Discussion: declaration of o-cology

I'm out. There are other areas of life where more substantial savings are possible without sacrificing the activity. Just because orienteering is discretionary doesn't mean it's not important to me. Getting there quickly makes participation more likely.

We need a whole of life cycle analysis first. Given the energy costs in producing food, what is the trade of between competiting and staying home and sleeping in.

...I'm out. There are other areas of life where more substantial savings are possible...

...We need a whole of life cycle analysis first...

Um, guys....
While not particularly noticed in the last RudyThread on air travel and ecological conscience, tonyf posted the link to his webpage, where he has set forth his personal lifestyle, as it has evolved over the last 30+ years. Of particular note are his own personal commitments contained in the black-edged boxes at the bottom of each page...for instance, "Food Choices".

Tonyf is the 2006 North American O Champion in M65+. It seems to me that if he can retain his competitive edge without the use of a personal car, and by limiting his air travel to one round-trip flight per year, then it puts to shame the rest of us, chartering air travel all over the place, just to turn in mediocre results. Certainly tonyf has the respect of the rest of us M65+ guys.

Perhaps we should take Rudy's Pledge, and concentrate more on the total ecology: more training, less travel

From the don't-forget-what-AP-is-about department, one of the things that the most successful euro-elite types emphasize again and again is experience in a wide variety of terrains. This is very important, and I wouldn't want to discourage any aspiring competitors from doing whatever it takes to increase their exposure.

also, the fact that I'm getting bored with these threads might be a sign that this is not the most appropriate or effective forum for an extended debate, regardless of how strong some people's opinions are.

Thanks, Kenny.

hmmm, yeah, we all had a TREMENDOUS amount to say about this topic. It took me many cups of tea to stay with it, but I did.

Anyhoooo-o, Rudy, our family is with you already. We bought a dog to stop us from jetting off to Hawai'i (which I adore and love) two times a year, and instead go to our local (BC, Alberta, WA) O-meets by car, with 2 people & an O-dog in the car. My orienteer is not world-class so we don't need to worry about terrains, etc, it's just good fun for us.

Also, my orienteer is powered by as many vegetarian/vegan recipes as I can massage into being delicious, & our food is bought local/organic thru an organization named SPUD. And so on. Light-bulbs, mass-commuting, bladeebla... we can always improve through. Gotta start somewhere!

I kinda sense other inter-personal dynamics going on here as well, but as a stranger, I can honestly say, Rudy, we took the o-pledge back in December 2006 when we went and got our O-dog Gypsy (heheheh, if you think these threads got long, please feel free to ascend to new levels of repetition & boredom by reading about Gypsy's daily O-adventures on MY log)

the fact that I'm getting bored with these threads

Yeah, I prefer the threads that encourage participation or relate stories of it, not those that make me feel guilty about it.

I'm a good guy. I'm just trying to get thru life in one piece, despite all the curve balls it throws sometimes. Racing is a big part of that. I hope I'm not too judgemental of other peoples' lifestyles. I try not to be. To quote Billy Joel, I found that just surviving was a noble fight.

Thanks Ken.

Wow, I never noticed that song referenced a strange orienteer:

And he sits in his room with a lock on the door
With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor

And

And he's proud of his scars

Yes, it is very apt, except for the "young" part :)

It seems to me that reading the pledge as 'I I will only walk or bicycle to events' is too extreme. The original post talks about something much more achievable - taking the more ecologically sensitive transport when possible. It starts from the premise that you've decided to travel, and then encourages us to think about how we do that sustainably. For example, carpooling to events instead of going solo. It's about traveling responsibly, not about avoiding travel.

Thanks Kenny.

I'd add that, amongst the silver buckshot of solutions, arguably the more effective ones will be large scale policy changes. Sure, altering habits and reducing energy usage will probably play some role, but without serious changes at the national and global level we won't get very far. If you're serious about orienteering, you're going to travel a lot. That doesn't prevent you from trying to move policy changes forward with your wallet and your vote. It may not feel as "productive" since it's not an immediate warm fuzzy, but in the long run it may very well be more important.

I've kept quiet all through this but that makes silence impossible - "silver buckshot of solutions"?!?!? No doubt a common expression in areas where hunting werewolves with shotguns is a traditional pastime. I can't wait for one of the Australians to top that for inventiveness.

Christina is very much onto what I was thinking about when I said there are areas of bigger gain. A concrete example: a few years back I convinced a rather large company to invest in optical storage and do away with printing, distributing (sometimes over large distances), and archiving daily and montly financial reports. I sold them on cost, but truly it was the 35 boxes of paper a day they were consuming that had me thinking there must be a better way.

No doubt a common expression in areas where hunting werewolves with shotguns is a traditional pastime.

We use pitchforks in these parts. And the silver bit is a bit overrated; that comes from discredited lycanthrope mythology. We find more modern materials, such as titanium, work best.

Silver buckshot as opposed to a "silver bullet". There's no silver bullet here, but there are a lot of small solutions already out there that, if all implemented together, add up to an answer. (Was that a stretch?)

And yeah, I could talk about this stuff a lot more but I'd rather not do it on AP.

The old environmentalists' saw...

...Think Globally...Act Locally..!

As much as the declaration of o-cology is based on good intentions, i'm not altogether convinced that it is worthwhile or even feasable. The problem I have with the whole Kyoto accord mentality of "lets reduce our carbon emissions" is that it is a bandaid fix. Even if everybody decided to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% all that would do is slow the environmental/climatic destruction rather than avert it until eventually all hydrocarbons are used up.

What I think we as a society should be doing is along the lines of what tonyf believes, and that is a shift in mentality from "the world is a resource to use up" to "we as a species are only one part of the larger natural world, and should exist in a way that causes no net unnatural changes to the environment

I think the smartest thing that people should be doing is reducing waste wherever possible, but not worrying about the net numbers until the time comes for a larger social and economic/techological change in the way we live (which we can advocate now if we so choose). So I am not going to feel guilty about having to fly to Australia for JWOC or Vancouver for the sprint training camp because I know that I carpool, use public transportation and can cut down on the amount of Chinese plastic I buy. We as a society are in the unique position of being able to forsee and avoid some of the future negative effects to the environment before the environment decides for us (eg. resource depletion/ mass starvation etc.) In the meantime, there are bigger fish to fry, such as air quality issues, habitat loss and water shortages. Not to mention meeting my training hour goals for the week :)

Thanks Kenny .

just to wander off on another tangent, how 'bout that crazy kid Mr. Branson, isn't he just the coolest? Cristina, doncha think that a $25 million prize ALMOST matches any single government's legislation (which I agree, is a critical part of our species' collective moves towards saving ourselves) - see what prizes did for private space flight, what with Burt Rutan's nasty composites and what-have-you.
Anyhoooo-o, happy orienteering to all of you, flying or otherwise, we all are doing our best and thinking about all this jazz a bit more, I'm sure. I wonder whether I could win Mr. Branson's $25 million... maybe FEET could !

Hmm...decades after the government moon program, the X prize motivates some launches to 100mi (or was it km). The relative effect of incentives looks tiny...nice for small incremental improvement, but big development beyond the scale of seems to come from big government programs.

Nevertheless...the Attackpoint Prize for best event/courses/run might be fun. Anyone have $25 million to put up? (Actually, $25 plus cookies might do.)

A friend of mine has a credo - To lilve within limits without limiting life.

I think it's probably OK to fly to an O event if you want to. Just don't fly to the corner store for milk and leave the jet running while you get it. The idea is that we ALL take responsibility - not that a few of us should overcompensate and sacrifice everything so the rest of us can thoughtlessly drive a hummer.

The thread was probably too long, but lots of people read it and had something to say, so it must have had some merit even though it's relationship to 'train, log, motivate' was tenuous at best.

Re: flying to O events. I'm a firm believer in trying to do things that are a) daily or habitual and b) contagious. If you don't fly to a meet, no one sees that you haven't done that. Plus, that's usually not a very common occurence. If you ride your bike to work, you're making a (potentially) significant change to a daily carbon usage, plus other people can see the benefits of doing it... or at least see that you don't have to be a kook to do it.

Of course, you can always do *more*, so be realistic and strive for small, acheivable and sustainable changes.

Ken, thank you! I even measure my weight in Ks!

just read a good article in the christian science monitor that said airplane travel accounts for just 3% of 'gweenhouse gahsses'. Hope that helps everybody breathe a little easier. And lighten up. Especially me.

My life experience has been that the closer to home you look, the more you see, but then I am very short sighted.

I am sorry anybody's patience was tried the extended life of this thread. (it does seem that one doesnt have to read anything one doesnt want to read??)

it is interesting what a diversity of approaches and opinions we have here, am very grateful for Attackpoint and its people. i am not embarrassed to say it is important to my life right now.

I question that CSM article...I'd like to see the calculations behind that claim.

But whatever....no apology is necessary for spurring these discussions on AP. Contrary to others' views, I think AP is exactly the right forum for these discussions.

There are lots of smart, technically savvy people here. So we understand the issues...I've learned a lot from listening to others' views.

And I sense a lot of collective guilt in the O community. Just look at the number of people flying down to Florida next weekend for a couple of hours' exercise, only a few days after the IPCC proclaimed that us Americans (and would-be Americans) were ruining the planet.

Thanks to these threads, I will be just a bit more enlightened but guilty about attending this meet than I would otherwise have been. Whether this enlightenment and guilt motivates us to change remains to be seen; but I think it is a worthwhile first step.

Thanks Rudy.

That's probably about right for airplane travel. On the one hand, it doesn't sound like much, but on the other hand I'm quite sure that emissions from my air travel (not including flying for work!) far exceed my emissions from driving over the course of the year.

Agricultural use in the US contributes around 7% of total emissions. So, I could stop eating to make up for flying so much. ;-)

I try not to look at it like this, because it would make me feel useless, no matter what I did - my individual contributions are negligible. Daily habits and policy are what need change.

My employer is the government's largest purchaser of renewable energy. By buying renewable energy sources, hopefully they're helping to make them more widespread and affordable for everyone (not to mention for themselves as oil prices continue to rise). I like this. I can tell my employer that I like this. I can tell my friends that I like this and that they should tell their employer about it. I can reduce my energy use on the way to work, and encourage others to do it, and encourage my employer to encourage others. And, lastly, I can vote for the people who I think will legislate well, because without that, no matter what I do as an individual, we're probably screwed.

There's nothing wrong with trying to reduce your flying, but I like to think bigger. A bunch of orienteers deciding not to fly to meets just means that a bunch of orienteers got in less cool orienteering, not that they made any kind of dent in public opinion, habits, or policy.

Now you can assuage your guilt over frivolous flying: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17612589/from/RS.3/

"Scandinavian airline group SAS AB introduced a voluntary greenhouse charge on Wednesday for passengers who want to offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated by their flights..."

This is not a new idea. And not much of a solution either. The takeup rate on British Airways' similar scheme that has been running since September 2005 has been minuscule: the equivalent of four Heathrow-JFK roundtrips, or 1600 tonnes of CO2. BBC story, dated March 13. BA flies 50 weekly roundtrips Heathrow-JFK alone.

Ken, you indicated above that you wanted to close down discussion on this thread. If so, I think you either need to lock the thread, or delete it. Otherwise it's hard not to respond.

I agree with feet: The SAS program is just a "feel good" program for us environmentalists, to allow us to salve our consciences.

The money we contribute (about $30 per round-trip to Stockholm from the US) doesn't reduce CO2 at all...it goes to constructing new wind farms in India, New Zealand or Inner Mongolia.

And if you believe some scientists, wind power is an ineffective long-term solution since you must use more energy to build & operate the wind farm than you'll ever get from it.

Apparently someone up there in the SAS boardroom fears that air travel might become less popular because of its increasingly recognized environmental cost...so they've ginned up this scheme.

Ken....thanks for allowing continued discussion; I still think this is one of the most interesting threads on AP.

The suggestion to ban discussion of how we might effectively help the environment is disturbing to me. There are lots of random discussions on AP, and this topic seems more relevant to orienteering than many. I like the openness of AP. Can't we just choose not to read threads we're not interested in?

I have been wondering about the effectiveness of carbon funds and the like, and it's nice to see it discussed.

I second the value of threads such as this. They may not make you feel good, but I enjoy having access to the opinions of a broad spectrum of "generally overeducated" individuals whether or not I share their perspective.

As an example, I likely could guery AP'rs on Mac vs. PC and start a large debate on the topic. But they would likely be quite valid points and would aid in my purchase decision.

Well, its easy to see Ken's position. He has the interests of orienteering at heart, and doesn't want to see young elite orienteers discouraged or distracted by anything that would detract from their pursuit of excellence and 'o' happiness. Why burden their shoulders with the cares of the world?

BUT the orienteering community could show that they are at least aware of the issue, that they are ulitmately so intimately connected to (am I assuming too much - if we destroy or mutate the natural world we will just have urban sprints and redraw all the maps:)?), and incorporate that awareness at the national/international level w/ some kind of policy statement, even if it was just token baby steps, without coming across as hypocritical. (Hasn't this been done in countries like Sweden?) Couldn't they? Well, maybe thats too much ask or not needed or deemed too irrelevant or too political for orienteering.

But still, something to think about. And good training and racing ideas could come out of thinking of ways how to use what we have close at hand better. Thinking seems to me better than not thinking, though not thinking seems to be the world's norm.

And if you believe some scientists, wind power is an ineffective long-term solution since you must use more energy to build & operate the wind farm than you'll ever get from it.

I'm curious here. Which scientists are those? Everything I've read has placed the net energy gain of wind turbines to be quite high - much higher than, say, coal or nuclear. The "energy costs" are recouped in much less than a year. So unless people are building turbines that only last a few months...

Well, windmills have been in use for centuries, millions of them, probably. I wonder if anyone told all those ranchers, farmers, grain grinders, water drainers, etc., that their wind operations were ineffective. And I suppose all those sailing vessels used over thousands of years were just another ineffective use of the wind. So it goes; tra-la-la.

Well yes...if we get out the cross-buck saw, saw up a few hundred planks using our own energy alone, maybe work a horse into the equation... We could build a primitive, inefficient windmill that would lift a few gallons of water from 40' down, to the kitchen sink or the potato patch outside the screen door.

But I thought we were talking about building and maintaining a huge multi-state energy distribution grid...on wind power alone. With all of the transformers, high-tension cables, towers, underground vaults, etc...mining and smelting all of that steel and copper and transporting it from around the world...on wind power alone.

The horrible truth of the matter, as I understand it, is that present oil and gas reserves provide 30-40 times as much energy as it takes to extract and deliver. Those huge pools of concentrated energy have been there for the taking...and we have. To the tune of 80 million barrels/day worldwide.

However no other energy source comes close to that 40:1 ratio, if you calculate the energy requirements of the total system - that is, the energy required to build the entire alternative energy addition plus all supporting infrastructure and systems. Examined this way, most alternative systems, as we currently know the technologies, are still negative.

The reason we see wind and solar farms functioning today is that we've used (still) cheap gas and oil to build them. But they don't have an infinite life expectancy - one day they'll have to be replaced. And once fossil fuels are gone, will we be able to replace them, using their own power alone?

Yes, we could go back to sailing ships and windmills...if the 6+ billion people now inhabiting the Earth were willing to live as they did in the 18th Century. But along the way to this reduced standard of living, there might be a few unpleasant adjustments.

I have great faith that we'll work through this problem. After all, just go outside on a clear night: the amount of energy being burned off up there in the heavens every nanosecond is huge. All we need to do is figure out how to do that controllably, and we'll have energy supplies beyond our wildest dreams.

The horrible truth of the matter, as I understand it, is that present oil and gas reserves provide 30-40 times as much energy as it takes to extract and deliver.

That number gets smaller and smaller as the "easiest" petroleum sources are used up. Some estimates put the ratio at 5:1 today.

Check out this graph of different Energy Return on Investments for various energy sources (original article).



These numbers are based on empirical data, so it's hard to say that wind is really such a bad option. That said, wind power has its caveats and can't be used everywhere - it's not going to single-handedly replace non-renewable sources. But there are plenty of places in the world that would benefit greatly from wind power and I see no reason why it shouldn't be used to the fullest.

Hydrocarbons are great, useful fluids that pay my salary. But I'm a sceptic of oil=civilization, renewable=cave arguments. The industrial revolution started long before oil.

Hydro is cheaper than coal, oil or gas for electricity, and yet requires grids to get its power from central Quebec to NY, or BC to LA. It can't be energy negative and still make money at a cheaper price, so there's one energy positive renewable source.

There's enough commercially viable potential "wind power alone" in the US to produce all the electricity the US currently uses...all the factories, homes, schools, hospitals. But somehow that's not enough energy to build and operate an electric grid, and a million wind turbines?

The energy-negative factoid fails several realism smell tests for me. I'd like to see the numbers and sources before giving it any credence.

(I saw a TV program last week that said that you could predict climate change (perfectly!) based on sun spots. (No, I don't think it was intended to air April 1...but maybe the date is different here in Britain.) The pretty graphs of the 20th century looked neatly correlated...until one tried to verify their numbers. They had airbrushed out the dominant 11 year sunspot cycle, which basically meant that their data didn't fit at all. (Apparently, in fairness, there is some serious, if unproven, theory out there about some effect of some magnitude.) Reader beware.)

wind power has its caveats and can't be used everywhere - it's not going to single-handedly replace non-renewable sources.

I'm not so sure. The most oft-repeated caveat is that it's variable. And yet, as weather maps show, although wind isn't blowing in a given place all the time, it is always blowing somewhere, if you look at a large enough area. A recent study, for instance, showed that Britain was never becalmed in the last 25 years. And already high voltage DC lines carry power thousands of kilometers with low losses (<10% I understand).

But it's a different paradigm than usual power production, which is mostly a coal/gas/oil/nuclear plant providing power to a nearby city. A continental scale grid, capable of taking power from where the wind is to where power is needed, would be a step change...which is usually harder to get support for than incremental change. (Except that sometimes people like a big project, like the moon landing, or the arms race, if the result is sufficiently compelling.)

(I'm not saying that some pumped storage or swing hydroelectric wouldn't be needed, much as is currently done for some nuclear power plants.)