Rising Curve Blog

We should all be looking at our lifestyles to see how we might become greener, in terms of protecting the environment and in particular cutting down on harmful gas emissions.  When Lord Stern talks about people cutting out meat to save the planet (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece) this is what he is really getting at – fundamentally looking at every aspect of our lives in a different way.  We need to spot check through the green lens things we have previously taken for granted.

This is daunting, but probably easier to make a start on, and make a significant difference, than we might expect.  Take lawns.  They are almost the mark of civilised British, suburban life.  A neatly manicured lawn says a lot about the inhabitants of the house.  But it takes a lot of work, and energy, to maintain and has no positive environmental benefit. 

Ah, you say, but we are green with our lawn, we put the cuttings into a big green bin and every 2 weeks or so the council come and take it away for . . .  something. 

Well they in part take it away to meet targets for the amount of green collection they do, and for little real environmental benefit.  Then there is the environmental cost of the collections.

Just let your lawn grow, and seed it with wild flowers.  Cut it back about twice a year and place the cuttings on to your own compost heap in the garden.  You’ll have a good supply of compost for the vegetables you have started growing (you have, haven’t you?), wild life will prefer the lawn and flowers helping them to flourish and there will be less consumption of CO2 emitting fuels.  In time you’ll come to prefer the wild to the manicured look, and have more time to enjoy it instead of cutting it.

Making greener choices in your life is easier to start than you might have assumed.  Go green, go wild, let your lawn go.

Posted by Glenn at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 We are in danger of losing the plot and momentum with banking reform in this country.  Populist calls to curb bankers’ bonuses (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3733afa4-c276-11de-be3a-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1) are cheap and fail to grasp the real nature of how we got into the credit crunch and the future challenges we face.  We cannot blame what happened to the economy solely on bankers’ bonuses .  They were part of a complex system and culture – and only a small part. 

Global economic developments – like the trade imbalance between China and other economies, and the greater interconnection of global finance – were overlaid on the ways that we had structured and promoted our national finance system, which in turn were interwoven with the financial culture we developed over the last thirty or so years – expectations of credit and consumption beyond our means, something too many of us were happy to play along with in the bubble.

How then are rhetorical demands to curb City bonuses going to get us out of this?  They aren’t.  They won’t work.  They are cheap headline grabbers.  Which is not to say we should not examine more closely the issue of bonuses, but not in this tin drum banging way.

The Midlands has been bearing the brunt of the recession as its manufacturing industries are once again pounded.  The area needs a reformed banking system which is more connected to and supportive of the manufacturing economy.  We need banks that can take longer-term investment decisions to support manufacturing and the innovation we need for a more economically and environmentally sustainable future. 

Part of the banking system needs to turn away from the seduction of quick profits from financial innovations and look to investments in greener technologies and other innovative sectors.  We need our politicians to play a leading role in drawing together the intellectual understanding of how to do this, such as examining where investment and commercial banking could be separated to manage risks and how the investment side could then be encouraged to support the development of manufacturing.  Wasting their time, the media’s time and our time on cheap grandstanding about banking bonuses is irritating and distracts from these real issues.

 

Posted by Glenn at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)