Greed for Space

We live on a small island. Yet we covet space for living or moving about. Many visitors from Europe find the size of our individual living space extraordinary. Proverbs 1:19 comes at the end of a passage admonishing those who are ‘greedy for gain’. This applies to unnecessary space as much as to excess money.

Although our population is increasing, we enlarge our houses and cars if we are able. We usually heat them with gas and, in the case of transport, often use fossil fuels to move them. Space and movement cost.

We demand too much air around us; moreover it has to be heated or cooled. As Christians we should not live in homes bigger than we need simply because we can afford them. Conspicuous consumption is not for us. Our homes should be heated by renewable electricity by a heat pump or Far Infrared electrical heating. If they are heated by gas, our carbon dioxide emissions are much increased if our home is bigger than it need be. The same of course applies to church buildings! I have some affluent neighbours; they ask me, “Would I save money by installing a heat pump like you?” I say, “No, but you would help to save life on earth as we know it”. At that point they lose interest. God’s creation is at risk if we put monetary costs above carbon dioxide reduction. It may mean we have to go on fewer holidays, particularly by air. But not only do we like to have more space around us but we also like to cover more space on our journeys on holiday. God’s creation staggers under such carbon profligacy.

By installing massive insulation, filling the rooms with people day and night and installing Far Infrared heating, PV panels and batteries. Baildon Methodist Church is beginning to experience days in the summer with no electricity bill for all the community meals, lighting and activities for 1100 people a week. Free renewable electricity is not an impossible dream but a treasurer’s delight. If we have fewer people in our buildings in the winter, each uses far more energy per head than if the buildings are busy.

Humankind has a problem. As Cregan-Reid wrote, “We have brains because we move, and plants don’t need them because they are static.” Humans will always move. We travel incessantly by foot or mechanical means. Marchett’s Constant (1989) states, “People have always averaged 1 ½ hours travel a day.”

On our roads it is normal to see cars carrying one person. Buses are commonly carrying less than seven people (the breakeven number for a standard bus to cover its costs). Cars have grown bigger: the mini is now the size of a maxi. Why? One reason is that diesel and petrol engines are so efficient. So instead of reducing the size and weight of the car to economise on emissions, we increase it to bolster our egos. Citroen do produce a tiny car, the Ami, and Renault have a micro-car, the Twizy; they are cheap and fun. But few are buying them in Britain.

If we are in a moving space, we occupy the area we have just left as well as the area we are about to enter. When we move very fast, as in a plane, the space we appropriate for ourselves is vast. On land, immobile cars have sterilised huge spaces on the earth: car parks are unused for much of the day whether they are on the drive of a house or on the enormous areas of tarmac around shopping centres. As the Mayor of Bogotá pointed out “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.” As we inch towards ensuring vehicles pay for the mileage covered, the use of public transport becomes more and more economic. Public transport services could be, as on the Manchester Metrolink, roughly once every 10 minutes, a service interval which means that they are willingly used.

We are inching towards smaller cars. In Haarlem in the Netherlands, Sydney in Australia and in Houston in Texas the advertising of high carbon emitting vehicles is restricted. Local trade has increased; the air quality has improved. We are moving slowly towards reducing the space taken up by petrol stations, pipelines and oil and gas storage. Europe is beginning to close oil refineries. A less celebrated benefit of electrical power is that it needs little storage.

Undoubtedly travel using our feet is healthier than using a fossil fuel driven mechanical contrivance. We bewail our overweight children. Yet we give them lifts in our cars or provide buses to get them to school even when they could and should walk. In every secondary school where I have worked, the bill for buses was far higher than the amount of money spent on books and equipment. If we want fitter children and a cleaner environment, we need to reduce parental choice of school so that children can walk to school in fresh air. ‘In walking is wisdom.’ (Jay Griffiths)

In Mark 16:15 Jesus says “Proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” We cannot do that if we are claiming more space in it as our own instead of sharing it with all – people, trees, creatures, plants and waters.

The space that really matters to us is not light years away; it is immediately around us.

By John D Anderson, Member of Baildon Methodist Church, Bradford