Nature is elegant. It solves problems. In nature we find the ears of the bat, the neck of the giraffe, the legs of the cheetah and the eyes of the hawk. It experiments and finds new ways of doing things. Failed experiments die away, whilst successful experiments reproduce themselves and become more populous. Nature is the way it is because it hosts the greatest competition of all: the competition to survive. That same competition underpins every competition between complex systems. Those complex systems may be countries, as in the cold war victory of the US over the former Soviet Union, or animals, like the gazelle that must flee and the lion that must eat, or the rivalry between businesses competing for scarce resources, market share, and revenues. There is no bigger idea than the simple idea that the fight for survival promotes change, and grants prolonged life to those that make the right changes, whilst killing off those that do not change or make the wrong changes.

So what lessons can be learned from nature right now? The human race has woken up to the greatest fight for survival since Homo sapiens first emerged. Our species has done wonderfully, and has expanded rapidly in living memory, growing from a little over 1.5 billion at the start of the twentieth century to over 6 billion by its end. We have learned to make more and more food from the same amount of land. We survived the Black Death. Our own predilection for war caused great losses, but the human race kept recovering and replacing the dead with more living. Problem after problem has been overcome by science and technology. The irony is that our very success now poses our greatest threat to survival: that we might destroy our climate, torching our Earth and turning it into an inhospitable husk. The battle against global warming is the struggle which will increasingly grip our attention and inspire our creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention, and there is no greater necessity than to preserve our world.

We can wage the war on global warming at both the macro and micro levels, and we will devise plenty of strategies. This will generate an incredible variety of opportunities for all kinds of enterprise, at every scale. By the same token, governments will be increasingly focused on the goal of saving the planet, not least because of the biological drive that says every citizen, whether President or peasant, wants their offspring to survive. Governments will be looking for ways to back potential winning solutions, both big and small. Businesses will imagine, pioneer and perfect many new kinds of solutions to solve energy problems we previously did not know we had. Good solutions, like creating new kinds of renewable energy and devising more efficient lifestyles, will survive beyond what a normal business would call long-term. By recasting the human struggle for survival, we are also redefining the economics of the human race, changing the index for prosperity from increased consumption to more efficient consumption. In the process, we are rearticulating the objectives of every business.

What strategies will the human race explore, as it fights against global warming? Some strategies will be about cleaning up the mess we created, like removing the carbon that is already in the atmosphere, whether through mechanical scrubbers or genetically modifying plant life to breathe in more carbon dioxide. Others will be about doing the same things as we do now, but with diminished impact on the environment. This includes finding replacements for oil as the portable fuel source for vehicles. We will innovate about how to achieve our same overall objectives, whilst doing fewer things that consume energy. This will promote technologies for homeworking, teleconferencing and organizing people in remote groups, so they can work together without needing to be in the same room. It also means organizing ourselves so that food is grown locally, and not transported over vast distances. Yet other strategies will involve supplying our energy needs without using fossil fuels, which involves both harnessing resources like wind, wave and sun but also storing energy efficiently, so we can save the energy we make to be used when we need it. As well as efficient creation of energy, there will also be more enterprising solutions for efficient distribution of energy, through innovations like installing smart meters in homes and businesses, or by improving the cost-effectiveness of microgeneration, so electricity is produced where it is being used.

Nature solves problems through constant innovation in the relentless fight for survival. The human race will do the same; harnessing its innovative gifts and finding ways to keep nature on a constant course, and hence ensuring our planet remains inhabitable. It is the biggest idea of all, as true in a recession as it is during a boom. This single big idea will give birth to countless ideas of every kind imaginable, and probably many more that we currently cannot imagine. The only sure way to fail is to duck the challenge and do nothing to innovate for a low-energy, sustainable-energy future. Some businesses may decide to ignore the fight on global warming, and will only react when energy prices force them to react. The winners in the recession, like in all enterprise, will be the businesses that turn a threat into an opportunity. The businesses that will prosper in the long run, will be the businesses that are in the vanguard of the war on global warming.

I am in Oman. Oman is a hot and sunny country. It is day time, and it must be thirty Celsius in the shade. But I am shivering. You see, I am inside. I am sat in an office. I am sat at a desk that looks like pretty much any other desk in any other office any where in the world. It is the top floor of this building, but because the windows are small, I, like everybody else on this floor, depends on fluorescent strip lighting, like you might find anywhere in the world, in order to see what I am working on. The fluorescent strips are a lot less bright than the sunshine outside. And I am shivering. The air conditioning is on, and for whatever reason it must be aimed at my seat, so I am shivering. I could walk over to the wall and turn the air conditioning down, but you can guarantee that within ten minutes somebody from the other side of the floor will come along and turn it up again. So I just go outside now and then to warm up. I am in a hot sunny country and I have to go outside to warm up and get some natural light. And they say the world is running out of energy. Work that one out.

By all rights, I should be the last person on this floor that feels the cold. One way you can tell this office is in Muscat, the capital of Oman, and not Brisbane or Grimsby, is by looking at what people are wearing. Omani outfits have, over hundreds of years, been perfected to keep people cool. They are long and airy. I, in contrast, am wearing the usual boring Western long-sleeved shirt and trousers combo. So my clothing should be warmer than the local outfits. Perhaps, though, they have a critical edge on me, what with wearing hats. The Omanis all wear hats or scarves, so perhaps they are saving a lot of the heat from their heads in their hats, whilst all the heat from my head does is try to defeat the air conditioning’s thermostat in a futile battle. My head, hot as it may be will never win in a straight contest with the air conditioning, unless they run out of oil in Oman, which will not be for a while yet.

I often think the world is just wrong. Not “wrong, but we can understand why”. Not “wrong, but there is a reason why we do things like that”. Not “wrong, but there are mitigating circumstances”. Just wrong. Take, as an example, when Brits go on holidays abroad. Britain is nice in summer, or at least nicer. It is awful the rest of the time. British people go to other countries at exactly the time of year when Britain is the nicest it will be. One of the disadvantages of living in Britain is that you cannot enjoy outdoor activities in Britain all that much. There is nothing better than a bit of fun with friends when the weather is nice, having a picnic or enjoying a kickabout in the park. If only your friends were not on holiday. So instead of Brits going out, enjoying the summer, and being sociable with friends, we hang out with strangers in a foreign country.

Why do we all have to work during the day? A lot of jobs are better done during the day, when you can see what you are doing. Why do all the jobs where people sit in offices, bathed in artificial light, have to happen during the day? Today, I will be going home at the same time as everybody else in this office. Taking the traffic jam home, I will see the sun set. I will have spent the whole day in artificial light, and then, in my private time, rely upon artificial light. If I enjoyed myself during the day, and worked only at night, then I could get natural light for half of the time, instead of none of it. That would save energy, as well as making me happy. It would not make any difference to my work, except that there would be nobody else around to work with (unless people start thinking like me).

If people did not go to work at the same time, there would be less traffic congestion, less time wasted, and less fuel burned whilst going nowhere. We would need fewer roads and fewer ugly car parks. If people took their holidays at different times, the airlines could make a more reliable profit all the year around, instead of needing to charge a fortune in summer in order to cover their losses during the rest of the year. Beautiful countries would not need to be scarred by so many concrete hotels, and people working in tourism would have a more consistent source of income the whole year around. When I was young, my teachers said everybody is a unique individual. It does not seem to be working out like that.

Thinking the way I do, I thought I might set up yet another website, just dedicated to observations, called ‘What Is Wrong With The World’. It would basically be a list of what is wrong with the world, but perhaps you guessed at that already. It does not matter if anyone takes notice. I am not pretending to be Martin Luther, pinning my theses somewhere everybody can read them. It would just be nice to know if there is anyone who thinks like me, or whether I really do live in a world where everyone else thinks there is no way to improve on working during the day or taking your holidays during summer.

There is a Harry Hill joke which I often think about but find hard to tell in a funny way. I was in hysterics when I heard it, but I think you had to be there when Harry told it. The joke involves Harry’s father opening up a bed shop, called ‘Beds Beds Beds’. There is a guy with a shop around the corner already called ‘Beds Beds Beds’ so Harry’s dad changes the name to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds’ instead. The guy around the corner sees his dad’s shop, and did not like his competitor getting one up on him, so he changes the name of his shop to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds’. Harry’s dad then changes his shop to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds’. That is pretty much the gag except it goes on a lot longer – to the point where you either holding your aching sides and the tears rolling down your cheeks, or you left a half hour ago, wondering why anyone thinks Harry Hill is funny. I think I like it because it makes a point about people being the same no matter how silly the consequences are.

I thought ‘What Is Wrong With The World’ lends itself to quite a snappy URL, so I looked to see if www.www.com or www.wwww.com had been taken. They had. So has www.wwwww.com. So has www.wwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwwwww.com. By this point, I was thinking it was getting ridiculous. I mean, who wants a website where the URL is nine consecutive w’s? Like nobody is ever going to mistype it and end up at www.wwwwwwww.com instead, and you nobody is going to get confused when hearing it over the telephone…

“The phone crackled. I missed that last bit.”
“W”
“And what was before that?”
“W”
“Instead of just reading out a lot of w’s, why didn’t you just tell me it was nine w’s?”
“Because I thought you might type www.9doubleyous.com by mistake”
“That’s what I said, nine w’s”
“No, I meant 9 double yous”
“That’s what I said”
“Forget it”

Of course, nobody does want a website called www.wwwwwwwww.com or www.wwwwwwww.com or even plain www.www.com. They all got bought by people who want to make money from spam links or by selling the domain to somebody else who really wants the name. Yup, the ticket touts of the internet world, who register a domain just so they can sell it on to somebody else, had the creative juices flowing on that day…

“You know what, we should register the sequence from three w’s dot com to nine w’s dot com.”
“Why would anyone want a URL like 9doubleyous.com? Is it supposed to be some kind of gambling site?”
“I meant www.wwwwwwwww.com”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”

These internet tout parasites think the world owes them a living because they have the time and resources to mindlessly drive up the price for anyone who wants to do something useful before they die. There are so many parasites in the world today, sucking blood out of anyone they can find, that it is hard to find anyone who just does a hard and honest day’s work. It sure is not me. Remember, I am the guy who wandered around outside to warm up. Arguably I should warm up by typing faster. Wandering outside, instead of working, I was thinking of this blog, and not what I was paid to think about. But it worked out even as I inadvertently thought about work the previous evening. As I was wandering outside, enjoying the Omani sunshine (note to self: bring sunglasses to work tomorrow) I started wondering why did the domain touts stopped at nine. Why not ten w’s? Perhaps they missed a trick. Perhaps I had better buy it before someone else does. Or maybe I will get 3doubleyous.com instead.

Did the title grab your attention? Cannot believe it is true? It IS true. The dots are there, people just refuse to join them up because of fashion. I need to do more work on researching the numbers of how much damage is being done, and how many are to blame, but let me sketch out the idea here.

Let us start with some simple basics. First, old Einstein pointed out that matter is energy. That means even things made of matter are, essentially, just another manifestation of energy. Everything in our physical universe is energy, in one form or other. Remember this, it is the cornerstone of the argument.

Second, fashions come and go. When in the midst of a fashion, what seems perfectly sensible will, once the fashion is dead, seem very daft. That is why we no longer see people wearing powdered wigs or daubing white lead on their faces. Fashion does not apply to clothes only, it also applies to ideas. White lead was popular because a pale skin indicated someone who did not work in the open air, and was hence more refined. Coco Chanel went on a cruise from Paris to Cannes, and got a suntan. That instigated the idea that a suntan represented wealth and luxury. Instead of wanting to turn white, women started wanting to turn brown. More recently, thanks to medical research, the circle has started turning the other way, as there is nothing sexy about skin cancer. Two of the predominant fashions of this era are healthiness of the individual and concern for the planet’s environment. I say these are fashions not because they are wrong or devoid of meaning, but because human perceptions of them have changed and will likely change again. As such, our perception of how to achieve both goals may be at odds with each other, especially in areas where fashionable thought obscures the real issues.

Getting back to the real issues, and real issue number one is where we get the energy to live our lives without killing the planet. Remember, everything is energy. Some energy sources never get depleted, like the Sun (of course, even the Sun will eventually run out, but we have time to worry about that later), or get used less quickly or as quickly as they are replenished, like hydropower or burning rubbish. Some energy sources get used up far more quickly than they get replenished, like coal and oil. I say “sources” because, ultimately, all of these sources stem from the same source - the Sun. I distinguish the sources based on our day-to-day experience of them (oil is black stuff in the ground, the Sun is a big light ball up in the sky etc).

To be healthy, we humans also need a source of energy. Otherwise we die. We predominantly obtain energy from what we eat and drink. Our food and drink may also provide other raw materials for our well-being, but most of it is consumed for the purpose of providing an energy source. This is why crops may not be a wise alternative to oil. Biofuel may be used to run our cars, but still needs to compete for resources (land, and hence ultimately exposure to the Sun) that may be better used producing food.

The amount of food we need is related to the amount of energy we expend. That is a FACT. It is, to borrow from Al Gore, an inconvenient fact that many people try to gloss over. It is inconvenient to lots of people pushing diet pills, exercise programs, and low-cal substitute foodstuffs. Eating gives most of us pleasure, but in wealthier countries there is the risk of consuming more food than is needed to meet our energy needs. That makes us fat. Similarly, if we ate less than our energy needs, we would get thinner. We may also get unhealthy in various ways, but we would, eventually and inevitably, get thinner. Forget all that advice about eating something for breakfast or selecting the right kinds of food in order to lose weight. In the end, lots of people all over the world still die because they do not have enough food. Do not kid yourself that it all comes down to how you eat, and not how much you eat. The less you eat, the thinner you will get, because you are not consuming enough energy to meet your energy needs. I am not advocating eating less, because your nutritional needs, and hence your health, are much than just a simple what goes in versus what goes out equation, but I am pointing out the equation is fundamental and relevant.

One aspect of healthiness is exercise. If we are active, our bodies work better and, as we age, degenerate at a slower pace. This means, to be healthy, we need to expend energy on exercise. I say “exercise” in the broadest sense of physical action. There is also a narrow sense, of exercise for exercise’s sake. My concern is that exercise, for exercise’s sake, may be good for your health, but otherwise is a waste of energy. It consumes the energy delivered in food, but has no productive outcome other than improving the health of the individual. This may be contrasted with purposeful exercise. In other words, it is the difference between riding an exercise bike in the gym and riding a bicycle to work. In the former, the only goal is to exercise. In the latter, a necessary transportation goal is also realized.

Our diet is another aspect of our healthiness. We need energy, which may be measured in calories, we need water, and we need nutrients. Certain foods, like lettuce, are low in calories, high in water content, and rich in nutrients. This makes lettuce quite a fashionable food, in the sense of being a good choice for healthy living. But it is a terrible food for the environment. Why? Because the total energy used to produce and distribute a lettuce, like any foodstuff, is not the same as its calorific content. Lettuce contains energy, which we can access by eating it, but some energy used in the production of the lettuce, and most obviously in getting the lettuce to the person who eats the lettuce, does not add to the calorific content of the lettuce itself. Think of the energy spent planting the lettuce, or tilling the land, or involved in making or spreading fertilizer or pesticides, or collecting the lettuce, or building storage capacity for lettuces, or transporting the lettuce, or chilling the lettuce whilst being stored or transported, or packaging the lettuce, or even in the energy you consume to eat the lettuce. All of this energy is used in order for you to eat the lettuce, but none of it goes into, or comes out of, the lettuce itself.

Can you see where I am going yet? That lettuce, which may be so fashionable, may arrive on the plate of a wealthy person only because of a lot of energy-expensive activities beforehand. Lettuce is particularly energy-expensive, because it is big, bulky and is mostly water. If you split the lettuce into nutrients and water, and only transported the nutrients, you would use a fraction of the energy needed to transport the whole lettuce. We already have more efficient ways to transport water than in the form of lettuces, so human needs could be satisfied at far less cost to the planet if people drank water from the tap and ate the nutrients than if they ate a lettuce. It would be less fashionable. It would not “feel” as healthy. But it would be a lot better for the environment, by reducing energy consumption, particularly that spent on transporting the lettuce. When you factor in that your lettuce, because of largely inefficient distribution chains designed to give you nice-looking lettuces when and where you want it, has quite probably had to travel from a foreign country to get to you, you end up with lettuces that consumed over a hundred times more energy to get to you, than you get when you consume them.

Lettuces are not the only culprits in the criminal roll-call of energy-wasting foods. They say that eating celery consumes more energy than is contained with the celery. That may be great if you want to lose weight, but represents a wasteful process from the perspective of conserving energy.

Energy wastage in food production and distribution is one problem we need to tackle if we are to help the planet, even if it means not having food that looks and feels so healthy. Energy wastage due to consuming food for pleasure is another side of the equation, even if the pleasure is related to “healthy” foods. It is easy to be critical of fat people who eat poorly. Being fat may lead people to consume more of other energy sources - they weigh more so consume more fuel to transport, they need bigger clothes, and they may eventually consume energy in terms of drugs and medical treatments. But some of the “bad” foods, like sugar, are bad because they are highly concentrated forms of energy. Somebody (probably me… hopefully somebody else) needs to do an energy audit comparing how much energy is expended producing and transporting “bad” foods versus “good” foods. It may be that the bad foods are better for the planet, if they consume a lot less energy relative to the calorific content provided to the person eating them.

Even if you cycle to work, as opposed to cycling to lose weight, you may be harming the environment more than helping it. It takes energy to fuel you. You expend that fuel when riding your bike. If you did not ride the bike, you could have ate less. If the energy you use riding the bike comes from lettuces, and those lettuces come from another country, then an awful lot of energy was expended prior to you getting the little bit you use to turn the pedals. Most of that energy will have come from non-renewable sources. Factor all those numbers into any equation for how good the bike ride is for the environment. Then compare those numbers to the numbers involved in drilling for oil, transporting the oil to your car, and then used in powering the car. Cars are heavier than bikes, but oil is a very concentrated source of energy. It may be that the total energy cost, in terms of the non-renewable energy expended, is lower if you drive to work. I am not saying it is, I am just saying I have not seen anyone do the maths, and it is a long way from obvious as to which equations would represent the most efficient use of our non-renewable sources. It does not matter that the fuel in the car (petrol, gas, diesel, LPG, whatever) is 100% non-renewable and that the fuel in you (lettuce, strawberries, white sugar, celery, hamburger, Pepsi, whatever) is 100% renewable. What matters is the total non-renewable energy cost in getting the necessary amount of fuel to you, including the energy expended on production and distribution. In short, powering your bicycle with lettuces may have a higher total carbon cost than driving your car.

Of course, the carbon cost of the lettuce, and of your diet in general, rather depends on where your food comes from. If it comes from your back garden, then the costs will be lowest (though we still need to factor in the energy cost of tools you may use, fencing to keep out animals etc). If it comes from a local farm, it will be low. If it comes from the other side of the world, it will be high, although we should avoid over-simplification. It has also been reported that the production of New Zealand lamb is so much more energy efficient than the production of lamb in the UK, that New Zealand lamb represents a lower total energy cost to UK consumers than UK lamb does.

If we want to eat healthy and save the planet, it would be a good idea to print the total non-renewable energy costs involved in production and distribution on those expensive and obsessive labels so loved by nanny governments. Until that time, the safest bet is to eat in moderation, grow your own food, and pay attention to where food comes from. Digging up the garden is a more productive use of energy than pretend rowing at the gym, so perhaps you should swap one form of exercise for the other. There must be a fair few people who feel very self-congratulatory when they ride their bicycle into work, and then eat a big salad for lunch. For all we know they are killing the planet far more quickly than a 4WD driver who ate a small burger from Burger King. As I said before, I need to do a lot more research before reaching conclusions, and there are many variables, but if I sowed a seed of doubt, that is enough for now.