The power was mine.

I saw an advert recently reminding me not to use a 100 watt bulb when a 60 watt would do. It seems like a pretty simple thing to remember (how flippin' bright do you need your house to be, anyway?), but it sparked off a few neural connections in me that the advert's creators might not have intended. The sentiment, and the wording, was almost exactly the same as an after-credits short that was featured in the show Captain Planet and the Planeteers, that I must have watched at least 15 years ago.

If you aren't acquainted with Captain Planet then you might have missed the Saturday morning cartoon renaissance that occurred during the early to mid 1990s. The titular Captain Planet was an elemental warrior created from the powers of five magical rings, each belonging to a teenager from one of the five continents and each containing the force of one of the... four elements. I can imagine the brainstorming meeting at the show's inception:


Head Executive: So he's a superhero, like Superman, but environmental. So we rope the kids in and the merchandising does itself but we get the moms and schools and all that other crap on board. 

Junior Exec: Does he have different costumes, sir? 

Head Exec: No, this is the brilliant part. To even GET the superhero on screen, you need to combine a bunch of other powers. And the powers belong to teenagers. Use... I don't know, the four elements. And then you give one each to a kid from each continent. Put 'em together, presto chango: Captain Planet!

*Applause* 

Junior Exec: Um... sir? 

Head Exec: What? 

Junior Exec: There are... um, there are five continents, sir. 

Head Exec: Really? 

Junior Exec: America actually counts as two, sir. 

Head Exec: Well, just make up another element then. Something inoffensive, that doesn't change the format of the show. Like 'heart' but not as gay. 

Junior Exec: Well sir, the Chinese actually believe that metal is the fifth element and... 

Head Exec: What are you, a communist? You're fired. Power of heart it is. Aaaand done. *Does 'gun' gesture with hands.*




So the spirit of the earth gives five magic rings to five special young people, calls them Planeteers and sends them off to fight eco-crime or somesuch without clearing it with health and safety or anything. Ma-ti gets stuck with the power of heart but it doesn't really matter because the five Planeteers are, frankly, rubbish. In retrospect it's obvious that they would have to combine their powers to summon Captain Planet in every episode (he does come ahead of them on the billing), but at the time I remember thinking, even as a small child, that the Planeteers were strikingly inept, and that if I had magic jewellery that shot fire out of it I'd do a much better job of combating eco-terrorism.

On screen it looked like the Planateers were held back by their own creative shortcomings (if the girl who controlled water didn't have a fire to put out or sea-creatures to bathe, she just stood around looking sheepish), but in reality they were battling both against the demands of the plot and against an amazingly jarring contradiction in the show's own ethos. Captain Planet's motto was: the power is yours, but the tagline extolled every time he was summoned forth was: by your powers combined. The idea was to point out that people are much more effective when they work as a team: a worthy sentiment but one that left the Planeteers relegated to multi-cultural cheerleaders while Captain Planet did the required eco-asskicking. 

I'd actually forgotten his awesome, grass-green mullet. Go Planet!

The program was dead and buried by the mid 90s and although it is fondly remembered, most people recall it for its catchy theme tune and for the beguiling mix of sentimentality, violence and high camp that typified western children's animation during the period (Captain Planet, while a rugged looking dude, should have either fired his costume designer or is naturally one of the gayest looking beings in the universe).

The show had an effect on me, but perhaps not the right one. I mean, I remember the theme tune word for word, but I still need to be reminded to use a lower wattage in my light-bulbs.

When people talk about the effects of climate change, or indeed, any continued trend that may affect world development, the point is often made that it will be the next generation, or possibly the one after that, to suffer the full effects. We can fuck up the planet with impunity because we'll be dead and buried by then, but our grandkids sure are going to be pissed about it.

In my case, and in the case of people my age, the sad fact is that we've been listening to this argument for most of our lives. I was only 5 when Captain Planet first aired in the UK. It was pointed out at the time, possibly even on the show itself, that it would be the next generation that would need to act. And the next generation... well, I've had a lot of stuff on recently, so I've been a bit busy. What have YOU done to save the environment?

I don't want to sound like a defeatist, but maybe we're naive to think that we can convince each other to stop messing about with the planet, seeing as we're having so much fun doing it. Perhaps we can convince the next generation to do a better job. At least part of Captain Planet and the Planeteers point was demonstrating to children how they might make a difference in the world: that the power might be theirs. Seeing that I am that next generation, maybe the show wasn't as effective as its creators had hoped.

I know it sounds like I'm passing on the responsibility and that's because I quite blatantly am. I just think that it's unlikely that everyone my age is going to have a sudden change of heart about looking after the environment. I'm one of the more ecologically minded people I know and I'm still frankly crap at being green.Maybe we should turn our creative efforts onto a new project: how to get those that follow us to do better than we. Considering the example we currently set, I think we're going to have to make a better show than Captain Planet if we're to convince the next generation to stop passing the buck.

Ahead of the curve /or/ Put the wind up the oil baron

I spent some time recently thinking about renewable energy, partly because it’s research for my novel (which is set on a windfarm) and partly because of this post from Nash. It is of his usual stellar quality, and ruminates on the eventual need of humanity to spread beyond this pleasant orb and seek new places to pillage and despoil beyond Earth’s orbit. It looks quite a long way into the future but it made me think hard about some of the issues that address us as a species right now. Chief among them was the possible energy crisis that awaits when we run out of fossil fuels, and the more I thought about it the more I thought: well, that’s bollocks, innit?

Don’t get me wrong, it seems pretty likely we’re going to run out of fossil fuels sooner rather than later. It’s unlikely we’ll even be able to accurately predict when they will reach critical levels, because so much of their future usage will go into the developing economies of India, China and Russia. No one knows for certain how the economic needs of the world will evolve so we don’t know how much energy we will need, past the broad estimate of a flippin’ shitload.

The obvious alternative, therefore, is renewable energy. In fact, it is the only alternative: we can’t just let everything run dry and grind to a halt.

Before the switchover is complete it seems some people expect an era of crisis: we won’t have enough fossil fuel left to sustain the world’s current energy needs and we won’t have enough renewable energy to cope. My question is this: what about current business practice makes this seem likely?

Some good examples are the American railway companies, many of whom collapsed as America’s primary travel method switched from rail to road. The railway companies were selling a product: travel by rail, and when the need for that product disappeared the company was doomed to follow. Business in general learnt a harsh lesson: that no matter how solid and essential a particular product might seem, it can always, always be replaced, and that it is impossible to foresee what form its replacement might take.

The answer? Sell not a product, but an idea. Don’t sell train tickets, sell travel. A good current example is British Telecom, who have to occasionally put out advertisement reminding you that you even have a landline: the product on which their company is based. That they are still a success, despite the fact that a significant fraction of households don’t even bother to use their landline anymore, is down to idea vs product mechanic. BT don’t sell phones, they sell communication.

It seems unlikely to me, therefore, that when the oil starts to really run out, executives at the major fuel companies are just going to stop bothering to show up for work and start seeking employment at the nearest bio-mass depot. It seems rather more likely that the major fuel companies will already own the renewable energy sources, and will have for some time.It also occurs that the fuel companies are in the best position to estimate how much oil is left in the ground, and plan accordingly.

There is plenty of power in the sky and the sea. Enough, in fact, to supply the world’s energy needs several times over. Getting at it will require quite a lot of money, but here’s the thing: the fuel companies actually have quite a lot of money, and they’re willing to spend a bit to make a lot more.

So basically, energy crisis, schmenergy crisis. At first glance this looks like quite a good thing. We switch environmentally damaging energy sources for nice clean renewable ones, everyone feels a bit better and breathes a bit easier and can still keep their iPod charged. Win win.

Except. Except I’m not a massive fan of most fuel companies. I don’t really like the way they operate, or the product they currently endorse. I’d much rather they started making serious investment in renewable sources now, and left the fossil fuels in the ground. But of course they won’t, because that’s not currently how the money is made.

The problem with necessity being the mother of invention is that you have to stick with the person that does the inventing. If you invent things well in advance you can shop about a bit, and choose someone who’s not a colossal twat for your future inventing needs.

The question I’m posing to you, then, is how can we get ahead of the capitalist curve in this? Is there a way of making companies, and I’m talking the big boys here, not Flancrest Enterprises and Jim and Sally’s Family Wind Turbine Store, stop following the shortest route to profit? They’re going to have to change eventually, but only when there’s no money left in doing things the old way. Can we persuade them to do it a bit sooner?

As far as I can see this is the most important aspect of consumer choice. Getting things cheap is a fair goal, especially for those for whom money is in short supply. It’s perfectly within your rights to seek out the cheapest option for a particular product or service. I can’t help thinking, however, that companies will do much of the work in that regard for you. Companies want your money, and they will do anything they can to get it, and if that means lowering their prices then they will. Unfortunately the chief way they manage this is by lowering their overheads and passing on the savings, and in the standard business model the main way to lower your overheads is to start fucking someone else over even harder than you were before.

The only way to encourage large firms to act in a more ethical manner is through mass movement. This is a sentiment more easily made than acted upon and everybody knows it, but my point is this: eventually some firms are going to have to start acting in a certain manner. The problem is that in the meantime the world may have changed into a less hospitable place. It is in all our interest to encourage them to jump the gun.

Obstacles, scmobstacles

I have a new place to live, I found myself a job, work on the novel is goin' pretty vegan kosher, and I feel a little less frightened of life in general. So: I'm back, and there is a post below. Love and rockets.

The Goldfish

I talk to myself a lot. Obviously I only do it when I am by myself, as I already attract enough disparaging looks when I venture out in public thanks to my general air of untrustworthyness. I debate with myself in the car on long journeys, I voice lists of task aloud, and I sometimes read out loud in the bath or in bed, because I’m a solipsist and like to hear the sound of my own voice. In all these things I am not alone. But mostly, when I talk to myself, I insult, berate and criticise my own actions and outlook, and with good reason: when I am by myself, I metamorphose into an idiot. Seriously. An utter dim-wit.

Clearly I am no Einstein when I’m in a crowd (at work today I spent thirty seconds trying to open the safe door against its hinges) but when I am alone it becomes ludicrous. It would be unnecessarily long and tedious to list every faintly idiotic thing that I’ve done recently, but I shall give you a few examples so you can see what I’m driving at.

Firstly, I am capable of some truly incredible acts of clumsiness. I occasionally have accidents that require a perfect storm of physical ineptness, lack of forethought and sheer ignorance. I once almost succeeded, no word of a lie, in choking to death on an ice-cream while sat at the back of a rave. My panicked, potential final thoughts, were consumed by the knowledge that the ice-cream would melt before my corpse was discovered, leaving the authorities baffled as to the manner of my demise. I haven’t touched a Calippo since: they are as treacherous as frozen confectionary can get.

I am also guilty of some spectacular negligence. Given a kitchen to myself and enough time to wander off distractedly, and I will happily set fire to a pan of water.

Finally I occasionally find myself engaged in acts of monumental hubris. You know how sometimes on Casualty some idiot gets rushed into A&E because they were trying to replace a light bulb in a pitch black bathroom above a bath full of water up a rickety ladder while listening to thrash metal on a personal stereo and having a distracted conversation with someone three rooms away? Yeah, that sort of thing is right up my crippled, scarred-for-life alley.

I am not unintelligent. I used to get answers right in school. I have held down various jobs, some for several years, without ever getting into trouble or being disciplined. So why, when I am by myself, am I such a flippin’ retard?

The answer is my attention span, or rather the manner in which I focus it. I cannot keep my mind focused on a single task for more than about four seconds, unless that task requires my complete attention. Things that require extended concentration (driving, video games, cunnilingus, that sort of thing) are all fine, as long as they last. You cannot get away with letting your mind completely wander during these activities, and so it obligingly stays put. This allows me, incredibly, to split my attention in the manner so readily available to other people, and perhaps even do something else at the same time. This is why I can drive my car and talk to myself at the same time, without constantly heading down one-way streets or into canals when I reach a particularly difficult sentence.

Things that require little attention, things that should be easy: that is where I generally come a cropper. Cooking is, normally, not a difficult task. Unless you are making soufflé or ice swans or something equally complex, cooking is really just a collection of small, simple actions: you do the things in sequence and at the end, food happens. But it is because the actions are normally so small, so simple, that I regularly fuck the whole thing up. It’s easy, and so you have plenty of time for your mind to wander, and mine wanders a pretty long way, coming back with its boots muddy and its cheeks red to find the kitchen on fire and the stomach pretty hacked off.

If I have one simple task to do, I will either get distracted and forget about it, or I will become bored and try to multitask unsuccessfully. When I play video games I get bored at loading screens and try to read, an impossibly task that merely result in my reading the same sentence four hundred times and invariably missing the start of the game. Whenever I try to tidy a room I attempt to accomplish every piece of cleaning simultaneously, which means each task advances infinitesimally slowly and I spend the entire time in a state of high irritation. I regularly come back from the post box with the letter I went there to post. Once I put the slice of toast I’d brought with me in there instead.

I don’t do this, crucially, when there are other people around. This is because I am a) more aware of my actions when there are other people watching me, and b) because when there is someone nearby I am less likely to let my mind wander. God knows what I was thinking about when I started choking on my Calippo, but I sure as shit wasn’t focussed on the task at hand, and that wouldn’t have been the case if there was someone talking to me at the time. I can carry on a conversation with someone else while I’m doing practically anything (cunnilingus is a hard one, I’ll admit).

The solution, then, is to either start paying more attention when I’m on my own, or start pretending that I’m not, if you follow me. They say you should always dance like no-one is watching. I’m going to start thinking like someone is watching, and see if that ends up with fewer burnt stir-frys, fewer home decorating accidents, and fewer ice-cream related near-death experiences. I’ll let you know how it goes.