roads of stone » global warming

234. Fukushima, Japan and nuclear power in the UK

Roads — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:01:42 +0000

The triple shock of a huge earthquake, a devastating tsunami and an unfolding nuclear accident rocked Japan in March, and my condolences go out to all the many thousands affected.

Luckily, none of this could never happen here in Britain. Or could it?

Despite public disquiet over the safety of the industry since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear power has regained political favour in recent years.

Amidst desperately slow progress in investing in renewables to fill a looming energy gap in the UK, successive governments have presented nuclear as a clean, cheap and proven solution which also offers zero carbon emissions.

Faced with public concerns after Fukushima, ministers have maintained that the UK is unlike Japan because there are no appreciable seismic risks. We do have earthquakes, but mostly they are minor.

But low seismic risk falls far short of guaranteeing safety. The more important question is whether there are risks from geological or meteorological events which could threaten the safety of our existing and future nuclear power plants. And I’m afraid the answer is a resounding yes.

All our nuclear power plants are located by the sea. The sites chosen combine a ready source of cooling water with locations in relatively remote areas some distance from centres of population.

If minor leaks of radioactive material occur, as historically they have done at Sellafield and Dounreay, the health risks have been minimal, so far.

Looking beyond the troubling observation that the Irish Sea close to Sellafield was (until last week) the most radioactive stretch of ocean in the world, are seaside locations good places to site nuclear power plants?

It depends on whether the coastlines chosen are safe from natural hazards.

Even in Japan, the tsunami risk was seriously underestimated.

Predictions allowed for a 5m wave, but the northeast coast was struck on 11th March by a 10m wave, and the defences were completely inadequate for this.

Now Britain does not experience frequent powerful earthquakes like Japan, but we do have tsunamis. And the effectiveness of tsunami defences around our British nuclear plants? Probably very limited.

In 1755, the massive Lisbon earthquake unleashed a devastating tsunami across the North Atlantic. By the time the wave hit the coast of southern England four hours later, it was diminished, but still over three metres high.

In January 1607, a tsunami resulting from a submarine slide somewhere in the Bristol Channel may have been the cause for a mysterious fair-weather flooding event which struck along 570 km of coastline in North Devon, Somerset, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. Reports describe a mysterious tide which rose suddenly between 5 and 8 metres higher than normal.

The area affected then includes the site of the Hinkley Point and Oldbury nuclear plants in Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

An official flood risk report on Oldbury estimates that a tsunami here will not exceed 0.1 m in height, somehow ignoring the historical evidence from 1607 of flooding over 50 times higher than this.

Rare as they may be around our UK shores, two devastating tsunami within the last five hundred years is two too many for comfort. The recent Japan earthquake was the strongest in the area for at least 140 years. But it happened.

Tsunamis will hit our British coasts again. The effects will be devastating because we’re completely unprepared — and so are our nuclear power plants.

And what about storms? The nuclear power plant at Dungeness is situated on a lonely shingle spit, some 75 miles from London. Close enough to provide power to our capital city, whilst far enough away from population to leave some room for error.

It all sounds good until we remember that this shingle coast is very mobile. Just 20 km along the shore, the village of Winchelsea was literally swept away by a massive storm in 1287. Such storms may not happen very often, but when another one occurs, Dungeness will be at risk.

Fortunately, UK Energy Minister Chris Huhne rejected Dungeness as the site for one of our next generation of nuclear power plants. But rising sea levels pose a risk to the other sites which were approved.

At Oldbury, the existing flood defences currently provide cover for a 200 year flood, but assurance falls to the level of a 100 year event by 2025. Coastal defences will offer effectively no flood protection at all to the Oldbury site by 2055.

It’s clear that storms, tsunamis and global sea level rise will place our existing and new nuclear plants in danger, even in the UK. There’s no safe place to site a nuclear power station, and we should stop building them, right away.

A few minutes working through the My2050 energy model for the UK shows that withdrawing from nuclear power will leave our energy future as very challenging indeed. But it’s the right decision.

Because the awful experiences of Japan this year – and they look far from over yet – are a timely reminder of just how desperate the nuclear present can be.

220. Focus on a greener road ahead

Roads — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:35:29 +0000

My car was ten years old last week. As chance would have it, 100,000 miles came up on the same day. That’s the most miles of any car I’ve owned.

By European standards, it’s a middle of the road kind of vehicle. A 2000 Ford Focus with a 1.8 litre petrol engine, which has delivered 39.8 mpg over the life of the car.

The UK government launched a scrappage scheme last April, and extended it in September. My car qualifies. If I scrap the car, the government and dealer will each give me £1,000 off the full list price of any new vehicle I buy.

At first sight that’s good, but a new family car still costs £15,000. The cynic in me also noted that before the scrappage scheme began, dealers were offering discounts of £2,000 to drag buyers from the street. Those offers aren’t available within the scrappage scheme.

The result is that the taxpayer is writing a cheque for £2,000 to manufacturers for every new car sold, while the real savings to buyers are minimal. I’d be better off buying a one-year old model and saving £5,000 off the list price that way.

In addition to supporting the car industry, the scrappage scheme aims to offer environmental benefits by taking older, thirsty cars off the road and replacing them with modern, more fuel-efficient models. But does it?

My next car will be more fuel-efficient and likely smaller. I’ve seen a new Ford Fiesta Econetic claiming 76 mpg, and the equivalent Focus will do 66 mpg. Even a basic 2009 1.6 Ford Focus diesel gives 60 mpg. So is there a clear environmental case for scrapping my 10-year old car and buying a newer model?

It’s not easy to be sure. 10,000 miles a year in my present car burns 1140 litres of petrol. Every litre used produces 2.31 kg of CO2, so that equates to around 2.6 tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere.

A litre of diesel produces 2.68 kg of CO2. At 60mpg, a year’s motoring uses 760 litres, contributing only 2.00 tonnes of CO2.

There’s an embodied energy cost in building a new car, but the figures vary according to who publishes them. The Society of Motor Manufacturers claims that 1 tonne of CO2 is produced in building a new car, but most analysts see this estimate as far too low. Volkswagen’s Life Cycle Analysis for the new Golf indicates an energy cost from manufacture approaching 6 tonnes of CO2.

If I extend my car’s life by 50% by running it for a further five years, this will save half a new car from ever being built. Let’s say this will save 3 tonnes of CO2. That means that in driving 50,000 miles in the next five years, I’ll add 13 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. A new car would add only 10 tonnes, but the energy cost of building half an extra car pushes the total back up to 13 tonnes again.

These equations take no account of the waste of finite materials incurred in building a new car when the old one is still running well. So although I’m keen to reduce my carbon footprint, overall the environmental case is hardly made.

Will the car last? I’ve never driven a car this long before, but so far the car feels solid — touch wood.

Nearly all the common faults in Focuses have already happened. I’ve had two new wheel bearings. A new link arm. The car over-revs in car parks when it’s half warm and it stutters now and then. A speedo failed. And the central locking doesn’t ever work in winter.

The car isn’t as shiny as once it was. There’s a dent where the plumber drove into it while delivering our new and greener boiler. But I can live with all of that.

Reviewers say my Focus should be good for 150,000 miles. One determined optimist wrote that at 100,000 miles the car was only halfway through its life. The highest mileage car I found on sale had 146,000 miles, although scrappage gloss and pitiful resale values may deter folk from going further at the moment.

So decision made — now what more can I do to cut the carbon cost of driving?

* Avoid short journeys where the engine is run from cold
* Stick to speed limits
* Keep the tyres fully inflated
* Have the car regularly serviced and maintained
* Turn off the engine at traffic lights (like the Swiss do)
* Eliminate excessive acceleration and minimise braking
* Remove junk from the boot and seat pockets

I do all these already. I drive like a granny, and I walk or cycle my local errands. But there are two more things that I can do.

Most importantly, I need to drive less this year. And finally, at the car’s last service in December I switched to Michelin Energy tyres.

These are a little more expensive, but their lower rolling resistance offers a 2.5 % fuel saving.

That’s just 1 mpg. But there’s life in the old car yet. And in environmental terms, every little helps.

218. A turning tide – from Houston to Copenhagen

Roads — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:50:28 +0000

June in Houston. It’s 99F outside as we wait an hour at immigration.

A glossy US arrival video is playing on a giant screen above our booth, but we have to wait an hour and offer all our fingerprints before we’re free to pass.

Welcome to America.

Obama’s America — but has it really changed?

The freeway towards the city looks just the same. A little less traffic perhaps.

Wide blue skies are yawning high above the endless sprawl beside the road. The downtown towers inch nearer across the final swoop of our 5,000 mile journey to reach The Loop.

In the hotel at last, I flop my bag and body down and switch on the TV. There’s a programme talking all about energy costs, and today’s phone-in prize is (quite remarkably) a free green audit of your home.

And it strikes me that I’ve never heard this stuff in Texas before.

All fresh and showered by sunset, we walk on Main Street to find a place to eat. It’s hotter than July this evening, but after ten hours in an aluminium tube we’re in no mood for air-conditioned civility. Some al fresco nachos, a cold beer and a simple plate of enchiladas are all we seek.

We find them at Cabo on Travis. A perfect terrace to catch the steamy breeze of sundown.

And then unexpectedly, outside the restaurant, we find surprise again. A parked Mini, with just the perfect bumper sticker. Actual Size.

* * * * *

The morning is always slow in coming, when you wake six hours before the day.

Finally, the sky lightens and we’re running down the sidewalk. Right on Main Street, left past Cabo and onto Buffalo Bayou’s footpath beyond.

It’s perfect running. If you want to catch America, look above you at the looping freeways. Cast your eyes across the sunrise to a city touching clouds beyond the morning bayou.

We try to find another bridge. Eventually, I ask a runner. No problem — about a mile ahead, she says. And then she adds, mysteriously, You have to go to war.

Her words puzzle me. Because that’s bloody cryptic, from an American to a Brit. We were there with you in Iraq, you know. Even if we didn’t really want to be. But perhaps she means the running — and if she does, then that’s exactly right. In the morning summer heat, a war is precisely how this feels.

The sun is fully up now. We run east towards a distant skyscraper, and finally beneath it, we find our bridge. Waugh Street.

We laugh our way across the bayou as I look up. I’ve never noticed this tower before, but now the corporate logo screams its tale to anyone from anywhere around the globe. It’s AIG.

It’s three miles back to downtown Houston — towards the searing sun — and amidst my struggle I start to wonder. Can America really change?

It’s early days, here in the energy capital of the world. But there are signs. A little less traffic, a smaller car or two. A feature on energy saving on Texan television. A lonely logo on a single skyscraper which symbolises the changing financial climate of this world more strongly than any other image I know.

And suddenly it seems that the tide is turning in this battle, after all.

Copenhagen still lies six months ahead, and a positive outcome may be too much to hope for. But a narrow definition of success or failure at a single conference — however momentous — perhaps that’s not the issue.

The real news this morning is that the world has changed. For now, at least, the economic horizon is painted a different colour.

And on energy and this steamy climate, America will engage.

191. Two years of Roads of Stone

Roads — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:42:15 +0000

The second anniversary of this site passed midway through a busy August. An office move and a new computer have diverted me since, but the milestone seems worth marking all the same.

There hasn’t been much time to write. This isn’t a site for daily updates – the past twelve months at Roads of Stone have seen just 28 posts.

Still, that adds up to around 20,000 words, squeezed into odd moments here and there, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I’ve been busy.

Those words have extended to travel writing on Kenya (seven posts), Scotland, Texas, Bermuda and France.

Conversations have extended to cover geology, music, golf, UK and US politics, the history of horseracing and Shakespearean theatre, petroleum economics, global warming, the urban development of London and French cooking.

These diverse topics have been digested with a steady diet of running, both in my Surrey and Sussex hills at home and across wider horizons abroad.

The most popular new posts from the past twelve months were those on Kenya, attracting over 8,000 readers. High energy prices have defined the year, and my analysis of the oil price shock was read over 1,600 times.

Amongst older posts, my account of the 2007 London to Brighton bike ride found nearly 3,000 readers, with over 300 on the day after this year’s event.

Traffic has grown from 16,000 views in the first year to 140,000 in the second. Clearly the site has established itself as a destination of choice – for all those politically-minded, sporty rockhounds of a certain age who profess an interest in natural and economic history as well as the survival of this planet.

So what lies ahead? We live in fascinating times – witnessing a global economic crash, a new US President and perhaps a change of UK government, too.

Plenty to think about whilst running, and lots more to see along the way. And in the meantime, thanks to all of you for coming with me.

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190. Conventions and rallies – Sarah Palin and the US Open

Roads — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:05:45 +0000

The news this week from America was electrifying.

After a titanic struggle, the young pretender had seen off the hot favourite. Now only destiny and history awaited.

The crucible of battle beckoned – a chance to banish the incumbent powers through destroying the old master.

And no, I’m not talking about the US Open tennis, even if for just for one moment in the second set it looked like Andy Murray might almost have the game to beat Roger Federer, just as he had swept away Rafael Nadal.

It was the American party conventions and the battle between Barack Obama and John McCain which intrigued. After glowing coverage of the Democratic bash in Denver, the Republican affair attracted little comment here initially.

Flicking the channels for a glimpse of Flushing Meadows last week, I came across a speech by Fred Thompson. The Senator’s deadpan style might almost have been compared by The Guardian to the dullest and most plodding rhetoric offered by our own Gordon Brown, but Thompson gave it a passable attempt.

The speech set out John McCain’s credentials, recalling his suffering and extraordinary courage during the Vietnam war. McCain was a principled and dignified statesman, he said, willing to stand up for what was right, and to fight the establishment machine. Willing to take risks in support of his beliefs.

I might not agree with McCain, I thought, but America does have a proper choice, this time.

A Republican leader able to summon up another kind of change, offering measured wisdom and long experience as practical alternatives to Obama’s vision and idealism.

Two strong candidates – and each of them presenting a pathway into the future.

The case for McCain was made, and Thompson should have stopped there.

Sadly he didn’t. What America doesn’t need, Thompson continued (and forgive me if I paraphrase) is a leader who is popular in Europe. What America doesn’t need is a President who apologises for the damage of these past eight years. Not when our enemies are all around us, pressing fast at the gates of republic.

Well, excuse the world for disagreeing, Senator, but that’s exactly what America does need. To rejuvenate her strongest alliances, to step back from confrontation and isolationism, and to re-engage with the world. To rediscover her friends and to create no more enemies.

How could a tortured prisoner of war like McCain not regret Guantanamo? It beats me, as the inmates of Abu Ghraib and Camp Delta might also have said.

But as instructive as it was, Thompson’s speech is a memory now. An unpleasant ripple, long forgotten in the choppy wake of Sarah Palin. A woman, no less.

It’s well past high time to shatter the glass ceiling. Despite so much progress, prejudice remains ingrained and pervasive, all around us.

Just this week, in telling us that Andy Murray could be the first British winner of a Grand Slam title since Fred Perry in 1936, had our own British media forgotten how Sue Barker took the French Open four decades later, or that Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in 1977? It seems that they had.

So yes, let’s see a woman into the White House, and soon. But surely, it’s insulting the intelligence of women to assume that any woman is the right woman. Even if she’s feisty. Because behind the undoubted charisma and the hockey-mom branding, it doesn’t look that good beneath.

Palin is an evolution denier. A climate change denier. An opponent of AIDS education in schools. A woman who is so in tune with her environment that she lists shooting wild animals as one of her favourite pursuits.

McCain isn’t a healthy man. He’s run a brave race to get this far, but he looks exhausted and lacklustre in the spotlight now, relying on negativity and wild distortions of policy to back his campaign case.

And what of his judgment, and his trumpeted triumph over the party machine? Because measured risk-taking is one thing, but in propelling a trigger-happy Sarah Palin to within one ageing heartbeat from the Presidency, the Republican party seems happy to risk the world far more than this election.

The news from America last night wasn’t good. The brave young pretender was finally foiled by the sheer brilliance of the old campaigner. Andrew Murray will have to wait for another day, and he’ll need to find another level before he can challenge a redeemed Roger Federer. But that day will surely come.

And far beyond Flushing Meadows, will Obama find the poise and the power to dispatch McCain and his gun-toting firebrand of a sidekick, all across America?

It’s hard to predict the future, in politics and sport. But a smile at the net isn’t enough, John and Sarah. Because the ball has gone past you. And running in reverse won’t help hit it back.

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182. The truth about global warming

Roads — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:52:29 +0000

The sun is out again in London, after an unusually cool spring. It’s been a cold winter across much of Europe and North America, too. But the year is turning now, as it always does eventually.

Cooler weather will come and go. Floods, droughts, disasters, snowstorms and heatwaves, too. That is the nature of living on the Earth. You’ll see reporters referring unusual weather events to climate change, but that’s largely misleading, and it’s misinformed as well.

So let’s not get confused. That is only weather, and it’s not the same as climate. Reports like those just serve to confuse the public.

The urgently pressing fact is that climate change is real. And it’s happening.

There’s a clear scientific consensus here, except amongst a tiny minority of scientists who are funded by the very worst elements of the fossil fuel industry. This 2004 article explains the point.

The truth is that just a few vested interests have supported an entirely misguided public belief that real scientists are divided on the issues.

So let me tell you now – they are not.

This delusion of differing scientific opinions is peddled enthusiastically by a small number of isolated but vociferous so-called ‘researchers’, many of them funded by big oil. The tragic legacy of this cynical manipulation of public opinion began with the systematic undermining during the late 1980s and 1990s of the global negotiations leading up to Rio and Kyoto (for details, I recommend the dramatic account within Jeremy Leggett’s book The Carbon War).

A decade on, the scale of misinformation (the denial industry) remains breathtaking, as explored in George Monbiot’s excellent book Heat).

Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth did much to draw worldwide attention to the critical role of manmade carbon emissions in driving recent climate change. But the involvement of a political figure is in some respects distracting, since this is a debate which we simply can’t afford to politicise.

And whilst the science is straightforward, Gore is guilty of some simplifications. We need to appreciate that global temperature variations reflect the superimposed effects of both anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (increasing, and accelerating) and a lower amplitude natural cyclicity in solar insolation (currently entering a relative low).

The solar effects are presently counteracting the influence of rising carbon dioxide, but that is only a temporary reprieve, and it’s not really a reprieve at all.

There’s an excellently-framed analysis here: Climate change in the public debate. A basic appreciation of the science along these lines clearly refutes the oft-cited red herring that global warming stopped in 1998.

That’s a view you’ll hear from the climate change sceptics. They’re good at propaganda, since they’re well funded and well versed in the manipulation of public opinion. But that inference isn’t just misleading – it’s tragically inaccurate.

The point is that inside a decade, the insolation budget will fall again, and carbon dioxide levels will have risen even further, with dangerous effect.

So let me reprise Monbiot, just for a moment. He has four simple questions for anyone who might be inclined to a sceptical view of global warming.

1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?

2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?

3. Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?

4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?

Monbiot continues, “If you can answer ‘no’ to any of these questions, you should put yourself forward for a Nobel Prize. You’ll have turned science on its head.”

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140. The Great Global Warming Swindle

Roads — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:20:00 +0000

A Channel 4 documentary to be broadcast in the UK this Thursday evening and entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle argues that global warming is real, but that it is caused by entirely natural cyclicity in solar insolation.

Predictably this sensationalist claim has already been seized upon by the media. It will doubtless be interpreted by many as proof of the hoary old chestnut that ‘the scientists are divided’ on global warming. Those same people will find easy and equally inaccurate confirmation that there is no need to muzzle their gas-guzzling SUVs or to take the slightest care of our energy resources.

Debate on such an important subject is surely healthy, but I wonder if this programme is really constructive since it appears to be built around little more than blithely damaging misrepresentations of scientific opinion (and fact).

It seems irresponsible that Channel 4 is determined to give peak airtime to this unfounded viewpoint when the arguments to be presented can be dismissed by any qualified scientist (or indeed the average A-level science student) within five minutes and with the aid of a couple of simple graphs.

Natural variation in global insolation does affect climate on a long-term and cyclical basis, and such changes may have been partly responsible for the cooling trend seen in the middle of the 20th Century. But of course this effect is merely superimposed upon (and is now more or less completely swamped by) the enormously larger anthropogenic effect on our climate of increased atmospheric CO₂.

The blunt fact is that the sheer scale and rapidity of the global warming we are now experiencing is unparalleled in the history of this planet, and that global insolation is not the cause.

Sadly, many of our influential policy-makers and a majority of our journalists have a very limited background in or understanding of basic science, so that they are vulnerable to such misinformation presented from an apparently trustworthy source. As indeed is the wider public.

I’m not sure of the best way of addressing this – whether through letters or articles in the national press, or by writing to government or to Channel 4. But I’d be interested in any ideas about how to respond most effectively in this case.

133. Tomorrow – Avril Lavigne and global warming

Roads — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:49:26 +0000

2006 is over, and it’s more than high time that I penned an update to my articles from 2004 and 2005 on global warming and the energy crisis.

Science content is a key component of this site, and I may yet return to write that article, but in truth I’ve been struggling with it all week.

As I ran today, my iPod was set on shuffle, taking me to places that I rarely go. And finally it struck me that instead of writing, I should just leave you with this simple message, delivered directly and emotionally by one young singer-songwriter.

It sounds like a conversation on the environment, from my daughter’s generation to mine.

I was going to write about the offshore windfarm which opened in late 2005 at Kentish Flats to the east of London and the new, much larger Thames Estuary windfarm recently approved nearby. I was going to exhort you to take action and sign up (at no extra cost) to wind electricity.

I was going to take encouragement from the fact that whilst the uptake of green technologies in 2006 was not enough to make a significant difference to greenhouse gas emissions, at least the awareness of the environment (if not the will and commitment to do anything much about it) has been rising steadily.

I was going to lambast the UK and US governments for the wasted environmental and energy opportunities of the past eight years.

I was going to express my disgust with Tony Blair for backing a return to nuclear energy, and my frustration with the misinformed Daily Telegraph editorial team and readership for their mindless joy that several (but not all) of the wind turbines in the UK were still for a few days during December’s fog. That’s not the point – because every single day that those blades are turning, they reduce carbon emissions.

I was also going to mention the unseasonable weather. I completed my 7 miles this afternoon in the 12^oC warmth of what should be deepest January. It’s yet another mild winter after the UK’s warmest ever year in 2006, and it’s likely that 2007 will be the hottest year the globe has seen since records began.

The scientific truth here is beyond debate. But perhaps I must admit that science can sometimes only take you so far in any argument, even this one.

Please listen to that film clip. Link to this post. And do something too, if you can. Not tomorrow, but today.

Because our kids’ future is entirely within our hands. If we all act now, it may still not be too late.

And tomorrow may yet be a different day.

128. October is a summer month

Roads — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:23:35 +0000

October
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care ?

Words and music by U2, October 1981.

A lot can change in just twentyfive years. And this year, the trees aren’t bare, or even brown.

This October is different, because all the trees are green.

Who knows what the world will be like in another twentyfive years ?

But we know that answer already: October will be just another summer month.

As it already is in England, right now. Today.

110. The hands that built America – Houston skylines

Roads — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:41:44 +0000

Oh my love
It’s a long way we’ve -come
From the freckled hills
To the steel and glass canyons
U2 – November 2002

My watch says almost midday, and still I’m waiting for the sun to come up. I’ve been sitting in my hotel room for a couple of hours already, wide awake and yet bleary-eyed with jet-lag, but a glance out of the window and across the freeway shows a resolutely dark sky over the plains beyond The Loop.

Oh well. There’s no point in waiting any longer. I chuck on a T-shirt and shorts, lace up my shoes, trot out through the lobby and hit the sidewalk running.

One of the joys of being a committed runner is that you get to see so much more of the places you visit. I’ve explored the Left Bank, and the Right too, at enormous and gruelling length during my trips to Paris. I’ve seen the Ville de Lumière awaken from its slumbers as the grey summer dawn turns to the first tint of blue. I’ve explored Olympic Park in Calgary in summer, winter and fall – amidst sparkling July skies, golden maple and crusted ice floes buckling the Bow River two metres thick. I’ve looked down on Vienna from amongst ripening vines above the Danube, and run through the chill of an Edinburgh November morning.

And more times than I can remember, I’ve seen the sun go down in some secluded corner of the Mediterranean, enjoying the last glints of azure over a Cretan bay, the aroma of hot Corsican pine wafting down a limestone gorge, and greyly fading October evenings falling over empty Umbrian fields. A thousand windows on the world that ordinary travellers will never share.

Of course, there are less poetic moments as well. The bleak final carpark lap to make up the mileage through a business estate in Reading. A full-on Aberdeen northeaster chilling my bones deep into the docks and along the Footdee seawall. But that’s all part of the territory, too.

So what is the wisdom in heading out alone into the deserted Downtown darkness of America’s fourth largest city a full hour before light ? Maybe it’s best not to think about it too much. When you’re in training, you just have to run.

It won’t be the workout I need, I know, but there’s about thirty minutes there, if I want it. With city streets to cross and some dodgy direction-finding to factor in, they won’t take me that far. Two and a half miles or so – and I can’t remember when last I ran so short. Once, it was my longest ever distance, but in the midst of London Marathon training again – it’s refreshing – almost liberating, in a way.

So now, despite the tiredness from yesterday’s ten hour flight, and the disorienting midday darkness, there’s a spring in my step. Because whatever else the city offers me this morning, I know my legs will easily be up to the challenge.

I head into the street, past the ‘Don’t Walk’ signs, alongside City Hall, with its illuminated clock face, and down to the Allen Theater. Allen Park lies beyond, but I’ve neither the time nor the confidence to explore it this early, so instead an improvised loop brings me back to Wells Fargo Plaza to stare upwards at the skyscrapers supporting black Texas sky. Across the tram tracks on Main Street, I pass a floodlit church and then cruise a slow circle back onto Lousiana and the Skyline District.

It may be a compact Downtown here, with neither the grandeur nor sense of architectural history that Chicago can evoke, but the motley range of seventies and nineties buildings is one appropriately to reflect the cyclical peaks of the oil industry, and the troughs in between. And running around here – it’s like poring over an atlas of the biggest energy corporations in the world. Shell Plaza, Exxon, Texaco, Total, Devon, Hess, Pennzoil.

These wide streets were laid out between the bayous soon after General Sam Houston defeated the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Houston went on to become the first President of the Republic of Texas and the city was named in his honour. This was still a small town of just 45 000 people at the turn of the twentieth century, mostly known for lawlessness, corruption and disease.

But then the gusher at Spindletop on the Gulf of Mexico coast in 1901 changed everything, with the discovery in 1930 of the East Texas oilfield, a five billion barrel global giant, finally setting the scene for economic development on a massive scale.

Over two million people live in Houston today, and the Gulf of Mexico remains one of the most prolific hydrocarbon-producing provinces in the world, with America’s status as a major importer of petroleum largely reflecting its voracious appetite for energy, rather than any lack of commitment in finding and exploiting more reserves from the region.

A hundred years after Spindletop, Houston is now the acknowledged capital of the world’s energy industry. This is the powerhouse, the hands that built and drive the economies and technologies of today’s America, and of the whole world beyond.

That appetite for energy continues, unabated. This is without doubt one of the most energy-intensive cities in the world. Urban development sprawls across the wide open Texas plains here, with four separate centres located beyond the Downtown area, all linked by their own freeways and choking traffic.

Our rental car is the same model I drive at home, but here it’s dwarfed by the gas-guzzling monster trucks that so many Americans just seem to love to drive. All those cars, houses, malls and office blocks gulp more power in hefty air-conditioning which seems to be set cooler than in any other place I’ve ever visited on the planet. And perhaps it has to be – since throughout the long Houston summers, this place is more or less uninhabitable without it.

I listened to the State of the Union address over my Heineken last night. If George Bush thinks this country is addicted to oil, then it must certainly be true, but it’s part of the culture – so how can you change it ? It would make sense to drive less, and to drive smaller cars, but how could you really deconstruct one of the world’s largest cities to make it more energy efficient ? Just the sprawling nature of the Westchase district, where we’ll spend today, extends over so many miles and miles of shopping malls and business plazas that it would be more or less unworkable without the car. And so all of us – even Texans – we’ll just have to power our cars differently, that’s all.

It’s only twentyfive minutes I run before breakfast this morning. I’ll run the same again tomorrow, and on Friday. Before I know it, I’ll be on the plane back to London. And so how can I, really, honestly, criticise energy usage when my own flights here have used more fuel than the average European family car does in a year ?

The sky is slowly lightening now. The birds are awake, screeching raucously from the trees and telegraph wires as I run down Smith. The city skyline here – it’s impressive. There’s no other word for it. The Enron building towers above me, soaring high long after the company, which collapsed so scandalously in 2001. For now, it’s still the most gleaming of all the Houston skyscrapers, even if its ship’s funnel shape is almost an appropriate metaphor for the corporate sinking which played out within.

A final sprint brings me back to my hotel for a shower and breakfast. Across the freeway and far beyond The Loop, I can see the massive trail of red tail lights still growing towards the Galleria. The Houston horizon is lightening, whilst all around the world the skies of our hydrocarbon age are slowly fading. Another time is dawning, and it’ll look different from this one. Just how different is hard from this Houston perspective to ponder, and only time and ingenuity will tell.

The pace of change seems slow sometimes, when measured against certainty, such damning inevitability. Just one man, one opinion – even millions of opinions – they can’t change the world, not today. But the world is changing slowly, all the same.

And one thing is clear to me now, this morning. These hands that built America – they’re going to have to be busy again soon, and for a very long time to come.