Woolworths makes the switch: inefficient light bulbs out in 2010

According to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science website, there's currently no scientific evidence to link electromagnetic fields and the symptoms attributed to electrosensitivity. Of the 37 studies undertaken on the subject, only seven have shown any measurable effects and there are question marks over those. Compare this to the colossal amount of scientific evidence pointing to the reality of climate change, and I don't think there's any competition.

He also has some interesting things to say about Alasdair Philips and his range of products designed to protect the unwary from rampaging electromagnetic fields. And the mercury question we've already covered here.

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gpuk

Hey Rob, thanks for the reminder. I got one last week too but neglected to mention it on the site. It's been a busy week...

Fiona - sorry also for not replying sooner as well. Re-reading my comment, it does sound somewhat dismissive which I didn't intend. Post in haste, repent at leisure! I'm undecided about the future but I certainly wasn't suggesting we sit around and wait til doomsday, otherwise I wouldn't be working here. It looks like we've divided opinion though with campaigns like the light bulb one: some people are pleased we're working on consumer issues, others think we're faffing around with incidental matters. For the record, the light bulb push is part of an ongoing EU-wide energy efficiency project, but no, it doesn't address the uber-problem of overconsumption.

I hope I wasn't shifting responsibility on this issue - after all, we're all culpable in the current state of things - but you're right, maybe we should be getting stuck into it. However, the chances of us launching an overall anti-consumption drive are slim which is what I was getting at, but what I was remiss in pointing out was that, oddly enough, this aspect is probably going to become increasingly apparent in our established campaign work. I know other people here feel it's a core issue, and presumably a lot of people reading this agree, but it's unlikely to be a campaign issue in its own right.

But here's an open question: if it's all about changing behaviour, what can we do - either as individuals or organisations - to achieve that?

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gpuk

The energy used to manufacture CFLs is more than compensated for by the energy saved during their lifetime. True, many are made in China but the reason their emissions are far greater than ours is that they're manufacturing vast quantities of consumables for export to the UK and other countries. Per head of the population, China's emissions are half that of ours.

That doesn't mean it's fine to transfer all our emissions from manufacturing to other countries and let them deal with the problem, but it does highlight the fact that - as you rightly point out - it's a global issue that needs global solutions as well as local ones.

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gpuk

Janszat - I read through the article you linked to and was disappointed that, despite the author claiming he was all for CFLs, he proceeded to comprehensively trash them. I haven't been able to find any records of mercury poisoning specifically from CFL breakages, but I did come across this succinct scientific explanation of how mercury vapour disperses in an average room, plus a piece on Snopes about the $2,000 clean-up bill story. farnishk - Last night, I met a friend to talk about the Transition Towns project and we got on to discussing the root causes of... well, just about everything. Our solution was to change behaviour, both on an individual and societal level, but unless people are personally impacted by climate change and peak oil (and in a persistent, chronic fashion, not just sporadic flooding), then they're not going to change their habits. We haven't cared enough in the past about people starving in Bangladesh, so why should we care about them drowning? His opinion was that, whatever happens, we're screwed and there's going to be a crisis before things get better. (Sometimes I agree - it depends which side of the bed I get out on.) Maybe that's the only way society can be reformed, an inevitable part of the process - as many have recognised in the past (and Naomi Klein touches on in her new book), change only comes with a crisis. But maybe we'll be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and fundamentally change the way we live without the trauma of war, starvation or whatever form this crisis might take. To answer your point more directly (sorry for the rambling, but it seemed broadly relevant), I don't think Greenpeace can do that alone, and should we, given that we campaign on specific environmental problems? It's probably not our forté and, in the same way that Amnesty tackles human rights issues and we don't (at least not directly), perhaps another organisation or a wider movement needs to take up that challenge. web editor gpuk

I guess we can't help being anthropocentric - it's hard-wired into all of us and even though we are the sole cause of the mess around us, it's impossible to talk about environmental problems and solutions without considering the impact on individuals and communities. We could try taking people out of the equation, but I don't think we'd get very far. Time is short, but we also have to recognise what is achievable with the limited resources we have within the organisation. For instance, the long-term goal in our forests work is zero deforestation, but to get there we have to break that up into manageable goals that move us in that direction. Likewise, in aviation we're challenging areas where the industry is expanding (short haul flights and bigger airports) and moving on from there. Saying no one should fly ever again is unrealistic and won't give us the momentum we need to win debates and our campaigns. Again, we're not going to win a campaign against the use of electricity which is why Bex made that comment. The issues we deal with are usually too complex to paint in black and white terms of good versus bad, so our aim is to change policy and behaviour that reduces our environmental impact to as near as zero as possible. And no, decentralised energy is not sustainable in the terms you're talking about - it requires metals, glass and plastic to build the plants and infrastructure, not to mention transporting fuel - but then by that token neither are bicycles, candles or basic farming tools. Unless we go back to living in caves, we're going to have an impact on the world around us - it's unavoidable. The trick is to manage the resources we use responsibly and value them for their own right, not just their commercial potential. But the issues of consumption and population are being raised elsewhere on the site as well... web editor gpuk