Greenhouses

Have you ever wanted to build a greenhouse, to house all your vegetables all year round, but don't know where to begin?

Well Esteban is doing just that. But he does know where to begin.

HERE!

Some heartening yet irrelevant environmental data

To gauge the interest around the world in sustainability, I conducted a potentially trivial experiment using internet search engines, quotation marks, and positive and negative terms. My results were as follows;

Firstly, what are our collective thoughts on what we should do with our planet?

"save the world" - a heartening 6,720,000 hits / 372,000 in the UK
"destroy the world" - a pathetic 850,000 hits / 38,200 in the UK
("save mars" in contrast scores a truly awful 555 / 117)

Good stuff. How are we going to provide power for things such as pointless internet searches?

"nuclear power" - a massive 27,700,000 hits / 1,790,000 in the UK
"renewable energy" - an even massiver 29,700,000 hits / 3,800,000 in the UK (hooray for us!)
"fossil fuels" - an insignificant 2,550 / 74 in the UK

I then realised I'd spelt 'fuels' wrong (along, I suppose, with 2,550 other people - now that is worrying!) Spelt correctly it still only creates 11,700,000 hits / 799,000 in the UK

A bit of a free-for-all really, though renewable still comes out on top... At least it seems we're generally being realistic about things:

"the climate is changing" - 89,900 hits / 14,700 in the UK
"the climate is not changing" - 1,120 hits / 82 in the UK (though it only bothered to show me one solitary hit)

And what should we do with perhaps the worst epidemic to hit modern life?

"recycle plastic cups" - a undoubtedly-growing 1,060 hits / 94 in the UK
"landfill plastic cups" - a barely-worth-mentioning 10 hits / 1 in the UK
"eat plastic cups" - an actually-quite-terrifying 202 hits (I only did it as a joke) / though 0 in the UK (I guess this makes 1)

It's not all good news though, the seemingly improbable "flew to work" generated 444,000 hits, whilst the (in my opinion far more common) "walked to work" generated only 128,000 and "cycled to work" only 21,600.

I have put this down to the likelihood that no-one brags about walking or cycling to work, whereas flying is a somewhat unusual thing to do before the grind of the office, and thus worth writing about.

So, my conclusions.

1. Internet savvy types are generally good, ethically conscious people.
2. Though they are quite lazy when it comes to a combination of transport and work.
3. My results are flawed for a variety of reasons.
4. I have wasted the last 20 minutes.

On the plus side, I haven't influenced the vote in any way, as this article includes one of each of the tested phrases (except for the plastic cups one... I'm beginning to think this is a good thing - the UK needs to at least think about the idea).

Phew!

Cure Cafe

Check out this great new website dedicated to sustainability and sustainable development - www.curecafe.com

Dear Friend

With all the news on TV lately about the hurricanes that America is experiencing, the typhoons in China, flooding in Switzerland and recent mud slides in South America, we shouldn't forget that the UK has its share of devastating weather too. Attached is a photo illustrating the damage caused to my friend's home in The New Forest from the storm that passed through last night. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.