And Slaters Go Plop

This week saw the launch of the new Sign On campaign. The essence of it is that world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen later this year and by signing up to Sign On we are letting John Key know that we want New Zealand to agree to set a target 40% reduction of emissions by 2020.

The reasons I support this campaign are threefold:

Firstly, the science behind the need for a 40% reduction is clear and strong; anything less is not going to be enough.

Secondly, I don’t have the willpower myself to achieve a 40% reduction and I believe this is one of the roles governments perform; to constrain some of our harmful and selfish urges and to reward behaviour that is mutually beneficial.

And, finally, I see great technological opportunities for our civilisation should we find the motivation to innovate. I’m confident we’ll come up with energy, transport, agriculture and production technologies far superior to what we have now. We just need the will to do so. As I heard someone say, the bronze age didn’t come about because stones became scarce; bronze was a better technology. I think that there is another age waiting for us beyond the oil-and-deforestation age.

I also like the fact that the campaign is saying nothing about how we ought to go about achieving a 40% reduction. That can wait. First we need the will to make a commitment and then we can act on the best advice from our scientists, politicians and economists to see how we will best achieve this target.

So, if you share my opinions on this, head on over to the Sign Up website and add your name to their list of participants. And perhaps let your local MP know where you stand on the issue too. Hopefully enough people will step forward to let our prime minister know that we taking this seriously.

This video gives a reasonably good summary of the content of Peter Singer’s new book, The life you can save – Acting now to end world poverty.

See the book review below.

I’ve just finished reading Peter Singer’s new book, The life you can save – Acting now to end world poverty. In it he presents his arguments for why we ought to be acting to help those below the poverty line, discusses the obstacles and suggests methods for making sure that the money you give is effective.

Singer is a philosopher and an ethicist and, as such, presents a robust case for the need for charity as well as the wrongness of withholding aid when it is within our means.

He sets the scene with a scenario where you are passing by a pond and notice a toddler drowning in it. Most of us would be prepared to ruin our new shoes and clothing as well as make ourselves late for work in order to save the toddler. This would indicate that we actually value the life of this child over the cost of our clothing and over the interruption to our everyday lives.

But why don’t we act with the same urgency when we know for a fact that for a similar cost and/or inconvenience we would be able to save the life of a real child in, say, Africa?

Here Singer addresses many of the psychological issues that surround immediacy, perceived unfairness when others don’t give, balancing our legitimate selfish urges, being more vocal about our charity to create a better culture of giving and much more.

Having established that if we are able to help and we have no good reasons not to he then goes on to examine how to invest your aid wisely and ensure that your money is being used for what you intended. (I’ve often chosen my charities based largely on how little is wasted on administration – he deals with this and shows that it is more complicated than that).

The last part of the book is dedicated to establishing how much it is reasonable to expect us to give without turning us all off. Singer holds himself to his own standards and admits that even he can’t live up to them (he doesn’t mention it in the book but according to a radio interview I listened to he gives around 30% of his income). Think of it; if you can afford to buy a coffee when you could have had tap water then you have diverted potential aid from those who clearly need it more than you. Instead, he suggests a more realistic scale of percentages which, for most reading this, would be between 1-5% of our incomes before tax.

And all is not lost as he points out: in 1981 there were 1.9 billion people below the poverty line whereas today there are only 1.4 billion. Those numbers may seem close but consider that the fact that the world population has increased in the time and what this amounts to is that we have almost halved the percentage of people living below the poverty line in 30 years. Ending world poverty is achievable.

I thoroughly recommend you read this book.

The Otago Bike Trail takes advantage of a decommissioned rail track that used to run from Middlemarch up through Wedderburn and down into Clyde from 1879 until 1990. The rails and cycle-unfriendly rocks have been removed and it now provides the perfect gradient and stunning scenery for leisurely cycling.

It’s relatively inexpensive, relaxing, safe and the perfect way to see some of the most beautiful countryside New Zealand has to offer.

Sal and I did the trail a couple of weeks ago. Read on if you’d like to know what we thought were the highlights, lowlights and, most importantly, how not to win at curling.

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Nihil est agricultura melius nihil uberius
Nihil dulcius nihil homine libero dignius.

“Nothing is better, more fruitful, more pleasant
and more worthy of a free man, than agriculture”.

- Cicero (106BCE-43BCE)

(Today I completed my new vegetable garden. I’m exhausted but happier and more fulfilled than I’ve been in a long time.)

Less than a week ago, Act leader Rodney Hide sent an “open letter” to John Key outlining his stance on the Emissions Trading Scheme. In it he says:

So I’m not as worried about the future of the planet as I used to be. Even the UN now admits the globe stopped warming in 1998. [emphasis mine]

Take a look at the graph above and see what he’s done here. Technically 1998 was a very warm year and we’ve not had temperatures to match it since. Up until now people who have had an axe to grind have been misleading the public by phrasing this in ways to make it appear as if global warming has miraculously stopped somehow but Hide goes a step further and turns misdirection into an outright lie.

The UN have never, to my knowledge, said that global warming has stopped. The figures, even when taken selectively, don’t lend support to this concept.

Now, I like Hide as a person but we can’t afford to have people in his postition of influence spreading outright lies like this to the general public and for policy to be made based on these lies.

(sources: Open Parachute, Hot Topic, UK Met Office, Scoop)

Yesterday, after eight weeks of training, I ran in the Auckland Half Marathon. When I started I wasn’t able to run for more than 20 minutes without having to stop. Within just six weeks I had already managed to complete a full training run of the 21km required for the half marathon non-stop and without having to be taken away in an ambulance.

I have to say it’s quite liberating getting over that initial hurdle of becoming fit enough to run continuously (within limits!) and was surprised at how little time it took.

The secret to my couch potato success was to invest in good running gear and to follow a training regime (note: this book is by the same author and mine seemed to cater for a more diverse number of styles) specifically designed for someone of my fitness to get up to speed.

The regime essentially consists of running three days a week with fairly easy runs on Tuesday and Thursday followed by a more challenging one on Sunday. It starts you off easy and gradually builds you up in waves in order to give your muscles time to repair in between runs.

So, if you are a bit of a couch potato like me, I fully recommend signing up for an event like this as it gives you the motivation to get off your arse on a regular basis. And get yourself a good training regime as well as some good running gear! It is well worth it.

[edit: also, if you are a chap, I recommend tape on your nipples for runs over one hour.]

These are fairly old but I only just stumbled upon them. Some good insights from David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey and Jane Goodall on the environment and the future of our planet.

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In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.

It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle – my second-favourite Pink Floyd album – which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.

Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.

Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:

Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.

Last month I signed up with New Scientist and ended up automatically sponsoring an orangutan in Borneo. We received the pack with photos of “Roy” (who’s very cute and undoubtedly adorning the fridges of many other people) and I never thought all that much else about it.

For my last post I was scavenging around for photos of apes and came across this and thought it worthy of a post of its own: