Scottish people. My problem is with the fact that nowhere in the talk, the 'Common Home' book or on the website is there any consideration or discussion of the political processes and attitudinal changes which will be required if the plan is ever to become more than a vision. In other words, how can it actually be done?

Some of the technical parts of the plan - building, heating, electricity and transport, will require massive initiative and action at government level comparable to that which drove the hydro development of the 1950s. Proposals relating to agriculture and land use, particularly those for compulsory redistribution of land, will require an almost unimaginable transformation of current attitudes to land ownership and management. But it seems to me that in putting forward these proposals without any serious consideration of the practical means by which they might be implemented, Common Weal is laying itself open to the charge of misrepresenting as a realisable programme what some people will see as no more than a science fiction fantasy.

Perhaps that is putting it too strongly, and perhaps the main problem is that the vast majority of the population won't see or hear about it at all, and wouldn't care much if they did. It is easy for supporters and campaigners in organisations such as Common Weal, Transition or Planet Sutherland to forget what a tiny minority we are and how much of our time we spend preaching to the converted. The depressing thing about direct action by Extinction Rebellion or climate strikes by young people - even if they were able to take place - is the lack of any sign that they will have the intended effect of forcing governments to take climate change seriously. Perhaps we need to consider such unlikely scenarios as the Scottish Greens merging with the SNP and including the Common Home plan in a joint manifesto for the independence referendum.

I don't claim to know the answer, but I feel very strongly that if a programme such as the Common Home plan is to be taken seriously by a largely unconverted public it should include if not a detailed answer to the question 'how can it actually be done?', then at least an awareness that the problem exists.

After hearing Robin McAlpine in Inverness last year, I sent him an email along the lines of what I have written above. In his reply he highlighted his credentials as an 'influencer' in various fields, and said that if you want to bring about change you need to ask "so who can make this happen?" and apply an incentive to action (which can be "anything from a hard kick up the bum to a bit of positive reinforcement" ), and also consider what other conditions need to be put in place, such as "‘grassroots support in the political parties’ or ‘public pressure’." He went on to say that we need to move from arguing about distant targets to talking about what needs to be done NOW, and that to achieve the widespread support required needs the environmental movement to be a much better story-teller. At the moment it doesn’t tell stories, it gives dire warnings, which don’t really work because people need to believe the future is better, not worse. So the plan was written as a happy story about a future people will actually want to live in, which is shown as enhancing and not sacrificing.

To me all these ideas still seem insufficient to bring about the degree of action required in our current political circumstances. In a Scottish context, McAlpine saw Nicola Sturgeon as "fundamentally opposed to land reform (or basically any reform)", and noted that the Scottish Government would do nothing until after the elections next year. With a view to what might happen after that, Common Weal had intended to spend the whole of 2020 running what sounded as if it would be a high pressure commercial-style marketing campaign to sell the Common Home Plan 'brand', but of course Covid-19 pretty much put paid to that. In relation to the elections he said that Common Weal would certainly be targeting the party manifestos, and that he was certainly not content to sit around and watch if there wasn’t a serious electoral opportunity to vote for an agenda like the Common Home Plan - but hastened to add that he would rather get measles than try starting a political party.

All of which leaves us - me at least - no nearer to any clear idea as to how the radically transformational ideas in the Common Home Plan might even begin to be put into effect. The initiative clearly has to come from government, and given that the whole focus of the plan is on an independent Scotland, any progress would seem to depend on electing a radically 'green' government next year - under new leadership? - and then winning an independence referendum we might not even be allowed to hold. In terms of mountains to climb, Everest fades into insignificance by comparison.

[George Mochrie]

To begin with I must say I am impressed with the technical detail of the Common Weal plan for a Green New Deal. They have faced up to many of the problems that are so often avoided, and I agree with most of what Robin McAlpine says. This post is rather long, but really it just scratches the surface of the issues involved.

The talk opens with the phrase “It’s not just carbon”. This is a simple and seemingly obvious statement, but one that is often missed. Yes, carbon pollution and it’s consequences are perhaps the single most pressing challenge we face, but even if it was not an issue we would still be facing an existential environmental crisis. I found it refreshing to hear this articulated, so often the discussion is so concerned with climate that the other problems are sidelined or ignored. I also feel that the carbon focus can obscure the fact that “too much carbon” is not the root cause of our problems. As I have said before, it is a symptom of our species being out of balance with the wider environment, as are all the other environmental challenges we face.

I also found it refreshing to hear the scale of the looming crisis stated plainly. Often people euphemise, dissemble or mollycoddle when talking about the implications of environmental collapse. I disagree that the survival of humankind is assured, I can think of at least three scenarios where it is not. I don’t believe our demise is assured either; “Life will find a way”, and we are life. The assertion that environmental collapse will lead to civilisational, social and population collapse, and that this is real and imminent allows me to take the speaker seriously, these things do seem assured at this point. It seems certain that whatever the future may hold, this world is coming to an end, one way or another.

I partly disagree with the speakers attempt to absolve us of individual guilt relating to our own actions and their environmental cost. Yes, we live in a society that often only provides us with options that make us complicit in ecocide, but society is itself the aggregate of the individuals within it. We all share the responsibility. I believe we must accept and be conscious of our own personal contribution, we must come to terms with our existential guilt if we are to be able to move beyond it. By accepting our inevitable culpability and keeping it in our consciousness we can learn to live in a more environmentally mindful way. Guilt exists for a reason, it tells us that we are doing something wrong. I believe we should listen to our guilt, cherish and nurture it. We can allow it to do what it is trying to do, guide us to living a better life, to being better people. Of course there will always have to be compromises, but a mindset which for instance allows one to fly off to a holiday in the sun once a year because “society allows it” is not morally acceptable to me.

It’s easy to scapegoat others: government ministers, corporate executives, “the elite”. This is not a solution for anything other than making us feel better about ourselves. By absolving ourselves we also surrender our power, our agency. We are encouraged to do this from childhood, to abdicate our own personal sovereignty, to invest our agency in people further up the hierarchical structure of our society, to ask permission or indulgence. These “higher ups” have shown themselves unwilling and/or unable to deal with the existential threat we face, it’s high time we stopped deferring to them. It’s up to us, all of us, as sovereign human beings. We do not answer to those who claim illegitimate (though actual) power over us, we answer to our progeny.

I am wary of the financial accounting given, though I think I understand it. The political left is often accused by their adversaries on the right of being financially incompetent. By giving well researched numbers for this plan Common Weal is preemptively rebutting such attacks. The fact is that money isn’t real. A real thing is something that remains even when nobody believes in it. Often the illusion of money is used as an instrument to control the behaviour of groups and modify the behaviour of individuals. At best it is an abstraction that helps us manage an economy that would be so complex as to be unmanageable without it. Trying to solve a concrete problem by manipulating an abstraction is doomed to failure. Trying to solve the environmental crisis by placing it within a financial context is like trying to fit an incomprehensibly large box inside a much smaller conceptually manageable box. We need to start accounting in real terms, using units of energy, entropy, biodiversity, man-hours. Linking the value of our currency to a unit of energy, or perhaps to an estimate of environmental impact, rather than to perceived future productivity would be a useful interim first step. Ultimately we need to abandon our anthropocentric hubris, to accept that we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, that we are just specks of dust in the universe. In Christian terms we must re-learn how to be godfearing.

I appreciate the elements of positivity given, but I am somewhat dismayed by the casual acceptance of industrialism as an inevitability, though this is understandable as Common Weal seems broadly (neo)Marxist and Marxism is a reaction (or response) to industrial capitalism that generally aims to maintain the industrial part. Yes, in many ways transforming our society into one that is sustainable will bring many benefits in terms of health, sanity and well-being. Many believe that capitalism is responsible for ecocide, I don’t agree, industrialism is a better candidate. In fact the real root cause seems to me to be much deeper, but this post is already going to be ridiculously long so I better not go off on that tangent. I do believe that we need to move to a largely and truly post-industrial economy, as opposed to one that simply moves the industry to another part of the planet, out of sight and out of mind.

There are elements of industrialism, specific benefits of our industrial economy, that I believe are worth retaining. The internet is probably foremost amongst them, but a very different internet than the one we know today. I am not advocating Luddism, nor out and out anarcho-primitivism. The talk mentions that a sustainable future will likely be much more decentralised than the one we know today, and in such a world the Free exchange of ideas, innovation, technology and understanding will be of paramount importance. Note the capitalisation of “Free”: intellectual property is intellectual theft.

Information technology is immensely beneficial, almost required, for distributed manufacturing, which is also touched on with the mention of 3D printers using wood/resin filaments. A decentralised world with a massively reduced need for energy for transport would require distributed manufacturing, it’s key. The maintenance of an electronics and semiconductor industry also allows things like LED lighting. A world without any electric light is a step too far even for me. Metallurgy is also pretty much essential, and required for the aforementioned electronics capability amongst other things. In a less industrial, less consumerist , less globalised world we would require a fraction of the current usage which could be met by recycling things like cars, ships and aeroplanes.

I agree wholeheartedly with the enthusiasm about wood as both an energy source and a manufacturing and construction raw material. The plastic and fossil fuel industries are strongly linked, with the exception of a small amount of bio-plastics. There are numerous reasons why we need to move away from plastics, and by shifting to wood as the default material of choice we have the added benefit of locking carbon out of the short carbon cycle. My own research indicates that to grow enough firewood to heat my modest three bedroom house would require three quarters of an acre of short rotation coppaced willow. Common Weal’s identification of the value of district heating helps to mitigate this to a large extent, but obviously isn’t applicable to more isolated homes.

On the subject of buildings, there is much here that seems sensible. I hadn’t heard of ply-scrapers, they sound great. I am well aware of the problems of retro-fitting existing housing for sustainability. It seems worthy to note that in a future where we have less consumer junk to accommodate, and where we are likely to spend more of our time outdoors, we probably don’t need houses as large as we have grown accustomed to. I expect many of you are aware of the tiny house movement, this seems like the way forward for many reasons, not least because they make the possibility of heating predominantly with wood much more attainable. Also, I believe straw can make effective insulation with less processing than wood.

I think the idea of using sub-sea arctic waterfalls and currents to generate hydrogen is questionable. The arctic icecap is melting, we’re looking at an ice free arctic summertime in a decade or two. It’ll be gone year round in a few generations. The waterfalls will weaken, the ocean currents will change. While the AMOC may not cease completely I don’t think we can be sure enough to justify the required investment. On the other hand the acidification and ecosystem collapse of the oceans may well solve the barnacle problem. It’s a wonderful idea for a science fiction novel.

Transport. I don’t believe the substitution of electric for fossil fuel vehicles is nearly sufficient, the embodied energy cost and the energy usage is simply not sustainable. A world where people regularly travel using forms of transport more energy intensive than an electric bicycle is not in my view a good idea. Private car ownership is simply not sustainable, regardless of what powers them, even community ownership of cars is something I would like to avoid. My preferred option is the reordering of society in such a way that such modes of transport are not required, which is an easy thing to say but has wide ranging implications. Of course goods will still need to be transported, albeit at lesser volumes than they are currently (decentralisation, distributed manufacturing). If there is scope for Scotland to become a world leader in future technologies perhaps it would be in the manufacture of modern high-tech sailing ships for freight.

Land use/land ownership. I’d good to see this topic included in a sustainability plan, because again it’s key. The vision of a forested Scotland with distributed food production and light industry is very close to my utopia. My own view is that land ownership is impossible. Land doesn’t belong to people, people belong to land. Of course this is very much at odds with current thinking. My preferred pragmatic solution is to make land ownership the exclusive preserve of community co-operatives. In this way land (and by extension housing) could be allocated by the community to it’s members as each community sees fit. While I call this a pragmatic solution it still goes way beyond what Common Weal are proposing, and would outlaw conventional notions of land ownership. It would however have the side-benefit of disincentivising pollution through land use, as those who were most likely to be impacted by such pollution would be the same people who manage the land, or at least be neighbours of those people. It would make us all more cognisant of many of the negative externalities of economic activity.

Agriculture and food. This is a huge topic, and I agree broadly with what is presented. Again I would prefer to see more decentralisation, permaculture at a market garden scale rather than agro-ecology. If every community was capable and responsible for the production of the bulk of it’s own calorific intake so many other problems would be diminished, such as transport, refrigerated supply chains, food additives and packaging.

The points raised concerning a circular economy I agree with wholeheartedly. I would only add (and it was hinted at with the mention of composting) that we need to re-integrate our resource loops with the natural world. A large part of this involves using materials (such as wood) that are products of the biosphere rather than the geosphere, because they can be recycled by the biosphere much more quickly than geology can recycle inorganic materials. The whole climate problem can be seen as an intrusion of the biosphere into the geosphere. Fleshy apes liberating carbon and other substances that have been locked away safely for many aeons, leading to an imbalance.

Robin McAlpin’s final point on advertising was delivered in a lighthearted manor, but it is in fact a very important one. Anything that artificially stimulates unneeded consumption needs to stop immediately. Even without the climate crisis the marketing industry is deeply evil, using advanced psychological manipulation to modify people’s behaviour in ways that don’t benefit them. Advertising is about hacking your brain, using your base instincts against you, and it still works even if you know what it’s doing. We need to end this, but it is unlikely to happen any time soon. These days I don’t really see adverts, I don’t watch TV, use social media and I browse the internet with an ad-blocker. There was a time I made a point of not buying anything I saw an advert for, perhaps that would be a good first step in freeing our society of this menace.

I’d like to reply to Peter Moffatt’s point soon, it’s an important one: how do we get from here to a better there. How do we engage the mainstream, alter the structures that make environmental damage inevitable. I believe there is hope, but we must also recognise that if it was going to happen in the way we would all like, with a prompt enlightenment, then it already would have. As it is I’ve typed quite enough for now

[George Mochrie]

My problem is with the fact that nowhere in the talk, the 'Common Home' book or on the website is there any consideration or discussion of the political processes and attitudinal changes which will be required if the plan is ever to become more than a vision. In other words, how can it actually be done?

The conundrum of why we silly human apes do the silly human things we do fascinates me.

I think you might be interested in this video on exactly this topic.


I used to live on a hill overlooking the Forth Valley. On cold clear winter mornings I would look down to my home town of Falkirk and see a brown haze, pollution from the many thousands of vehicles on the roads and from the various local industries. If you were down in the town you weren't aware of this toxic soup, you can't see it from the inside, you can remain unperturbed by it. In a similar way I think one must be a little weird to have the degree of objectivity (or non-conformity) that allows one to break from the crowd, to be a heretic, to speak out against conventional wisdom. Perhaps there has to be some conceptual distance between a person and the society in which thy live in order for a critique of that society to develop. Perhaps this is why, even when the facts become pretty evident, it is predominantly those at the edge of the independent-though bell-curve who are concerned with the environmental crisis.

I think we have to understand that human beings are social animals, and that this often trumps our capacity for independent rational thought, obscures our view of issues larger than our own lives. This is not a deceleration of superiority or an attempt to insult those who don't hold the same view, it's simply an observation. Many people who are much smarter and better educated than I am hold views that seem crazy to me, because they have not questioned the same assumptions I have, these seemingly crazy ideas are the cultural defaults. Their intellect has been off doing other things, like being successful, achieving social status as a means of attracting a high status mate, a common behaviour pattern among higher social animals.

Most people who drive cars or use computers don't have an appreciation of the technical workings of those machines, and under normal circumstances there is no reason why they should have. If your car breaks down you call a professional who does understand the technical details, and they fix the problem. In the same way most people who live in society don't have an appreciation of the technical workings of society. Most people who live in the environment (ie. all if us) don't have a technical appreciation of climate systems or ecosystems. Most people who have a mind do not have a technical appreciation of psychology, though most have an instinctive (often flawed) understanding of it.

I once asked a wise man why more people don't have a desire to develop a more nuanced and deep understanding of themselves, human nature, and society. He told me: "Most men are men of action."

As I alluded to in my previous post, many have abdicated responsibility for stewarding the world to "leaders". A life without responsibility can feel liberating, free. Responsibility is a burden, it has a cost. If these leaders were truly exceptional people, both in terms of vision and morality, philosopher-kings, then perhaps it might be a good thing that we cede our responsibility to them. It would free us normal people to pursue lives of joy and personal fulfilment, secure in the knowledge that the big issues were being dealt with. Unfortunately this is not generally the case. Why it is that we allow the most power-hungry people into positions of great power, or why we allow the most greedy to control most of our resources, or why we allow opportunistic short-termists to determine the long term future of our children is probably outwith the scope of this post.

The facts about the environmental crisis are out there, even the mainstream media has been telling us about them for decades. For those of us who chose to explore the issues further is a wealth of information available in scientific and other specialist publications. Of course there has been countervailing misinformation spread through the same channels by powerful vested interests, that has a part to play, but those who actually seek the truth of the matter the answers are pretty easy to discern. I don't think a lack of information is the issue here, it's that people don't want to think about it. In order to be in denial one must at some level be aware of the thing one is denying. Our society is in denial.

As has long been known, civilisations are maintained using bread and circuses, ours is no exception. In Scotland in aggregate there hasn't been a shortage of bread for several lifetimes, though it's looking immanent now. Our culture has grown into such a multifaceted web of distortion, misdirection and distraction that it sometimes is impossible to see reality, see any not-circus. It is likely that more headspace is devoted to sport or celebrity gossip than is devoted to the environmental crisis. Even our political discourse has degenerated into a clown-show, a pantomime.

This is not to say that we shouldn't continue to argue in favour of prudence and realism, of course we should. I also don't think we should be too disheartened when the mass doesn't suddenly accept the veracity of our arguments. It's pretty clear now, after decades of trying, that people don't want to leave the circus. Pleasing lies are more seductive than harsh truths. We should continue to make the case for rational action on the environment not because we expect that argument will prevail on it's own merits, but because it is the right thing to do, and because some will be swayed.

But there are other things we can do...

It's looking increasingly like we are entering (or have entered) a collapse phase. When there is no longer an abundance of bread another powerful animal instinct will kick-in, the drive for self preservation. I believe it is only at this point that a significant proportion of people will suddenly "get real", become very interested in sustainability because they require sustenance. If those of us who are consumed by the knowledge of this looming crisis can prepare the ground, establish the templates, gather the skills, formulate the methodologies and build some kind of alternative nascent infrastructure then perhaps we can provide a means by which life and humanity can be maintained when the circus burns. I expect this to be a turbulent time, as I've said before: "this world is coming to an end". Perhaps our role is as pioneers, midwives of the next world, ready to birth it when the time comes.

So instead of proselytising perhaps we should garden and save seeds. Instead of demonstrating perhaps we should foster community cohesion. Instead of learning how to paint placards perhaps we should learn how to build rocket mass heaters. Instead of writing to MPs perhaps we should write instruction manuals. When the current prevailing paradigm can no longer be sustained perhaps we can provide an alternative for those who come looking for it.

Is that all too grandiose, or too pessimistic? I don't claim ownership of the truth, I may be wrong, I hope I'm wrong. Either way, this is how I maintain what focus I have on the issues we are discussing here in the face of mainstream bewilderment and apathy.

[Peter Moffatt]

I have seen the video linked to by George in his latest post. If Roger Hallam wasn't such a terrible speaker it might have been a quite interesting talk, but I'm not sure that waiting for a 'prophetic transformation' as a means of bringing about the concerted and mass action required to combat climate change will go far towards getting us from here to there.

[George Mochrie]

I'm not sure that waiting for a 'prophetic transformation' as a means of bringing about the concerted and mass action required to combat climate change will go far towards getting us from here to there.

You may well be right about that, but I found the Hallam video an interesting examination of the problem: how to move the group consciousness. I agree he doesn't really present a solution, though he talks a little about the things he and XR are doing to move in a solution-ish direction. Indeed it seems no one knows the solution, hence your asking the question, if there was an easy answer it would already be common knowledge. I've been thinking about what a solution might be my whole life. It's pretty clear that the things that have been tried over the last half century or so by environmental activists of all hues haven't worked, looking at any graph will tell you that.

I wrote a few paragraphs discussing the nature of the problem, but you know the problem already.

When I ready my own earlier comment back to myself it seems fanatical, extreme and unrealistic even to me, but in fact I was trying to be conservative and understated. The level of consciousness shift required is extreme if we are to combat climate change, it dwarfs the shift from feudalism to capitalism and from capitalism to whatever it is we have now. Commonly held assumptions need to be challenged, such as one I mentioned: the concept that human beings can "own" a bit of land and "own" the living things on that land and the minerals beneath it. This concept is very deeply rooted in our society, Abrahamic tradition clearly states that God gifted nature to humankind (though Scots have only been Christian for ~1500 years). Perhaps a new vital religion preaching a creed of environmentalism is what's needed, one would expect such a religion to have prophets of one form or another.

If we could make living sustainably cool, something that gives social status, something that's likely to get one laid, that might work. At the same time we'd need to make owning a big car or jetting off to the med or replacing your sofa/tech-bling/wardrobe every year be socially unacceptable rather than something to be enjoyed, admired desired and envied. The most powerful tool for manipulating people in such a way is advertising (and perhaps soap operas and other mass media), but even if we were prepared to use that tool we wouldn't be in a position to monopolize it's use. Volkswagen or British Airways or Apple could out-spend any advertising budget we could muster. The levers of power are controlled by those who benefit from the current economic and political paradigm and we can see they don't want meaningful change of that sort.

With a brutal philosophical detachment I must confess that as a species we don't currently seem capable of transcending our natural instincts in order to prevent or even mitigate catastrophe. Perhaps we are no more in charge of our own fate than any other creature in overshoot, though a few of us are particularly conscious of it. Even if we had the collective will it may already be too late. I very much hope I'm wrong about that, and just because the "right thing" seems impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't try very hard to do it.

The best solutions I've seen so far are the Transition Movement (which you know more about than I do I'm sure) and XR. In a way they are opposite poles. XR proselytises and tries to sway the established order, Transition (as I understand it) is more focussed on building alternatives irrespective (but not in overt opposition to) the established order.

[betty wright]

Hi
I'm rather late to this discussion.
I liked what was said in the video, so I got a coy of the book 'our common home' (the 80 page one, which doesn't take long to read as there's lots of pictures)
Lots of encouraging ideas. Really important that it starts out by stating unambiguously that it is a structural problem & not one that can be solved by individual action, or groups of individuals. So how can governments & multinational corporations be persuaded to change the system that benefits them so much financially? How many of us need to face up to the statement 'this changes everything' (Naomi Klein), change the way we live, communicate that to governments so they understand they have support to make changes which will change everything?

A few things I didn't agree with or can't see how they could be made to happen
Can you really recycle concrete to make new concrete? I thought there was too much chemistry involved.
Using timber to replace concrete - what glues would be used to make the laminates?
District heating schemes - a huge civil engineering task to install as an add on. I understand that in Iceland it is widely used to good effect, but has been built in to their towns from the start. Although this would use proven technology, the orgenisation involved to do even a small town is very much unproven - would be good to see a pilot. Maybe we could start with Tain?
The suggestion that Scotland could be a driver of hydrogen economy globally is a bit of a reach - until the district heating schemes & home improvements are well under way, increased clean electricity will be required for heating.
I don't think it's a great idea to consider Scotland in isolation & state that we as a nation already produce all the clean electricity we need - Think Global Act Local is a very important outlook & I would suggest that we at least need to consider the UK as a whole. Or Europe - a DC grid that is fed by solar in North Africa (we would have to develop a non- exploitative way of trading!) balanced by wind turbines elsewhere.

Is anyone familiar with Zero Carbon Britain reports from Centre for Alternative Technology (available to download for free)? I find their scenarios somewhat more realistic & acheivable.

Thanks for flagging this up.
Betty