www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

We were watching the TV the other night, struggling for something interesting and informative to watch, when we just chanced upon back-to-back episodes of Channel 4′s Grand Designs.

Now I forget the first episode that we saw the tail end of but the follow-up was the most excellent episode with the woodsman, Ben Law. Ben was working and living in the woods in Sussex for 10 years where he earned a living from coppicing, making wooden furniture and charcoal. His dream was to hand-build a cruck-framed house in the middle of the woods.

With planning laws being tough on building in woodland, and rightfully so, Ben persuaded the planners of his needs to move out of a rusty caravan and into a more permanent structure. With a budget of £20-25,0000 Ben’s house was designed to be natural, blend into the surrounding woods and to be self-sufficient.

With no services being piped into the site, Ben is totally reliant on the sun and the wind to put power into an array of 2v, 920ah ex-submarine batteries and he collects enough water from rainfall and a spring to provide

“…enough for probably half a village..”

Ben also grows a lot of his own fruit and vegetables to, but how much we don’t know.

That’s enough of our praise for the moment, if you want to see it for yourself go to 4oD and watch the original 2003 Grand Designs series 3 episode 5.

What was particularly nice about the show we watched was that it was actually an edition of Grand Designs Revisited. I’d thought for 8 years that it would be great to visit Prickly Nut Woods in West Sussex some time, and Ben now provides occasional tours of his lovely woodland house. 2011′s dates are all fully-booked but there are slots upon for a visit next year.

Ben has also branched out and written a number of books and is involved in a number of schemes to teach skills and pass on his expert knowledge. For more information have a look at Ben’s personal website.

Wow! What a controversial title for a programme – “What the Green Movement Got Wrong”

The show is on Channel 4 tonight at 9.00pm so it’s probably going to be well worth a watch, especially when the blurb on the info button says:

“A group of environmentalists are challenging the movement they helped to create, advocating radical solutions to climate change, including GM crops and nuclear energy.”

What do you think about that? Watch the programme tonight on Channel 4 at 9.00pm and let us know…

UPDATE

Having watched the 75 minute show it seemed to make the assumption that the “green movement” is an inflexible bunch of hardcore, elitist extremists. Mentions were made that the green movement completely opposes GM foods, that greens completely oppose nuclear power and that environmentalists are generally a bunch of Apple Mac users who are the sort of people who have enough money to only eat expensive organic food. The film-makers painted a picture of environmentalists as narrow-minded and dogmatic.

Two main interviewees of the show were Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand and environmentalist Mark Lynas. The two each put forward their case for changing their minds on environmentally contentious issues such as the generation of nuclear power and the production of genetically modified food.

Nuclear power was touted as mankind’s only hope for an energy future and that the green movement had, by opposing nuclear power generation, unwittingly forced the world into only generating electricity from coal-powered stations. This, the programme said, had the effect of pumping more greenhouse gases and polluting the earth further. So climate change is the fault of the greens.

Mark Lynas seemingly backed-up his pro-nuclear stance by visiting the deserted city near the Chernobyl reactor whilst the show reeled off a slew of supposedly hyped-up figures that painted a horror story of the number of cases of deaths, deformities etc from the nuclear fallout and the contamination of the region. Mark Lynas appeared to be saying that the negatives of nuclear meltdown were nowhere near as bad as painted by the green movement. That only 68 people died as a direct result of the immediate cleanup of the Chernobyl power plant site at the time (1986) was stated as incontrovertible proof that the green movement’s scary “millions” was a fabrication.

As for GM, again the narrative focused on how greens were simply negative in the face of GM crops and that Stewart Brand, driving his 4×4 across America, was living proof that GM was OK because it had been in the mainstream food chain for ten years (burgers, tacos, hotdogs etc) and it “tastes delicious”. The programme also found time to rubbish the precautionary principle.

Another person interviewed was Adam Werbach whom I’d like to have heard a little more from. However, in the Guardian piece Channel 4 accused of misleading contributors to green documentary, he says that he was not properly informed that the programme would be a polemic. Indeed, in another short piece, Mark Sweeney’s apt headline states Channel 4 courts controversy with film highlighting green lobby’s ‘failures’

The 45 minute studio debate that followed the show had Lynas and Brand in the Channel 4 studio with Mark Lynas almost admitting that there was far greater context than the fine beam of views of his portrayed in the film. Representatives of the groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth contributed greatly to balance their unfair portrayal in the previous hour’s programming.

As an example of just how the programme has been praised by those that seem willing to jump on and bash any green agenda just look at this tweet:

Well thanks Channel 4 for exposing the greens two faced campaigning on nuclear, GM and even DDT! #c4green

This just sums up the show’s narrow-minded appeal.

The documentary will certainly court further controversy and I hope there is continued fair debate and time for the record to be set straight. Demonizing the green movement is about as constructive as condemning all business as lacking ethics. This is a sweeping generalisation and is simply untrue.

Some people may not like George Monbiot’s tub-thumping style but he does nail the show’s approach as sailing too close to the corporate wind in his Channel 4′s convenient green fictions write-up.

I’m all for rolling out alternative views so they can be discussed and considered but not when they’re touted as gospel for the flock to follow unswervingly – and that applies to all sides of the debate.

When I switched my Sky box on the other day (at the wall socket, of course) I was greeted with a message screen that I had not seen before.

The vivid green screen that turns to red with the glassy Sky logo and a chameleon perched atop it is accompanied by the narrative:

We can all do our bit to be greener.

By switching your Sky box to standby, together, we can save enough energy to light all the homes in Birmingham for a whole year.

Remember, go red, be greener.

Switching to standby, aye? I thought that standby was the problem because it still uses electricity whereas the really green option is to just switch off at the wall.

All I can find regarding Sky being greener is an article that says a software update last year, rolled out to 9 million customers, could switch off the Sky box during the day, supposedly when not in use. I’ve seen the Sky box tell me it was going to switch off after 2 hours of inactivity and Sky reckon it saves their customers £20 Million a year – that’s about £2 per customer.

Now, if Sky could go just that little bit further and totally switch the whole box off that would be even better

London, 26th January 2009: A 16 foot high sculpture of an iceberg featuring a stranded female polar bear and her baby cub was launched on the River Thames today providing Londoners with a timely reminder of the dangers of global warming.

The sculpture, which was specially commissioned to mark the launch of Eden, a new digital TV channel devoted to natural history, graphically brought to life one of the most iconic images of climate change – the melting ice caps.

A team of 15 artists spent two months constructing the 20ft by 20ft square structure which was launched in Greenwich, South East London at 6:30am, before travelling up the Thames to stop beside Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament for a national photocall. The structure weighing 1.5 tonnes was winched into place in freezing temperatures, before travelling 7.5 miles along the Thames.

The melting of the ice caps will not only affect the polar bears, there will also be serious repercussions for the two billion people who depend on the glacial meltwater that feeds their rivers. The polar bears’ presence in London highlights these issues which will also be addressed in Eden’s Fragile Earth series which will run throughout the week.

Broadcaster and eminent wildlife conservationist, Sir David Attenborough says:

“The melting of the polar bears’ sea ice habitat is one of the most pressing environmental concerns of our time. I commend Eden for highlighting the issue; we need to do what we can to protect the world’s largest land carnivores from extinction.”

Eden’s Channel Head, Adrian Wills, says:

“The Earth is a fragile place and we were keen to launch with a message that would draw attention to the uncertain state of our finely balanced environment. Our aim is to reflect one amazing world, with one amazing channel that can address issues like climate change whilst providing an entertaining, informative experience by airing a range of high-end premieres, landmark natural history programmes and first class wildlife documentaries.”

Now the polar bears’ have finished their journey along the Thames, they will be taking the message about global warming to Hampstead Heath as well as key cities across the UK including Birmingham and Glasgow.

The Thames is familiar with unexpected visitors. In January 2006 a seven-tonne bottle-nosed whale became trapped in shallow water near Battersea Bridge. Crowds gathered as the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) attempted to save its life. But despite the team’s efforts to move it into deeper water, the whale died.

Other mammals which have strayed into The Thames include a family of Harbour Porpoises, which were spotted near Vauxhall Bridge in December 2004. Three years previously, a Bottle- nosed dolphin was discovered swimming past Tower Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge.

Eden’s programming starts at 9am, Monday 26^th January 2009, with Attenborough Explores… Our Fragile World at 10pm. A programme schedule for new digital Natural History channel Eden can be found at: www.exploreeden.co.uk

BBC2 last night broadcast the first episode in the new series of It’s Not Easy Being Green.

I missed the first (and second) series but have been on an economy drive recently, so staying in and watching TV has been the order of the day.

Whilst the programme is a great attempt to promote green lifestyle ideas you have to question the scale of the operations they demonstrate in relevance to your average Joe. (It’s similar to the way furniture companies try and flog you a new corner sofa by showing it in an awesome setting – you get the sofa home and then realise it takes up all of your living room)

Dick Strawbridge, the show’s presenter, uses his home in Cornwall to convert to and demonstrate green lifestyle changes. The difference between my own humble abode, a very average British 3-bed semi, and Dick’s home is that he owns a huge farm with a massive farmhouse & outbuildings.

• His solar panels, to make him totally self-sufficient on electricity, are not cheap. Even with a £2,500 energy-efficiency grant he’s still forking out £12,500. And because Dick owns a farm, the panels are installed on the south-facing roof on one of his numerous outbuildings.
• The composting toilet is great and lucky enough to be in its own decent-sized shed in the back garden, somewhere in the tract of land occupied by Dick’s farm.
• Growing your own veg is a great green idea and even more beneficial if your vegetable plot is far bigger than the average British back garden
• Dick traded his Audi convertible for a Land Rover diesel that he runs on home-produced bio-diesel from chip fat. The lucky blighter has a barn in which he has his own bio-diesel factory
• The eco swimming pool on the show was in the grounds of a rather grand country cottage and cost £100,000.
• The couple featured on the show who were doing up a Victorian house in London had a budget of £100,000 to “green” their property.

So, as you can see, going green or being green seems to be beyond the reach of your average British household. Without a huge acreage of land, a farm with a shed, a barn, at least one building with a south-facing roof and more than £10,000 spare cash to spend, the show is jam-packed with green solutions that the overwhelming majority of us can only dream about. The green lifestyle they preach appears, sadly, beyond our grasp. Only the rich and the landed gentry can afford to go green, according to this show.

But wait, am I being a little bit harsh? Maybe. They did a quick feature on deodorising crystals. We wrote about one brand available, Crystal Spring, a couple of years back. So rejoice, wannabe greens of the UK, for just £5.49 (inc P&P) direct from the Crystal Spring website, you CAN go green. At least in your armpits anyway.

One thing that was free is the WWF’s footprint calculator which they test a celebrity on every week, and this week it was cricketer Phil Tuffnell who got tested with his hunger for 3.97 planets compared to Dick’s 2.4. We’re a 1.35 so even without a composting toilet, PV panels, home-grown veg, bio-diesel car and no wood-burner (yet) we’re doing better than the green man. During the show the amount of activity on the footprint calculator shot up and there were loads of people online which is good to see.

Episode 2 of It’s Not Easy Being Green is on BBC2 next Wednesday, 14^th January, at 8pm or you can catch it on BBC iPlayer for the next 55 days (from today).

Whilst most of the ideas on today’s show were not for the common man (especially not during an economic crisis) you can at least aspire to them, dream about them if you will. But the wealth-gap issue between those who want to/need to & should go green and those that can afford to go all the way inspires us here to do more “going green on a shoestring” stories.

For more down-to-earth tips, check out the WWF footprint calculator, sign up for an account and be sure to act upon all the little eco tips they suggest.

A reminder to you all to watch “How Green is your Street” tonight at 9pm on BBC2. The quick synopsis says:

“The biggest names on Britain’s high streets are spending hundreds of millions of pounds trying to go green. Are they really trying to save the planet? The Money Programme investigates.”

The Money Programme are always pretty objective, so it should be a good’un.