Everyone else is banging on about the Greenhouse Effect so I don't see why I shouldn't as well. We Alpine Classic riders have a very direct interest in this after all: I don't know about you but I certainly don't fancy the thought of climbing Tawonga Gap in 45 degree heat. At 6:30am.
And I'm sure Phil and his fellow AAC Committee members want to avoid difficult decisions like shifting the event to Queen's Birthday Weekend, or relocating the whole shebang to the freshly de-glaciated mountains of Greenland.
Even our previously ultra-sceptical PM has been heard talking about climate change in public!
I actually have a theory that John Howard has known about global warming all along, but that he wants it to hurry up and defrost those icy Canberra mornings that keep threatening to freeze his bits off as he power walks around Lake Burley Griffin. Who cares if Lake Burley Griffin dries up over summer? - Parliament's not sitting then and our PM stays well clear of Canberra. And last time I looked there was still plenty of clearance between Sydney Harbour's high tide mark and the ground floor level of Kirribilli, so nothing to worry about there either.
Now, we might have got a different point of view and some earlier action out of Johnny H if he'd become a convert to cycling and entered a few recent AAC's. (But I'm not sure the sight of our PM decked out in cycling gear would have done a lot for the sport's image, if his choice of power-walking clobber is anything to go by - just imagine him wobbling along dressed in an Australian cricket team tracksuit and an early 1980's stackhat)
No, I think this is a case where we cyclists have to take responsibility for our own self-interests, so I've been doing some intensive research into how we can introduce a bit more environmental responsibility into our training for the big event, and come up with the following ideas:
Cycling To Work
Obvious you might say, but the real attraction for me was when I realised I could count the 10km ridden to and from work as "AAC training", instantly trebling or quadrupling my weekly totals, even if the biggest hill is a 5 metre pimple. Only problem is it can get a bit hot for riding around this time of year, compared with the air-conditioned car.
Which train of thought led me to a more hair-shirted suggestion:
Turn Off The AirCon
Apparently air-conditioners use lots of power, which results in lots of CO2 emissions, which accelerate global warming, which causes more air-conditioners to be installed! This must be one of those positive feedback loops the climate science pointyheads go on about. Now, turning off that aircon would be uncomfortable, especially if you're on the indoor trainer 'cos it's too hot for riding outdoors, but perhaps it would actually give us an acclimatization opportunity for the next AAC!
I'll let some of you folks out there try it this year and if it seems to work, or at least doesn't kill you, I might even have a go myself sometime in the future.
Wind Generation (I)
Some crowd of deluded greenies has installed a forest of windmills not far from a coastal road where I (very occasionally) train, completely wrecking the bucolic rural views. Damn shame they let them build it there if you ask me. However by a process of word association, wind generators made me think of wind trainers and the brilliant idea of connecting one up to a generator to power the household while I'm training! We could even look at going totally off-grid. But I wonder how my family would feel about getting only one or two hours of electricity per month?
Wind Generation (II)
This one occurred to me as I pondered my dietary and carbo loading strategy for the Classic. I had earlier read in the appropriately named Stern Report that methane's impact on global warming is about 220 times worse than poor old CO2, which clearly doesn't deserve the bum wrap it receives in the press. It struck me that as the early morning posse of Alpine Classic riders heads off for Tawonga Gap each year, all fortified with as much high carb food as they can eat, global methane emissions must go through the roof. Clearly some of the princely budget of 0.000000005% of GDP that the government has allocated to greenhouse strategies could very usefully be directed away from low emission coal and into low emission carb research.
Cycling to Bright
You've all seen - been part of even - the cavalcade of high powered, expensive and mostly imported vehicles headed up the Hume to Bright each Australia Day weekend. Some of the cars those bikes are mounted on are pretty flash as well. And as I reflected on the greenhouse impacts of all this driving, I recalled an arresting image after one recent AAC of seeing a lone, grey-bearded rider plugging gamely up the road to Wangaratta the following day, complete with tent and camping gear on his bike. "Of course", I thought, "Phil and the committee should make it mandatory for all participants to cycle to and from Bright for the Classic."
And it would also modestly increase the event's degree of difficulty, something I'm sure many riders have been yearning for immensely.
Carbon Offsets
My final flash of inspiration arrived after I'd spent a hard day reading about "carbon sequestration" and "carbon emission offsets" as ways of combating global warming. I thought I'd relax by perusing the pages of a glossy cycling magazine, poring over pictures of bikes I can't afford. Then I realized that we cyclists all have the perfect way to offset the unavoidable CO2 impacts of our daily activities: Just go out and buy a new carbon fibre bike every year!!
Tie up in that new frame the same amount of carbon that you contribute annually to CO2 emissions, and bingo, you're carbon neutral! And as you parade that flashy new machine before friends and family you can say that you really only bought it for the environmental benefits. Everyone's happy!
I got really excited by this idea until I did some calculations and discovered that:
a) my shed (let alone my budget) isn't quite big enough hold 1,500 new bikes every year; or
b) I'd have a fair bit of trouble pedaling to the top of Buffalo on 13 tonne bike. Even one made of carbon fibre.
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