Thrill seekers

This week a York academic Professor Trevor Sheldon likened staying in an NHS hospital to bungee jumping, because up to 10% of hospital stays resulted in some kind of mishap.

I wonder if this says more about how safe bungee jumping has become, or perhaps hints at a new thrill seeking pasttime for middle Englanders.

Now there’s no need to try an extreme sport like snowboarding, or throwing yourself out of a plane. Why not get yourself down to your local NHS hospital. Wonder where the MRSA is lurking? So do the staff. Their guess is as good as yours, and if its smeared around your bed waiting to infect your open wound, chances are the cleaners will miss it too.

Trouble with your kidneys? Try having one of them removed. Just hope it’s the right one.

Time to save the world again

The Environment Agency has asked an expert panel to list the top 50 things that will save the planet. I’m pleased to see that quite a few of the top priorities are actions that decision-markers need to take, rather than making us green people feel even more guilty. We need more government action on this! Also see Leo Hickman in the Guardian, who assesses whether they got their priorities right.

The top 20: What the panel prescribes
1 Dramatically improve the energy efficiency of electrical goods
2 Religious leaders to make the environment a priority for their followers
3 Encourage the widespread use of solar power throughout the world
4 Secure a meaningful post-Kyoto treaty on reducing the emissions that contribute to global warming
5 Encourage households to generate much more of their own power
6 Introduce tax incentives to "buy green"
7 Tackle the rapid growth in aviation emissions
8 Wean ourselves off dependency on petroleum
9 Encourage individuals to buy less non-essential "stuff "
10 Dramatically improve public transport
11 Aim for a "zero waste" culture
12 Install "smart energy" meters in all homes
13 Introduce a measure of economic success that includes the environment
14 Fully harness Britain's huge potential for generating renewable energy
15 Seek alternative, less damaging sources for biofuels
16 Bury carbon dioxide from power stations underground
17 Encourage hydrogen fuel cell technology in cars
18 Implement government policies to control global population growth
19 Reach international agreement on preserving rainforests
20 Create better incentives to improve energy efficiency in the home

I’m also getting worried about biofuels. The idea seems so nice. Petrol = bad, so let's turn plants into energy instead. But the benefits of biofuels may have been underestimated, and subsidies to produce biofuels is both creating an excess of bio-ethanol and skewing agriculture away from food production.

"The net greenhouse gas emissions of expensive European rapeseed oil-based diesel are a mere 13 per cent less than those of conventional diesel", says Martin Wolf in a thoughtful piece in the FT. I've also read in the Wall Street Journal that the biofuels gold rush is threatening the last bits of existing prairie-land in the US. Collecting bio-gas from landfills intuitively seems like a better idea, but don't know how this compares.