KEY POINTS:
From green coal to hydrogen-fuelled ships and even adopting crossbred mutts, here are 10 of the brightest ethical ideas - big and small - around at the moment.
BIOCHAR
In a nutshell: A way of trapping carbon with "green coal".
The clever bit: Any biomass waste,
from wood to peanut shells, releases carbon as it decomposes. But it can be burned in a kiln by pyrolysis (an airless burning technique) to create biochar, also nicknamed green coal. The biochar is then dug back into the ground to lock carbon into the soil following a system set out by ancient South American civilisations. Nothing new, then.
What is groundbreaking, however, is using it to mitigate our current predicament - ie, runaway greenhouse gas emissions.
According to experts, billions of tonnes of carbon could potentially be sequestered in the world's soils, specifically from agriculture and forestry residual biomass.
Biochar appears to lock carbon in for much longer than other forms or sequestration: a plant or tree will only sequester for 15 to 20 years, for example, whereas it seems reasonable to suggest that the biochar system will sequester for at least 100 years.
Also, biochar just happens to anchor soil nutrients extremely well at a time when the planet's soils have lost half of their carbon thanks to industrialised agriculture.
REHOME A MUTT
In a nutshell: Crossbred dogs win best in show.
The clever bit: Last August the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed suggested that Crufts, the annual jamboree celebrating canines from an ever-decreasing gene pool, in effect promoted health problems in dogs.
While it was suggested that the Kennel Club get its house in order, Pedigree pet foods dropped its sponsorship of Crufts and the BBC chopped it from the schedule.
This is in step with global trends. When Barack Obama promised his daughters a new puppy when they moved into the White House, Ingrid Newkirk, president of Peta, didn't miss a beat.
"Senator, no one needs to tell you that this country is proud to be a melting pot and that there is something deeply wrong about wanting only a purebred dog. Millions of Great American Mutts - the dog that should be our national dog - are set to die in our nation's overcrowded pounds and shelters for lack of good homes. When you are ready, please adopt a homeless pound puppy."
FERTILISING THE OCEAN
In a nutshell: Dumping iron dust in the ocean to remove carbon.
The clever bit: It is acknowledged that the oceans are the planet's biggest global sink, soaking up 2 billion tonnes of carbon every year. Spreading iron dust on ocean waters can in fact trigger huge plankton blooms the size of a small city. The algae would then absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and when the algae dies, it all sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered on the seabed.
Proponents suggest it would take just five to 10 ocean-going ore carriers to deposit iron sulphate, a waste product from iron and titanium smelters, into the world's oceans, and the phytoplankton created would then remove 1 trillion kg of CO2 every year.
BENIGN BIOFUELS
In a nutshell: The biofuels it's OK to like.
The clever bit: The idea was simple - burn plant-derived biofuels such as maize, sugar and corn in engines, then the CO2 released would be offset by the amount of gas absorbed by the plants when they grew.
It appeared you could drive oil-free on green gold. Sadly this was a cruel mirage, and when we got close it became clear that the displacement impact of a biofuel boom would lead to the ploughing-up of virgin habitats, giant monocultures, land-rights disputes, and the truly terrible conundrum of whether to feed the world or power the rich world's car fleet. In a dramatic fall from grace, biofuels crashed and burned.
But proponents of second-generation biofuels say it's not the idea that is at fault, just the choice of biomass. This time they advocate using the whole plant and converting waste materials such as cornstalks and leftover sugar-cane fibres into cellulosic ethanol that will then power our lives. This is reliant on a fledgling process: cracking or splitting cellulose into simple hydrocarbons - in effect breaking down complex chains and liberating sugars.HYDROGEN
CARGO SHIPS
In a nutshell: Emissions-free shipping.
The clever bit: To produce hydrogen-hybrid boats that could turn global shipping and freight from an emissions juggernaut into a zero-emissions glide across the oceans. The unlikely vehicle of revolution - which admittedly is some way off a transatlantic sortie right now - is a former British Waterways maintenance vessel, converted by Birmingham University, England, named the Ross Barlow.
Believed to be the world's first hydrogen-hybrid canal boat, the Ross Barlow's system works by storing hydrogen in lithium hydride powder, which can be topped up when it has been exhausted.
It's clever stuff because researchers have already overcome the two main hydrogen stumbling blocks that have dogged the automotive industry in particular.
First, making hydrogen is one thing; storing it safely is another issue entirely.
Unlike hydrogen cars, the system on the Ross Barlow barge means there is no need to carry high-pressure gas or liquid on board - while there has always been a fear that hydrogen cars might, literally, go off like a bomb, the threat of potential explosions has been removed. And there's another advantage: in cars, hydrogen has always proved to be too heavy, but the genius of the boat idea is that heavy hydrogen, in the form of lithium hydride powder, doesn't matter - ships need ballast.
SPECIES RELOCATION
In a nutshell: Giving under-threat species a second home.
The clever bit: You can see why the plight of the mustang, the romantic symbol of the American west, which is under threat from so-called "federal euthanasia", caught conservationists' imaginations.
The authorities decreed that the 33,000 mustang population roaming free on public lands across the west must be shot down to size (by losing 6000).
Critics say this is because they are in competition for food resources with cattle ranching. But the response - to move the mustangs to another part of the country entirely, to a privately funded refuge - has raised a few eyebrows. In many ways this goes against the grain of conservation practices (usually geared towards making the best of a bad job, as in the installation of conservation corridors for elephants that work around depleted areas or trouble spots).
Pragmatists say it's about cutting your losses and preventing extinction.
RADICAL ECO ACTIVISM
In a nutshell: Green direct action.
The clever bit: The days of eco radicalism are back. Grief, fury and rage caused by political indifference and inaction over the rapid decline of the earth's ecosystems and a seeming permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for the main greenhouse gas emitters has spilled over into direct action.
Meanwhile the September acquittal of the Kingsnorth Six (protesters at the Kingsnorth coal fired power station southeast of London) marked a turning point: their defence argument - they were trying to protest against climate change-induced damage on a far greater scale than the 30,000($78,494)-worth of chimney damage they allegedly caused - set a precedent. REINSTATE THE DRINKING FOUNTAIN In a nutshell: The rebirth of bottle-free water.
The clever bit: Saying "no" to bottled water - and the 13 billion plastic bottles sold in Britain every year (just 3 billion of which are recycled) - is catching on but is still hard work.
THE WORLD COMMUNITY GRID
In a nutshell: Your computer does ethical stuff in the background.
The clever bit: The considerable spare capacity of our home computers is used to make lighter work of some of humanity's most important calculations. The idea is simple: While you use a fraction of your machine's capacity to go about mundane stuff, IBM's World Community Grid runs calculations in the background pertaining to molecular mechanics in order to find the next generation of solar cells for Harvard University.
Alone, it is estimated, it would take Harvard's department of chemistry and molecular biology computers about 22 years to do the necessary calculations for the Clean Energy Project, but using our spare computer capacity, researchers hope this can be reduced to a matter of two years.
Already nearly half a million users have installed the simple software and signed up (www.worldcommunitygrid.org) to perform calculations that their owners could never understand.
STRATEGIC ORGANICS
In a nutshell: Organic pick'n'mix.
The clever bit: Organic production has lots of eco merits, but the thing that made organics the darling of the shopping trolley was the fact that their production ruled out pesticides. But however skewed the economics (critics contend that conventionally produced food does not reflect its true environmental cost), organic produce still attracts a premium.
So strategic organic is about prioritising which items need to be organic, and which non-organic (and therefore cheaper) products you can get away with. The bible of Strategic Organic, the US Environmental Working Group report published in October 2008, ranks fruits and vegetables by the amount of pesticides found on each and is based on testing 43,000 products.
The 12 types of non-organic produce to be avoided (the "dirty dozen"): Peaches are the "dirtiest", followed by apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, imported grapes, pears, spinach and potatoes. Meanwhile vegetables such as broccoli, asparagus and onions have relatively low levels - so you can get away with non-organic versions. They are the "cleanest" foods, with avocados, pineapples, mangos, frozen sweetcorn, frozen peas, asparagus, kiwis, bananas and cabbage.
- OBSERVER
