A new economics?

This week I bought an excellent book by economist Ha-Joon Chang  called "Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and The Threat to the Developing World". I'm looking forward to reading it, as his other book "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" is one of my favourites. On the other hand, I'm feeling somewhat jaded by the effusive comments on the back cover about these new and compelling ideas. I don't want to knock the ideas themselves, but I would contest the concept that they are new.
In fact, for the past 15 years I have campaigned about global injustice based on the evidence through which Christian Aid, WDM and many others have prominently and repeatedly demonstrated that the free market policies and privatisation forced onto poor countries by richer ones damage the countries forced to adopt them.

Of Rationality, Engineering and Faith

On Sunday I joined the audience for “The Big Questions”, a BBC2 debate filmed in York to be broadcast Sun 4th May at 10am. I listened to a range of speakers (including author Alastair McGrath, who was sitting in front of me) on the question, “Is it rational to believe in God?”

This got me thinking that in matters of both faith and engineering, reason can only take you so far, because there are limits to what we can know. Every day I try to apply scientific principles to model how a structure or slope will work, based on the evidence I have been able to obtain. But can we ever truly predict the loads that will be applied to a structure or the worst credible weather event that might occur? And performance will be significantly affected by how people actually use or maintain the structure over its 120 year design life, which might be completely different to what we expect (could the Victorians have predicted the rise of the motor car?)

Learning to see

Having celebrated the joyful hope of new life at Easter with a great feast at my brother's house (thanks Mick!) I have a new challenge for the next seven weeks up to Pentecost: I want to learn to recognise more wildlife.

As an engineer, it's obvious that I notice different things than other people in the landscape because I know what I'm looking for and I'm interested in what things are for. So on train rides, I notice radio masts, retaining walls and rock netting and as a cyclist I know every set of traffic lights on my routes around York. I know which ones are old fashioned and based on a fixed sequence and timing, which are camera controlled (eg PUFFIN crossings which allow elderly and disabled people more time to cross) and which rely on pressure pads in the road to detect traffic wanting to turn (which don't work when you're not as heavy as a car!)

But while I enjoy seeing flowers in gardens and have learned to tell the difference between a courgette and a bean plant by growing them myself, I often don't know the names of the trees, plants, butterflies and birds I see every day when out and about - and I think that's a shame.

Can we engineer an environmentally responsible HS2?

On the HS2 front, I think we should take the position of a "critical friend" - my previous post argues that there is a genuine need to be addressed and therefore I believe we should support the principle of building new rail capacity (it's not a vanity project as some have characterised it), but the detail of where and how we build it needs a lot of careful thought. Route selection for London to Birmingham is slowly getting there, but the preferred route for the sections further north is still under discussion and we can have an influence here (the route will eventually go to Manchester and Leeds and then on to Scotland). 

Should an environmentalist support HS2?

I have promised previously to write about HS2 and this week presented an opportunity as I debated the issue with friends from Christian Ecology Link. The discussion was sparked off by a recent Guardian article which concluded that “areas of irreplaceable natural value along the planned HS2 route, including 48 ancient woodlands that are home to rare bats and butterflies would be damaged by just phase one of the route (London to Birmingham)”. So is it possible to justify such destruction and still call myself an environmentalist?

Winter Woes for a (not very) resilient railway

This week, I had an interesting discussion with the asset management engineer at Network Rail who is responsible for all the earthworks between London and the Scottish border on the east side of the Pennines. On his wall, he had a set of Met Office maps which compare the rainfall in a particular month with the 30-year average: the South East and South West are completely covered in deep blue, indicating greater than 200% and 300% of the normal average rainfall for three months in a row (Dec 2013 to Feb 2014). Fortunately for my colleague, the East Coast Mainline has mainly kept out of the danger zone, so we've escaped the worst of the problems.

2014: Review of the first quarter!

We're nearly at the end of the first quarter of 2014 and I think that makes it time for a review of the year so far. I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately but I'm hoping to make up for that in April – I have loads of ideas and looking forward to some time over Easter to put them onto paper (virtually, at least). I set myself the aim this year that every month I will try to make a difference to climate change in four areas: personal and work-related carbon emissions, campaigning and prayer.