Amateur Brain Surgery

It isn’t all eco-doom and gloom. Here’s some good news about the environment…

Although fascinating, The Nurse’s weekly copy of New Scientist magazine rarely brings positive news about humanity’s rapid descent into global warming. But last week’s issue was different. 

It looks as though things might be changing. The Nurse wonders if we might look back at the first ten years of this century - with the benefit of hindsight – and see huge and fundamental social and cultural changes taking place. On a global scale.

Accompanied by an imaginary yet rousing trumpet fanfare, The Nurse is chuffed to report six positive environmental news stories:

• Greensburgh in Kansas, destroyed by a tornado in ’07, has risen from the ashes as an eco-town. Almost every new home is packed with state of the art insulation and the latest energy generating technologies. Next they plan to build ten 1.25 megawat wind turbines, aiming to make the town self-sufficient in energy.    
• Todmorden, a small town in Yorkshire, has turned every spare space into a vegetable garden. Veg grows in the graveyards, school and hospital grounds… and the residents can harvest it for free. Todmorden hopes to be self sufficient in fruit and veg by 2018. 
• Vauban in Germany has banned cars. 70% of the suburbs’s residents recently gave up their cars in favour of trams and bicycles. They have an efficient CarClub to borrow from when they need a car. The remaining 30% have to park their cars on the outskirts and travel in by public transport.
• Costa Rica is well on the way to becoming carbon neutral.  The country already generates about two thirds of its energy from renewable sources. Since 2008 they’ve planted 12 million trees, partly funded by a tax on petrol. The next step? To offset the few carbon emissions they do produce. 
• China is already a world leader in delivering eco-friendly solutions. They’ve created cunning solar ovens t0 reduce wood and charcoal use throughout the developing world. And they’ve exported solar technology to sub-Saharan Africa. Watch this space!
• The Australian town of Bundanoon has banned the sale of bottled water. They conserve 200ml of precious oil for every litre of bottled water not produced. 

A whole load of people, in diverse communities all over the planet, are taking things into their own hands. This lot have got off their arses and actually done something. Rather than dicking about while Rome burns. The Nurse is inspired.

So, to action. This prison’s heating is abysmal. At least once every winter the crappy old Victorian boiler explodes. Last year four of The Nurse’s fellow inmates were boiled – then toasted -  inadvertently contributing four bodies’ worth of emissions to the UK’s carbon burden.  Apart from being utterly lethal  it probably boffs out more CO2 than several million farting sheep.  

The Nurse, unhappily aware that a long and boring winter is looming, always feels better when she has a project to get her teeth into.  This year, it’s veg.

She envisages fresh produce growing in every prison cell. Fruit trees in the yard. Digging up the jail car park, turning it over to spuds. And using the inmates toasted in this winter’s inevitable boiler explosion to fertilise the soil. Waste not, want not.