“A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist“
BBC series “Yes, Minister”, 1982
Positivity matters. But so does realism. We struggle to combine the two.
A few years ago, Stephen Sackur – presenter of HARDtalk for two decades before the BBC decided to scrap it earlier this year – interviewed the environmentalist, George Monbiot. After listening with raised eyebrows to Monbiot’s assessment of why agriculture is unsustainable, Sackur interrupted: “you don’t really understand people, do you?” Monbiot replied that he was uncompromising when it came to the truth; but Sackur was questioning whether, by coming across as morose, Monbiot lost his audience.
Perhaps, in words attributed to TS Eliot, humankind cannot bear very much reality.
Permaculture
Earlier this month, I went to the London Permaculture Festival. It’s the sort of event that helps one to feel positive, by gaining inspiration from impressive individuals on ways to live in harmony with the natural world. The festival included a talk by the association’s chief executive, Andy Goldring, on Net Zero Leeds. Leeds is one of the cities in Britain that has made the most progress on decarbonising, with an impressive array of initiatives over the last five years or so across the energy, transport, waste management and building sectors. Leeds’ energy transformation is most noticeable in its flagship district heating network, Leeds PIPES.
Back home, I thought I’d look at the numbers. According to the Leeds Magazine, March 2025 edition, by converting non-recyclable waste into heating, Leeds PIPES delivers between 14,000 and 15,000 MWh of heat energy annually, whilst cutting residents’ bills by 10-25%. The Council claims that Leeds PIPES saved nearly 6,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2023. That figure is surprisingly high: given that the carbon content of natural gas – the fuel being displaced – is 0.2 tonnes per MWh, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that LEEDS Pipes is saving around 3,000 tonnes of CO2. But I guess the Council may be factoring in additional savings in the form of avoided methane emissions from the waste.
So I did the following calculation. Let’s assume a reduction in emissions from home heating of 6,000 tonnes of CO2. Leeds has around 350,000 occupied properties: I calculated this from figures in the article and separately confirmed it by a web search. The article says that these households consume, on average, 11,600 kWh per annum of natural gas, which it also says is slightly higher than the national average (the regulator Ofgem gives a figure of 11,500 kWh for the latter). Which in turn means that Leeds’ households consume about 4,000,000 MWh of gas per annum, emitting around 800,000 tonnes of CO2 in the process.
Or, to put it another way, the flagship Leeds PIPES programme saves 0.75% of the emissions from domestic gas consumption in the city (or less if a proportion of upstream methane emissions is attributed to household gas demand).
Regarding home insulation, another initiative, the Leeds Magazine outlines an impressive retrofit programme on the Holtdale estate. However, there is a risk of double-counting benefits, since the impact of that in terms of reduced heating requirements should already be factored into the average household gas figure.
On electricity, the article reports that the sprawling Barnsdale solar park east of Leeds powers 13,000 homes – so 3.7% of households if only Leeds homes are supplied, or a smaller percentage if that total includes some homes east of Leeds.
Maybe I’m missing something. I’ll share these calculations with the Permaculture Association and see what they say.
Ostrich behaviour
One can quickly develop a reputation for cynicism, as well as pedantry, by focussing solely on numbers. I must emphasize that the green initiatives in Leeds seem to be truly admirable, especially given all the practical, financial and social obstacles to green progress. And I’m aware of the ‘tipping-point’ argument, namely that once a certain minority of people follow a new path, then the momentum that they create can lead to an unstoppable sea change in social behaviour. But if the dent in greenhouse gas emissions from domestic gas consumption is less than 1% in one of Britain’s greenest cities, then the tipping-point for low-carbon heating still feels pretty distant. Maybe we’ll reach it one day, thanks in no small measure to groups like the Permaculture Association, but we don’t seem to be close yet.
So let’s laud achievements like those of Leeds Net Zero, but let’s also keep them in perspective. And face up to the implications – principally, that green initiatives need an order-of-magnitude increase in support from politicians and society at large.
As a nation – or perhaps as a species, if TS Eliot was right – we seem to be better at being optimistic than realistic. Witness the fiction, put about by politicians and apparently required by the general public, that we can save the NHS or national infrastructure without a significant increase in taxation. Or the dispensing of truth-to-power programmes like HARDtalk. Or the delusion, again nurtured by government at the perceived behest of the general population, that we can solve our climate crisis without any discomfort to our lifestyle.
We need both positivity and realism. The former gives us the will; the latter gives us the direction. To stay positive, maybe we have to consume truth in bite-size chunks, not too much in one go. But if, like the mythical ostrich, our recipe for happiness is to stick our heads in the sand when we’re faced with existential threats and lose all sense of direction – if optimism descends into ostrichism, so to speak – then it’s hard to see how we can survive them.