19/03/2008
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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I am confused about eco-issues. Like you, I have a printer and it needs cartridges. Cartridge World, which recycles them established a local outlet and it is an uncommonly pleasant shop. Their product is cheaper than the grossly inflated prices printer manufacturers charge, and there is a bowl of sweeties on the counter. Also, you get the warm feeling that you are doing a little bit to save the planet. A local supermarket undercut the recycled product and I bought from them. I hate to say it, but it was the green thing to do.
The cartridge goes into the basket along with the potatoes and hard liquor. I do not have to drive round to find a parking space. My city was built by the Romans and 1st Century town planning does not sit well with 21st Century traffic. As Shakespeare nearly wrote, 'Parking is such street sorrow.'
The supermarket buys from China so the cartridges come halfway round the world and, like everything which comes from China, and is sold in supermarkets, the packaging is excessive.
That puts Cartridge World back on top except for the fact I have to drive there.
The reason why I am supposed to be eco-bothered is because my government wants me to be, though I have not built golf courses in deserts. Governments are screwing our minds, they are instilling guilt where none needs to exist. Dear Zeus, I am beginning to sound like a Mississippi survivalist.
I am not suggesting a sinister conspiracy. It is the nature of governments to lag behind social reform, or anything that doesn't involve taxation or winning votes. In the UK, every level of government, from parish to parliament, wants to make us eco-aware and feel guilty.
In my town we have been equipped with wheelie bins and the move is designed to make us feel responsible, or guilty. I know that most of the paper I put into the appropriate bin goes to an incinerator. Look around, how many products made from recycled paper do you see? By now, recycled paper should lead the market, but it does not because most of the paper we carefully set aside goes to an incinerator.
The EU has decided that we must use low-energy light bulbs, and the US government has followed suit. The current tungsten bulb, proposed by Joseph Swan in an academic paper two years before Thomas Edison was born, is easy to dispose of while the low-energy bulbs contain mercury. We will have to buy them but nobody has worked out how to dispose of them.
In my bid to save the planet, I am stocking tungsten bulbs.
Now motor racing has to clean up its act. The sport, in all of its expressions, appears to be spendthrift consumer of energy. Of course it is. Motor sport has always been related to conspicuous consumption. It has always been the playground of the wealthy. Even the cheapest grassroots forms of the sport require a level of disposable income not available to most of the world's population. Motor racing is not for the poor, and it never has been.
It can, however, help everyone, unlike football or golf. Every car now made is a lot more efficient than cars were a few years ago. The cheapest import from South Korea is made to a standard which only Rolls-Royce achieved thirty years ago. Engine management systems which began in F1, have permeated down. What Bosch once made for McLaren's exclusive use is now common currency.
The FIA wants to appear to be green, so we have to know about KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) which will be permitted in F1 next year. The theory was known by Newton, the basic technology was developed by NASA for satellites, and some public transport systems have used it for about twenty years. Formula One designers have been prevented from using it. F1 used to be the cutting edge of technology, now it is twenty years behind bus companies.
Since it does not involve the use of WD-40, I may be a little hazy on the subject, but I will try. There is an immense amount of energy produced when a car brakes. This energy can be tapped and stored in a flywheel. Stored energy can be released to supplement the main power source so it can be useful in overtaking, provided that the guy you are trying to overtake doesn't do his thing with his KERS.
I believe that the Toyota Prius uses a regenerative energy system, so it must be very green indeed, except that the Prius is not, there are all those batteries to dispose of. The University of Wales has long taken an interest in the motor industry. A few months ago, it came up with a list of how green individual cars are. Eighty five per cent of a car's carbon footprint occurs before it reaches the showroom. You have to dig out ore-bearing rock before you get your iron, steel or aluminium. The spark plugs have to be made and then transported.
Taking everything into account, the three greenest cars in the world are a Citroen, a Morgan and the Lotus Elise, two sports cars from three. Cameron Diaz, leave your funny old Prius in its garage, we are going to have a hoot in a Lotus, and we are going to be green beyond your wildest dreams. I cannot promise anything else, but you will be more green than Kermit. The problem is, of course, that you cannot convince people. The Lotus must be bad, bad, bad, because it is fun.
We don't have to feel guilt about motor racing. Audi has won Le Mans for the past two years with diesel-engined cars. Caterpillar, maker of those big yellow things, helped out more than a little. Diesels are no longer those ugly oil burners that belch black smoke.
The FIA has joined the campaign, yet we are to have floodlit races. The Singapore GP will consume an estimated 3.1 million watts to accommodate television audiences elsewhere. My understanding is that the cost of the basic kit is around £25 million. There has to be fail-safe systems, very large stand-by generators plus someone called 'Sparks' with a screwdriver and a box of fuses.
Watching floodlit MotoGP from Qatar, something seemed not quite right. There were no shadows. This is not immediately apparent with floodlit NASCAR because the nature of the tracks and the racing itself call for tight camera shots. Motor racing has more or less eliminated landscape, now it has done away with the sun, roll on radio control.
World Champion. Casey Stoner, won the main race in Qatar so he has no personal axe to grind, but he expressed misgivings. The race was run at 23.00 hours, conditions were cool. Places in desert regions have no cloud-base to act like a duvet. Night-time is chilly. The cool air meant that the tyres did not reach optimum temperature. To quote from Autosport, with the punctuation, Casey said, "The problem is that we do this here and in Malaysia so we take out the two hot races of the year and then there are no more physical races left and maybe this takes something out of racing."
Stoner speaks like a real racer, he doesn't want things to be easy.
I would like to say that arranging floodlit races to suit the Northern Hemisphere, irks me. I have never minded that Oz. is not in synch with my clock. It reminds me that I live on a globe. I stayed up to watch the Lewis and Ronzo Show live, but I could have recorded it.
We will have KERS, at long last. We will also have floodlit races, a conspicuous waste of energy at a time when motor racing is trying to appear to be green. F1 designers are stifled by the rules. They could be pushing the envelope, but they are constricted by the need to put on a show. They're allowed to be a pale shade of green.
It wasn't that long ago when teams could choose between engines of twelve, ten and eight cylinders, they could have had 32 cylinders, or one. The twelves gave most power, but used the most fuel, the eights were opposite. It was common knowledge that a V10 was impossible because of inherent problems with balance, but someone forgot to tell Renault.
The choice of engines made a statement about balancing power with economy which we could all understand. I await Mark Blundell telling us about KERS.
As for me, I am in my usual state: utter confusion.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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