Space Monsters Ate My Atmosphere

One of my nieces is an animator. She makes models that are transformed through computer-generated imagery. She has a penchant for strange, Gerald Scarfe-like grotesques that inhabit an alternative world of the weird. I have an idea for her. Creatures with mushroom heads, thin, skeletal torsos and one tree-trunk-thick leg. These would lumber across landscapes, terrorising man and environment alike with their noxious fumes which consume air and the atmosphere. These monsters would be the Space Eaters.

One impact of the smoking ban has been that the sale of heating units for terraces has shot up. Space heaters have been common enough in bars and restaurants, but suppliers have been recording record sales as owners look to keep their clientele warm while they smoke.

Is there anything quite as ridiculous as heating outdoor air? This, let's call it the "batty proposition", is one argument against space heaters. But heating outdoor space has long been with us. Bonfires, braziers, no one ever objected unless they were being set fire to. The difference with the space heater is that it is environmentally harmful. Supposedly.

Space heaters have been around for years. The Germans, for example, have used them to warm Munich beer drinkers and Glühwein imbibers at Christmas markets since the 50s. In the UK, they were a rarity, only coming into vogue in the late 90s before being elevated into the position of number-one environmental killer thanks to the UK's own smoking ban.

The side effect of all the legislation aimed at driving smokers outside was that previously unknown carbon emissions started wafting into the atmosphere and onto the radars of environmental groups and tree-hugging politicians. Friends of the Earth leapt to the defence of the environment, earholed a Liberal Democrat MEP and, bingo, the European Parliament agreed to ban space heaters, in that it agreed with a report that was to form the basis of guiding decisions by member countries.

This was in 2008 though and bans, were they to be introduced, have yet to be implemented. But don't discount them being so. If something can be banned, then politicians will find a way of getting it banned.

Inevitably, sides have been taken in the space-heater debate, which has been warming up nicely since Brussels and Strasbourg started to stoke the fire.

An average heater uses the same amount of energy as a gas hob would use in six months and produces 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide annually, said the UK's Energy Saving Trust. No, it produces less, said Calor Gas: 35 kgs. Compare this with the average 3000kgs from a car, said someone else. The overall impact of heaters on emissions was minimal, said an Eric Johnson from the UN's Convention on Climate Change: less than plasma TVs, for example. Electric outdoor heaters have greater carbon burdens than the usual gas ones, said a report for the UK Government's sustainable energy policy, but can be more efficient as they provide focussed heat.

So, round and round the debate goes. Locally, I am unaware of enviro watchdogs having had their centimo's worth, but it can only be a matter of time if they haven't. GOB will surely come to the aid of the environmental party, but I wonder how many GOB-ists take a coffee on a space-heated terrace. Perhaps they don't indulge in such a past-time because to do so would be environmentally incorrect as coffee plantations are destructive of Brazilian or Kenyan eco-systems and the greenhouse effect of a bar's coffee machine is equivalent to the warming caused by all the methane from the dung of the entire wildebeest population of sub-Saharan Africa. Or something like this.

There is apparently a law covering heaters, one which says that they must be movable and can only be used during winter months. Which sounds like the bleeding obvious. But it also says that they should be used for only four months. Really? This is the first I've heard of this, but it comes from one of the many reports that have appeared in the local media regarding the sudden growth in space-heater sales.

For the time being though, and until any definitive moves to put a stop to space heaters, smokers and others can be kept warm on open-air terraces. But the Space Eater monsters' days may be numbered, because, as Friends of the Earth have said, there should be a ban on "these carbon-belching monstrosities".


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.