Pupillage Postscipt: Some Very Scary Statistics

The Bar Standards Board - the body which regulates the training and discipline of barristers - has just published the Woods Report on the Bar Vocational Course. The BVC is the professional postgraduate diploma that aspiring barristers must complete between getting a law degree or conversion course and doing pupillage; I start mine, at BPP London, in September.

The Woods Report was aimed at two main issues affecting the current BVC. One is that it is sometimes seen as not providing the relevant skills needed to enter pupillage. The other, and in some ways more immediate concern, is that the BVC providers are seen as allowing too many weak candidates onto and through the course with little prospect of attaining a pupillage or tenancy as a barrister. The report's main conclusions are summarised here, but in essence the course was generally found fit for purpose (which is a relief, given how much I'm spending to do it) but recommendations were made to fine-tune it to better sit with current needs. Much more of the meat of the report went into the second issue, for which some very sobering statistics were supplied.

( Numbers to make your eyes water )

Farnborough 2008, part 1: Intro, and the A380

Last weekend I made the trip to Farnborough to go to the biennial Air Show. In large part this was to see the newly-restored Avro Vulcan (more pics to come) but I'll readily confess an enthusiasm for airshows that I've been indulging since I first went to Farnborough in 1978.

At this point some of you might note that I've committed to trying to minimise my flying and ask how this squares with attending air shows. My views on this are:

1) I'm not anti-aviation, I am just seeking to avoid unnecessary carbon expenditure, and I have decided that by my own standards, many of the flights I might make are not really necessary.

2) Given that aviation will continue (and it would be a bad world where it went away) it should be as environmentally friendly as possible. That means continued R&D, and so ongoing efforts by the aerospace industry to sell new, more efficient aircraft. It was very noticeable that the most prominent theme of manufacturers' display stands this year was environmental efficiency.

3) Even viewed as a spectacle, air displays divide their carbon footprint amongst an awfully large audience.

I arrived in time to go around the trade exhibition, and although many of the stands were closed for the public days there was some very interesting stuff on display. In particular, I got to talk to the representatives of a rapid-prototyping firm, so got some more useful discussion points for my dissertation. Then it was out to the crowd line to get a place near the front for some photography.

To say that I took a lot of pictures would be putting it mildly. By the time I was done I had 650 to download, hence the delay whilst I've sorted and prepared them. I'll be putting them up in batches, so let's start with the aircraft that opened the show: the new Airbus A380.

( Lots of pictures of one whole lot of Plane. )

A best-efforts approach to carbon offsets?

So, if I do find myself with good reason for flying, is there anything I can do to offset the resulting CO2? Offset schemes have had a bad press lately, and often with good reason; all to many of them are ineffectual, be it though inappropriate measures, multiple counting of carbon credits, or offset against reduction measures that would have happened anyway. Nonetheless, there are ways to accredit offset schemes and having done some research it seems that CDM Gold Standard is reasonably credible; it is endorsed by major environmental NGOs and seems to use sensible appraisal criteria.

Looking at the CDM-approved projects, it seems that an appropriate one for someone in the UK seeking to offset carbon use is ClimateCare, which helpfully both gives calculators for specific sorts of emissions or, if you know the details of the CO2 offset you want, lets you buy it directly by tonne.

Even so, there is considerable uncertainty as to exactly how much of even a credible offset you should make. Air travel in particular is subject to a lot of unknowns, and I've seen estimates of the appropriate forcing factor of around 4 (i.e a tonne of CO2 emitted by an aircraft has the warming effect of 4 tonnes emitted at ground level). It therefore seems to make sense to me to err on the side of caution and apply a factor of 4 multiplier for offsetting aircraft flights. And, of course, offsetting should take second place to simply not generating the emission at all. Even credible offsets should be seen as compensatory measures for justifiable emission, not a method of buying an indulgence for something I would not otherwise have done.

So, I am thinking of setting a personal policy on these lines:

1) Decide if my journey is really necessary, as defined by my own standards (which I will say are mine, and I do not expect them to be the same as anyone else's, nor that they should be seen in any way as a benchmark). Factors include whether it is for work, for wider benefit, or just for my own purposes, and what the total CO2 output involved will be.

2) Use a reputable CDM Gold Standard offset, applying a multiplier of 4 for aircraft emission offsets. This will at current prices add around £80 to the cost of a return air fare to the US - not, given factor (1), that I expect to make many of those for the time being.

3) Do an annual offset of my approx 4 tonnes of personal CO2 emission arising from personal energy consumption and local travel. This will cost about £40 per year.