And Another Thing

We need to sex up the simple stuff, says
Martin Wright

Why are the most effective things in life the least sexy?I’ve spent the last six months renovating a terraced house, trying to make it as eco-efficient as possible on a tight budget. And I’ve just discovered what a huge disappointment I am to friends and colleagues. “I bet you’re going to have one of those micro-wind things on the roof,” they say, gleeful with anticipation. Then: “What do you mean, you’re not? I thought you were supposed to be green…”

“When I told them about my insulation, they dozed off.”

“Well I’m trying to be! So that’s why I’m making sure it’s really well insulated. We’ve got this amazing stuff, it’s about a foot thick, and you pack it in under the floorboards and in the loft and it’s got great thermal retention capacity and… hello? Hello-o...” What a surprise. They’ve dozed off.

Which means they miss the bit where I try to explain that the energy, carbon and money we’re saving thanks to the insulation, adds up to much, much more than the gains we’d get from the wind turbine - undeniably cute though it is.

“It’s cheaper to save outright than to source more greenly.”

If money were no object, sure I’d have one, along with a fetching array of solar panels, too. But the truth is that, by and large, it’s always cheaper, and more effective, to save outright than to source more greenly.

And what a dull, boring truth that is.

“Come up and see my windmill” could almost be a pick-up line (in certain small circles, at least). “Come up and see my insulation” isn’t going to cut it with anyone - at least, not anyone you’d actually want in your loft space.

“We want icons, we want totems: we don’t want boring insulation…”

It’s understandable. We live in a highly visual culture - we want icons, we want totems. We don’t want stuff that’s boring, or invisible (or, in the case of insulation, both). The media buzzes with symbolic shorthands. A Rolex says you’re rich; a windmill says you’re green.

It’s particularly true with transport. “She drives a Prius” is shorthand for “she’s got Hollywood cool, a bit of spare cash, and she cares…” It works the other way round as well. The recent surprise dip in sales of 4x4s surely has something to do with the fact that, thanks to a swift change in the zeitgeist, they’re suddenly sprouting huge invisible bubbles of disdain. Bubbles which shout “I don’t give a toss about the climate or you”, in letters six feet tall… Not so sexy after all.

So is there a visible symbol of “my home is incredibly eco-efficient thanks to great fat chunks of insulation in every nook and cavity”? Well, yes there is, actually - although thanks to global warming, it’s visible less often than it was. Frost on the roof. If you’ve got it (assuming you’re not desperately under-heated), it means you’re sealing in the warmth - preventing it from leaking out of the house to toast the tiles.

Trouble is, as iconic statements go, it’s a bit… subtle. Environmentalist Ed Gillespie has an idea to boost the impact. Why not insist that all new roofs feature a set of special heat-sensitive tiles, he suggests. Not just laid any old how, but positioned very precisely. If the roof stayed cool, the frost would remain in a uniform layer.

But if warmed from below, it would melt faster on the special tiles - causing them to spell out the letters ‘T-W-A-T’ to a watching world. Making the invisible visible - and shouting it from the rooftop, to boot.

Martin Wright is Green Futures editor-at-large.

12 January 2007

Martin Wright