CRAG strategy (cragcentral message#103)

Thu Oct 5, 2006 11:51 am

Duncan Law wrote:

Dear All, Keep this on the yahoo list for the moment. I wouldn’ t have read this on a forum. Interesting discussion.

Agree that we should publicise at Nov 4. and have a banner.

About loyalty. I know many LETS schemes collapsed with some members owing large debts. This is bad for morale and against the equity principle of the whole rationing thing.
I think ongoing monitoring is important. It makes you conscious of your actions as you go and of the difference the seasons make to your impacts. I shall read my meter when I come to turn my boiler back on. So that I get a real picture by the end of the year of what I emit in the winter. Heating is often our biggest impact. Ask people to estimate travel by train and they will have no idea. I look up the mileage of my journey in the National Rail Timetable (12.99) and enter it in my spreadsheet. It would be good to separate leisure and work mileage and perhaps love miles too. I attach the basic spreadsheet. Look under travel and house for the carbon impacts.

This thrashing out stage is really important. Keep at it.

Duncan

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

Fri Oct 6, 2006 7:43 pm

David Bassendine wrote:

Hi all,

Up to my eyeballs in courseworks at the moment, but great to see all the
activity! And we’re up in the google spotlight too. I can feel the
momentum gathering.

*12 month cycle. Shorter cycles hit the problem of seasonality, which is
a massive influence on gas emissions. A year balances all that out. Its
pretty tough to get a handle on allowances and targets on shorter
timescales, especially when the seasons are erratic (CC anyone?).
Continuous monitoring would be great, though. Ideally people could just
whack in their gas bill numbers (etc.) and have emissions automatically
calculated.

*Trading. Contentious, when it comes to real money. I would think best
to let groups decide individually how to spend their fund. We need,
though, to get together a knowledge-base of effective – not green-wash – sinks and their relative prices. Technology too. Information is a
massive barrier to action, and there’s loads of phoney nonsense out
there.

*Individual convergence. Could get complicated wrt timescale and
fairness.

*Loyalty. People will drop out, others will join. This project will be
tough: we don’t yet know how much individuals can do themselves, or
whether they are largely constrained by the structure of society.
However, we can keep groups stable if not too much is mandated: keep it
flexible and people will feel ownership. Some things may need to be
common to all groups for the larger unit to function: allowances, %
reductions? Its something we need to decide.

A meeting would be great. We may not be at our best on Sunday morning,
but it would be good to meet all you guys. I agree with Andy there
should be someone from each group.

Best, David

(Advertisement)

Sun Oct 8, 2006 10:51 am

Peter Sanderson wrote:

Hi,

I hope to be at the 4th Novemnber march but will not stay overnight
for the meeting, but wanted to contribute to the discussions. Some
related issues to those proposed by John were discussed at the last
West Midlands/Leamington CRAG meeting. We didnt come to many
conclusions so it would be good if they could be discussed at the
London meeting on 5th Nov:

1) The current annual target is set at 4.5 or 5.0 tonnes CO2 depending
on which group. If new members join next year should they join with a
4.5 tonne target or should they adopt the new 4.0 tonne 2007 target
(or whatever it is set at)?

My feeling is that all new-comers should start at a more achievable
target and slowly reduce over the years, otherwise we will not get any
others to join, especially in a few years time when the targets get
really challenging. However, others at our meeting suggested that the
annual targets should be the same for all members otherwise we would
have different targets for different members resulting in confusion.

2) If we set different starting targets for members depending upon
their current CO2 usage, then this may enable us to recruit members
such as frequent fliers (i.e. the type of heavy energy users that we
really should want to recruit). If we set a low starting target then
we will only attract current low energy users. However, if we have
different starting points this may become even more difficult to
control, and who would set the next years target?

One option is to set the next target as 10% less than this years
target, irrespective of what this years target is. This would
alleviate some of the difficulty experienced by people already on low
usage to get any lower.

On a personal note, my annual electricity use is already relatively
low (1500 KWh for a family of 4) so there is little else I can do to
reduce it further except get solar PV. I probably will do this in the
next year or two, but since electricity comprises relatively little of
my annual carbon budget it will not save me much. Reducing CO2 caused
by heating the home with gas central heating is more difficult when
living in a smokeless zone (so I cannot use wood), so my options are
decreasing. Transport is my main cause of CO2 (I already have stopped
flying) but short of moving house so that journeys to visit family are
shorter there is little else I can do apart from never going out!
Maybe we should have space for giving each other advice on such
issues – apart from having another baby to increase my
families “carbon allowance”.

OK, thats all for now, I seem to have got off the point a bit,
Peter.

Guy S

website team CRAGger Islington

Sun Oct 8, 2006 4:45 pm

Guy Shrubsole

Lots of interesting points for discussion and further reason for having a proper meeting. (And I think November 5th is going to be our best bet of getting together as many as poss without asking people to travel specially…)

There have been debates previously about having Contraction & Convergence on a CRAG level – to ease entry and allow for ‘historic’ emissions habits. With any such scheme the different rates of decrease are much less important than securing the final target. There are of course major issues over administration of varied targets but because CRAGs are a ‘microcosm’ of society, ie are obviously not compulsory and therefore want to attract new participants over time, there needs to be some way of easing in new members without calling on them to fall immediately into concert with old hands. Perhaps percentage cuts with an accelerating rate of cut over the years relative to those who joined earlier. Alternatively, they set up a completely new group.

Peter – you talk about problems of cutting certain forms of energy usage below certain levels. This is exactly the sort of useful information that we need to get out of the CRAGs. Our experiences will serve as evidence of what cuts can be achieved on a purely individual basis (with a little help from our CRAG friends), and what areas will need government intervention. We may find that for certain segments of the population there is a foundation level of emissions which cannot be cut below; which requires major capital investment to help, e.g. on better public transport, better insulation, grants for microgeneration etc. Over the years CRAGs will hopefully become sensitive to these problems – and will provide backing to calls for government intervention.

Andy (and anyone): definitely think flyers for Nov 4th would be good – didn’t you produce some earlier in the year? Also re the banner. Who’s going to produce this? I can make a placard or two but don’t think I’ve got the materials to hand for a cloth banner.

All the best,
Guy.

john ackers

website team CRAGger Islington

I am coming into this late in the day but I think we are approaching the review of the CRAG strategy in the wrong way.

Vey asks on behalf of Hereford on

http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/fora/threads/hereford-feedback-cragcen…

what is this document for. Well I missed the first part of the meeting on Novemeber 5th in Central London but it was to address the many issues that were raised in a series of emails on crag strategy before that meeting. It is therefore an internal document.

I know that Hereford has already commented in detail on this document but I think that it needs a small group of people to work on this (select committee style) and then it should be put to local group members for approval.

Here are my comments on this document at this stage:

-the relationship between local groups and crag central needs to be clarified.

-there is a lot of emphasis on communication but the document does not explain who will be doing the communicating or how we determine what we want to communicate.

-we need to define the core elements of our particular approach to carbon rationing itself in detail especially the elements that we expect all local groups to adopt.