Posted by: Anupam
With fossil fuels depleting fast, research work has been escalated to find new sources of fuel that are green as well. The answers aren’t that difficult to find as several crops have the potential to produce fuel similar to diesel, which can easily replace conventional sources. However, since the demand for biofuel has increased, producing fuel from food crops isn’t viable. Several universities and research groups are working on technologies that better biofuel production by producing fuel from algae or agricultural waste. Check out 10 such breakthroughs that will help make biofuel a much greener fuel for the future:
• Nanofarming:
The Nanofarming technique is conceived by researchers at DOE’s Ames National Laboratory and Iowa State University, in partnership with Catilin, Inc. The technology will make use of nanoparticles to absorb fatty acids from living microalgae. The technology allows biofuel production from algae without destroying the cells.
• Engineered tobacco leaves:
Researchers at the Biotechnology Foundations Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have found out a way to increase biofuel production from tobacco plants by engineering two genes, which increase the oil in tobacco leaves. The researchers have identified two genes - the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene and the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 gene. Plants modified to over-express these genes produce more oil.
• Biofuel production using artificial photosynthesis:
Taking inspiration from nests of a semi-tropical frog called the Tungara frog, researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found a way to artificially create a photosynthetic material from foam which uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes to produce sugars using solar energy and carbon dioxide. Unlike natural photosynthesis, which isn’t quite efficient, this artificial process has been designed to convert all of the captured solar energy to sugars, which are later used to make ethanol and other biofuels.
• Biofuel from grass clippings:
Scientists at the National Science Foundation have developed technology to breakdown farm waste such as corn stalks, grass, weeds and wood and convert it into useful biofuel. These scientists believe that they can use the existing infrastructure of oil pipelines, storage tanks, refineries and engines for this new fuel, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is renewable.
• Joule Biotechnologies’ Helioculture:
California-based startup Joule Biotechnologies has developed a unique process that converts carbon dioxide into liquid biofuel using a solar converter. The converter contains an internal broth of gray water, nutrients and unnamed genetically engineered organisms that use photosynthesis to secrete hydrocarbons that can be used as fuel. The company believes that the process, dubbed Helioculture, can produce up to 20,000 gallons of usable fuel per year per acre of land for approximately the same cost as fossil fuels.
• Nanotechnology for cheaper biofuel:
Researchers at Louisiana Tech University are planning to decrease the cost of the process of biofuel production by using new nanotechnology processes developed at the university. The new technology can immobilize the expensive enzymes used to convert cellulose to sugars, allowing them to be reused several times over, thereby significantly reducing the overall cost of the process.
• Wood-eating gribble for low-cost biofuel:
Researchers at the University of York in Britain have identified the potential of the wood-eating gribble to cheaply convert abundant wood and straw fiber into biofuel. The gut of the gribble can replicate the process of plasma gasification with some enzymes. The research team is trying to produce similar enzymes that all by themselves can produce ecologically sound ethanol from wood.
• Duckweed to produce biofuel without any wastage:
Scientists at the North Carolina State University have identified that duckweed, the world’s smallest flowering plant, produces far more starch per acre than corn and can be used to produce biofuel without any waste. Apart from producing bio-fuel, the plants can digest animal waste, quickly converting it into leafy starch which again be used to produce bio-fuel.
• Novozymes’ tech to convert agricultural waste into biofuel:
Danish biotechnology company Novozymes has developed a new enzyme that can convert maize, wheat, straw and woodchips into ethanol for as little as 32 pence per liter. The new enzyme, known as Cellic CTec2, breaks down cellulose in the waste into simple sugars, which are then used to produce the ethanol.
• Super bug to produce fuel from hydrogen and CO2:
A team of researchers from the North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia are working together to create a version of the Extremophile, a super bug that creates butanol or ethanol. The bug would skip the entire photosynthetic sugar-making step and would create liquid fuels directly from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Extremophiles will be able to live without water and will be highly resistant to radiation, which makes them ideal for biofuel production.545190
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Carbon trading system will have profound implications for B.C. businesses
Companies will discover how much the system could add to their costs this summer
Gary Mason
Last updated on Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2010 12:21AM EDT
.While a strange silence has fallen over much of the climate-change debate, government officials in four Canadian provinces are getting closer to unveiling a new system for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions that will have profound implications for many companies and industries operating within their borders.
British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba remain determined to become part of a carbon trading system with a number of U.S. states under the aegis of the Western Climate Initiative.
And while most of the work that has gone into establishing a cap-and-trade mechanism has been done away from the prying eyes of the public, that could change this summer when companies begin learning what it could mean to them.
Like most everything to do with the fight to lower greenhouse-gas emissions, efforts to build a legitimate cap-and-trade market are a bit of a jumble. It looks like British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec are determined to commence with something that resembles a carbon trading system by 2012. In fact, the plan is to hold the initial auction of carbon permits next year.
Manitoba, which also seems committed to the program, may not be ready to join quite as soon. It’s not a province with many large emitters in any event.
The group’s U.S. partners, meantime, are dealing with all manner of issues that the provinces seem to have avoided.
In California, for instance, a petition similar to the one under way in British Columbia to kill the harmonized sales tax has been launched to blow up the state’s progressive climate-change legislation. It looks increasingly likely that the question of whether the bill should be repealed will go to a referendum.
Washington State is having trouble getting a law passed that would allow it to be part of a carbon trading scheme. Arizona has backed out but still wants a say in how a cap-and-trade market is designed.
It doesn’t help that many of the governors of states that signed up originally to be part of WCI are in their final term in office. Midterm elections could usher in a new set of governors with different ideas about cap-and-trade.
But Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia don’t plan on waiting for their prospective partners to sort things out. This summer, British Columbia will begin informing the province’s biggest emitters how the system is likely to work and the kind of emissions levels at which they could be looking.
Under such a plan, jurisdictions set a GHG ceiling. Say, for the sake of argument, it’s 90,000 tonnes annually. Companies will be given or be forced to buy credits allowing them to spew that level of GHG emissions into the atmosphere. If a company anticipates it is going to exceed that level, it can buy extra credits that are auctioned off under a cap-and-trade scheme or purchase carbon offsets through other channels.
If a company expects to pollute less than the 90,000 tonnes, it can sell its excess credits through a secondary market.
Overall, however, there are not enough credits available for all the companies participating in the plan that may need to purchase them, and there is a limit to the offsets they can purchase. It is this scarcity that, in theory anyway, forces companies to change the way they do business.
At least that’s a simplistic explanation of what happens.
But you can see why companies that would be affected by this program would be antsy: It could add to their costs. How much it will is what businesses in British Columbia are going to discover this summer, and it is then we may begin hearing the kind of outcry that killed attempts to set up such a market in Australia.
But British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec – and those U.S. states involved in the design of the cap-and-trade system – are intent on avoiding a similar pushback from industry by not being overly aggressive, early on at least, with the emission ceilings they set. This will allow companies to ease into the program a bit and give them time to make the necessary adjustments to lower their GHG levels.
The worst thing that could happen is to make the costs associated with carbon trading so prohibitive that businesses decide to locate elsewhere.
The idea is not to use cap-and-trade as a type of tax grab. Rather, the idea is to spur businesses to seek out more environmentally friendly ways of powering their businesses. At the same time, those companies have to be convinced there is an economic reason to do so.
No province or state wants to attach an anchor to its economy and hope it still motors along. Right now it’s all about finding that sweet spot where the price on carbon drives change but doesn’t come at a cost to jobs.
Gary Mason
Last updated on Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2010 12:21AM EDT
.While a strange silence has fallen over much of the climate-change debate, government officials in four Canadian provinces are getting closer to unveiling a new system for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions that will have profound implications for many companies and industries operating within their borders.
British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba remain determined to become part of a carbon trading system with a number of U.S. states under the aegis of the Western Climate Initiative.
And while most of the work that has gone into establishing a cap-and-trade mechanism has been done away from the prying eyes of the public, that could change this summer when companies begin learning what it could mean to them.
Like most everything to do with the fight to lower greenhouse-gas emissions, efforts to build a legitimate cap-and-trade market are a bit of a jumble. It looks like British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec are determined to commence with something that resembles a carbon trading system by 2012. In fact, the plan is to hold the initial auction of carbon permits next year.
Manitoba, which also seems committed to the program, may not be ready to join quite as soon. It’s not a province with many large emitters in any event.
The group’s U.S. partners, meantime, are dealing with all manner of issues that the provinces seem to have avoided.
In California, for instance, a petition similar to the one under way in British Columbia to kill the harmonized sales tax has been launched to blow up the state’s progressive climate-change legislation. It looks increasingly likely that the question of whether the bill should be repealed will go to a referendum.
Washington State is having trouble getting a law passed that would allow it to be part of a carbon trading scheme. Arizona has backed out but still wants a say in how a cap-and-trade market is designed.
It doesn’t help that many of the governors of states that signed up originally to be part of WCI are in their final term in office. Midterm elections could usher in a new set of governors with different ideas about cap-and-trade.
But Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia don’t plan on waiting for their prospective partners to sort things out. This summer, British Columbia will begin informing the province’s biggest emitters how the system is likely to work and the kind of emissions levels at which they could be looking.
Under such a plan, jurisdictions set a GHG ceiling. Say, for the sake of argument, it’s 90,000 tonnes annually. Companies will be given or be forced to buy credits allowing them to spew that level of GHG emissions into the atmosphere. If a company anticipates it is going to exceed that level, it can buy extra credits that are auctioned off under a cap-and-trade scheme or purchase carbon offsets through other channels.
If a company expects to pollute less than the 90,000 tonnes, it can sell its excess credits through a secondary market.
Overall, however, there are not enough credits available for all the companies participating in the plan that may need to purchase them, and there is a limit to the offsets they can purchase. It is this scarcity that, in theory anyway, forces companies to change the way they do business.
At least that’s a simplistic explanation of what happens.
But you can see why companies that would be affected by this program would be antsy: It could add to their costs. How much it will is what businesses in British Columbia are going to discover this summer, and it is then we may begin hearing the kind of outcry that killed attempts to set up such a market in Australia.
But British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec – and those U.S. states involved in the design of the cap-and-trade system – are intent on avoiding a similar pushback from industry by not being overly aggressive, early on at least, with the emission ceilings they set. This will allow companies to ease into the program a bit and give them time to make the necessary adjustments to lower their GHG levels.
The worst thing that could happen is to make the costs associated with carbon trading so prohibitive that businesses decide to locate elsewhere.
The idea is not to use cap-and-trade as a type of tax grab. Rather, the idea is to spur businesses to seek out more environmentally friendly ways of powering their businesses. At the same time, those companies have to be convinced there is an economic reason to do so.
No province or state wants to attach an anchor to its economy and hope it still motors along. Right now it’s all about finding that sweet spot where the price on carbon drives change but doesn’t come at a cost to jobs.
Where to Breathe Delhi’s Cleanest Air.
Breathe in the crisp New Delhi air. Cough! Or maybe not.
India’s capital is a ring of smog, smoke and smells. But now there’s a sanctuary from pollution right in the city’s center, Connaught Place.
Next to New Delhi’s heaving Palika Bazaar stands an outdoor air filtration unit designed by the Italian firm Systemlife. This seven-ton hunk of metal has been sucking the pollutants from Delhi’s smog-choked air for the past three-and-a-half months.
A fan vacuums air through a five-level carbon and electromagnetic filtration system, cutting out the toxins and even deodorizing Delhi’s infamous putrid city smell before it’s released again.
“If I personally want to go to the place with the cleanest air in Delhi now, it would probably be right here,” says Rodella Bruno, director of Systemlife India, pointing to where the purified air tumbles out.
In the machine’s first month in operation, Systemlife says that the purifier rid Delhi air of 2.5 kilograms of particulate matter — including carbon monoxide, nitrogen, lead and radioactive uranium.
Though Systemlife does not have the mechanism to measure the total amount of uranium it filtered, company representatives found the fact that there was any uranium alarming.
“This should be an eye opener,” says Dhruv Chanana, a director at Systemlife India. “Regular air should not contain uranium. That should only be found near nuclear reactors, not in a place like Central Delhi.”
In Europe, the pollution level measured by the Systemlife units averaged about 50 micrograms of dirty particles per hour, according to Mr. Bruno. In this New Delhi unit, Systemlife has clocked a peak of 1,500 micrograms of dirty particles an hour, Mr. Bruno says. That’s a level of pollution 3,000% higher than in Europe.
New Delhi is rated the fourth most-polluted city in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In a city that’s buzzing with roughly one million vehicles a day and where waste burning is a daily ritual, pollution levels are reportedly on the rise.
The Delhi government is scrambling to implement citywide pollution reduction strategies before New Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games in October.
So why not position these supersized air-purifiers in every Indian chowk? Not so fast.
Systemlife says the unit purifies 360,000 cubic meters of air each day. That’s enough air to support 18,000 Delhi residents for one day. The company claims the unit is effective in cleaning air within a radius of half a kilometer.
But critics argue there is no data available as yet to determine whether the device will make a worthwhile dent in central Delhi’s overall pollution levels. Having loads of the machines could be necessary for them to have a real impact, even in Connaught Place.
“One machine is not good enough. We really need about seven to effectively clean the air in Connaught Place,” says Mr. Chanana.
But attempts to scale up could be too costly for the city to absorb. Although the company installed the Connaught Place unit free of cost, Mr. Chanana says each machine sells for as much as $300,000 with a minimum $2,000 a year in operational costs.
India’s capital is a ring of smog, smoke and smells. But now there’s a sanctuary from pollution right in the city’s center, Connaught Place.
Next to New Delhi’s heaving Palika Bazaar stands an outdoor air filtration unit designed by the Italian firm Systemlife. This seven-ton hunk of metal has been sucking the pollutants from Delhi’s smog-choked air for the past three-and-a-half months.
A fan vacuums air through a five-level carbon and electromagnetic filtration system, cutting out the toxins and even deodorizing Delhi’s infamous putrid city smell before it’s released again.
“If I personally want to go to the place with the cleanest air in Delhi now, it would probably be right here,” says Rodella Bruno, director of Systemlife India, pointing to where the purified air tumbles out.
In the machine’s first month in operation, Systemlife says that the purifier rid Delhi air of 2.5 kilograms of particulate matter — including carbon monoxide, nitrogen, lead and radioactive uranium.
Though Systemlife does not have the mechanism to measure the total amount of uranium it filtered, company representatives found the fact that there was any uranium alarming.
“This should be an eye opener,” says Dhruv Chanana, a director at Systemlife India. “Regular air should not contain uranium. That should only be found near nuclear reactors, not in a place like Central Delhi.”
In Europe, the pollution level measured by the Systemlife units averaged about 50 micrograms of dirty particles per hour, according to Mr. Bruno. In this New Delhi unit, Systemlife has clocked a peak of 1,500 micrograms of dirty particles an hour, Mr. Bruno says. That’s a level of pollution 3,000% higher than in Europe.
New Delhi is rated the fourth most-polluted city in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In a city that’s buzzing with roughly one million vehicles a day and where waste burning is a daily ritual, pollution levels are reportedly on the rise.
The Delhi government is scrambling to implement citywide pollution reduction strategies before New Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games in October.
So why not position these supersized air-purifiers in every Indian chowk? Not so fast.
Systemlife says the unit purifies 360,000 cubic meters of air each day. That’s enough air to support 18,000 Delhi residents for one day. The company claims the unit is effective in cleaning air within a radius of half a kilometer.
But critics argue there is no data available as yet to determine whether the device will make a worthwhile dent in central Delhi’s overall pollution levels. Having loads of the machines could be necessary for them to have a real impact, even in Connaught Place.
“One machine is not good enough. We really need about seven to effectively clean the air in Connaught Place,” says Mr. Chanana.
But attempts to scale up could be too costly for the city to absorb. Although the company installed the Connaught Place unit free of cost, Mr. Chanana says each machine sells for as much as $300,000 with a minimum $2,000 a year in operational costs.
Ian McEwan collects award for novel that tackles climate change
At the Guardian Hay festival, Ian McEwan receives Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for his new novel Solar
Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 May 2010 20.29 BST
The environment might be the hottest topic at Hay this weekend, with James Lovelock, Nicholas Stern, Ed Miliband and Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, all set to put their views to festival-goers, but novelists have proved reluctant to tackle the subject.
Ian McEwan, who takes on the issue in his new novel Solar, said he was surprised at the paucity of authors writing about climate change. Telling the story of a bloated, womanising physicist who sets out to save the world from environmental disaster, Solar has received favourable reviews – McEwan "uses comedy to sneak grimmer matters past the reader's defences", said the Guardian – but several of the Booker prize-winning writer's fellow authors have confessed that they are still concerned about the potential clash of polemic with art when writing about the subject.
"I have been surprised there aren't more novels [about it]. It's clearly begun to have an impact on our lives already and it has huge human consequences, on a small scale, on a private level and on a geopolitical level," McEwan told the Guardian. "Look at the University of East Anglia climategate – there's a novel in there, [and] Copenhagen itself should furnish a novel … I think it is a unique challenge to human nature. We are programmed for the short term and have to think about the long term, do favours for people we've never met."
Environmental campaigner and author Tony Juniper admitted that "fiction encourages people to think differently, so as a vehicle for cultural change it will be vital". He added: "How it's used is the big question, though," pointing to Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear, which is sceptical about global warming.
Philip Pullman said that he too had been considering tackling the topic through fiction: "I think the degradation of the environment, in all sort of ways, is the biggest thing we'll find ourselves having to deal with for the next hundred years, whether we want to or not."
But that's the politics of the matter, said Pullman, and "the difficulty is that we write with our imagination, not our conscience or our opinions; and, as Yeats said, making the will do the work of the imagination is a miserable business – or words to that effect".
He promised that as soon as he "is grabbed by an aspect of this topic", he'll do his best to tell a story about it, but forcing novelists to tackle it because they "should" would produce something "dreary beyond measure". He points out that Solar is a comedy, "and that doesn't surprise me; Ian's imagination is as unpredictable and mysterious as it could be". His own, he said, was not fed by "big abstract words like 'suffering' or 'injustice' or 'poverty' [but by] precise and concrete things like the glow of sunlight on a woman's arms, or the sound of horns in a dark wood".
Sadie Jones, who won the Costa first novel prize for her debut The Outcast, felt similarly: although she wouldn't rule out climate change as a topic, she said there was "a tremendous, and valid, fear that polemic destroys drama".
"You have to do it really well to pull it off," she said. "In fiction, current anxieties are often presented as future dystopias; where we had Brave New World and 1984, now we have The Road. These issues are being explored, but perhaps less prosaically than 'novelists taking climate change as a topic'. I can think of nothing less useful or enlightening than a spate of 'Oh dear, we've got global warming' novels – better to leave those fashions to T-shirts and disaster movies."
McEwan "deliberately refrained" from taking up a strong environmental stance in Solar, though. "I was more interested in the human aspect," he said. "Climate change is a sort of social construct, with scepticism and alarmism all boiling around together, and I was very interested in this."
He accepted that climate change could be a difficult subject for authors. "There's physics, statistics, graphs, data – and you've got to make it interesting," he said. "Novels don't work if you badger people, which is partly why I have the comic frame."
It clearly worked: this evening he was presented with the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction for Solar at the Guardian Hay festival.
Although Pullman wasn't intimidated by the difficulty of the topic – "if the story is gripping enough, people will find the science so fascinating that as soon as they finish the book they'll rush to the internet to find out more about particle physics, or oceanography, or organic chemistry, or whatever it is" – the award-winning novelist Sebastian Barry admitted it wasn't one for him.
"Climate change is such a knotty issue – it looks like a religion sometimes. [And] one of the hardest lessons I've learned in 30 years of writing is that the present is not available to me as a writer. I do envy McEwan his incredible ability to treat it as if it's as understandable the past, but for me the present is so mysterious, so elusive, so uncertain, and in a way so duplicitous … for me the present doesn't require rescuing, but as McEwan points out we desperately require rescuing from our present – I'm just not the man for it. Give me 40 years."
Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 May 2010 20.29 BST
The environment might be the hottest topic at Hay this weekend, with James Lovelock, Nicholas Stern, Ed Miliband and Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, all set to put their views to festival-goers, but novelists have proved reluctant to tackle the subject.
Ian McEwan, who takes on the issue in his new novel Solar, said he was surprised at the paucity of authors writing about climate change. Telling the story of a bloated, womanising physicist who sets out to save the world from environmental disaster, Solar has received favourable reviews – McEwan "uses comedy to sneak grimmer matters past the reader's defences", said the Guardian – but several of the Booker prize-winning writer's fellow authors have confessed that they are still concerned about the potential clash of polemic with art when writing about the subject.
"I have been surprised there aren't more novels [about it]. It's clearly begun to have an impact on our lives already and it has huge human consequences, on a small scale, on a private level and on a geopolitical level," McEwan told the Guardian. "Look at the University of East Anglia climategate – there's a novel in there, [and] Copenhagen itself should furnish a novel … I think it is a unique challenge to human nature. We are programmed for the short term and have to think about the long term, do favours for people we've never met."
Environmental campaigner and author Tony Juniper admitted that "fiction encourages people to think differently, so as a vehicle for cultural change it will be vital". He added: "How it's used is the big question, though," pointing to Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear, which is sceptical about global warming.
Philip Pullman said that he too had been considering tackling the topic through fiction: "I think the degradation of the environment, in all sort of ways, is the biggest thing we'll find ourselves having to deal with for the next hundred years, whether we want to or not."
But that's the politics of the matter, said Pullman, and "the difficulty is that we write with our imagination, not our conscience or our opinions; and, as Yeats said, making the will do the work of the imagination is a miserable business – or words to that effect".
He promised that as soon as he "is grabbed by an aspect of this topic", he'll do his best to tell a story about it, but forcing novelists to tackle it because they "should" would produce something "dreary beyond measure". He points out that Solar is a comedy, "and that doesn't surprise me; Ian's imagination is as unpredictable and mysterious as it could be". His own, he said, was not fed by "big abstract words like 'suffering' or 'injustice' or 'poverty' [but by] precise and concrete things like the glow of sunlight on a woman's arms, or the sound of horns in a dark wood".
Sadie Jones, who won the Costa first novel prize for her debut The Outcast, felt similarly: although she wouldn't rule out climate change as a topic, she said there was "a tremendous, and valid, fear that polemic destroys drama".
"You have to do it really well to pull it off," she said. "In fiction, current anxieties are often presented as future dystopias; where we had Brave New World and 1984, now we have The Road. These issues are being explored, but perhaps less prosaically than 'novelists taking climate change as a topic'. I can think of nothing less useful or enlightening than a spate of 'Oh dear, we've got global warming' novels – better to leave those fashions to T-shirts and disaster movies."
McEwan "deliberately refrained" from taking up a strong environmental stance in Solar, though. "I was more interested in the human aspect," he said. "Climate change is a sort of social construct, with scepticism and alarmism all boiling around together, and I was very interested in this."
He accepted that climate change could be a difficult subject for authors. "There's physics, statistics, graphs, data – and you've got to make it interesting," he said. "Novels don't work if you badger people, which is partly why I have the comic frame."
It clearly worked: this evening he was presented with the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction for Solar at the Guardian Hay festival.
Although Pullman wasn't intimidated by the difficulty of the topic – "if the story is gripping enough, people will find the science so fascinating that as soon as they finish the book they'll rush to the internet to find out more about particle physics, or oceanography, or organic chemistry, or whatever it is" – the award-winning novelist Sebastian Barry admitted it wasn't one for him.
"Climate change is such a knotty issue – it looks like a religion sometimes. [And] one of the hardest lessons I've learned in 30 years of writing is that the present is not available to me as a writer. I do envy McEwan his incredible ability to treat it as if it's as understandable the past, but for me the present is so mysterious, so elusive, so uncertain, and in a way so duplicitous … for me the present doesn't require rescuing, but as McEwan points out we desperately require rescuing from our present – I'm just not the man for it. Give me 40 years."