Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

1. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast The Environmental Impacts of Normality Image: Alice in Wonderland

2. Whose Fault? • Common to think humans are ‘in charge’ • When things go wrong someone is at fault • “They” should “do something about it” • Super hero to fix things up? • Sustainability issues not like this • Focus on us, the society we live in, our expectations • What is the environmental impacts of normal, everyday life? Image: http://phenomenaonbreak.files.wordpress.com

3. Turning on a Light • Canberra’s average domestic energy consumption is about 8660 KwH (up 10% in 5 yrs) • Lighting around 5% of this • ‘Globes’ convert 90% of electricity to heat, 10% to light • c. 1% chemical energy in the coal from which the electricity was generated is converted to light • Across a av. 1000 hour lifespan will produce 107kg GHG • Total cost to you is 4 x more than using low wattage compact ($25 v $100 for 10,000 hrs of light)

4. Shower • Typical shower head may flow up to 30litres/min • 150kg water to remove c.1 gram dirt • If electric storage water over 3.6 tonnes ghg/year – c. 10kg/CO2 per shower

5. Get Dressed • 3 tonnes water for 250 grams cotton lint (v. high agri inputs) • Washed, bleached, dyed (1/3rd wasted) and finished (chlorine, chromium, formaldehyde) • Sewn in China @ 30c/hr • Packaged and shipped back • But each time washed may use 1/10 total manufacturing energy

6. Cup of Coffee • World’s 2nd most (legally) traded commodity • Often poor tenant farmers growing high-input monoculture cash-crop • Estimate farmer receives about $0.02 of the price you pay for a cup of coffee • Ethics: ‘and we eat tortilla with salt? What is this? This is not just.’ (Mexican coffee producer, interviewed by Sasha Courville)

7. Milk in Coffee • Energy cost of transporting milk in refrigerated truck is about 45Mj/km • Typical energy cost of transporting milk would be about 2.2 Mj per litre (depends on total distance and litres per load) • Food Energy of the milk itself is 3.2 Mj • But many of us are worried we take on too much energy in our diets, so want lo-cal • 2Mj Industrial Processing energy to change food energy content from 3.2Mj to 1.2 Mj • 2Mj of fossil fuel energy to burn off 2 Mj food energy • Often we drive to get our food at a cost of 3.5Mj/km, saving us the 0.3Mj/km energy we would burn if we had walked . . .

8. Mobile Phone • 0 – 2 billion at + 20 per sec • 400 components, global network of subcontractors and assembly • 50% China: eg Shenzhen, village to 12m in 25 years, largely off phones • Huge mix of elements: inc. pvc, iron, aluminium, arsenic, gold, cobalt, lithium, chromium, silver • 75g – 30kg of rock and ore • Tantalum: (compact, efficient capacitors, so your phone is small) - 80% reserves in Eastern Congo, so much controlled by warlords • Average lifespan of 2 years • Just the phone itself – infrastructure? www.tech.co.uk

9. Jogging • Large volumes of affordable, high energy dense food • Surrounded by energy intensive devices that reduce our energy expenditure • 6,000 Roman ‘slaves’ to live equivalent lifestyle • More energy in than out • So, either accumulate energy stores (health risk) or go jogging burning c. 1.5Mj/5km to ‘get rid of it’ • Fuel price increase = ‘pay rise for slaves’? http://thomashawk.com

10. Conclusion • These are for us perfectly normal everyday activities • But are irrational from an environment and energy perspective - some are ethically questionable • The society we live in constrains our choices • Other choices need to be made possible and we need to be motivated and enthused to adopt them • Comparisons with other societies can help us reflect on our own and see that we can do things differently • We must change the ecological signature of our society by becoming ecologically literate