WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
Teresa Gorman on a conduit between
a Japanese lavatory and suspect environmentalism
I'D HEARD about them but I thought they were a joke — a centrally heated loo that washed your bottom without you giv- ing up your seat. No need for one of those newfangled Continental thingummybobs that require you to remove your tights. The British have never come to terms with bidets even if they do install them these days in upmarket, off-the-peg Barrett houses. So when I ventured into the loo in my Kyoto hotel I had no idea that I would meet my, well, Waterloo.
The instructions, all in sign language (this was Japan), were displayed on my right. They offered a choice of jet or spray. I decided on the jet. It hit me with such surprising force that it propelled me from my perch, and it just kept coming. So I pressed the second button, the spray — a different sensation altogether, more a gentle rain shower than a thunder- storm.
There appeared to be no time limit on the exercise. You could sit there all after- noon, a not unpleasant way to pass the time. I decided to experiment with the stop button. I was rather hoping for a little hot air to finish things off. Alas, the tech- 'Do you have any with creepy crawlies that have survived those awful life-threatening pesticides?'
nology hadn't got that far. I expect the Japanese are working on it.
But I was puzzled. In addition to their obvious interest in personal hygiene, the Japanese are very environment-conscious. Yet there didn't seem to be any restrictions on this extravagant use of water. I won- dered what the delegates to the Kyoto con- ference on saving the planet, otherwise known as COP3, would make of it. I imag- ined they would take a dim view, when many countries are suffering water short- ages, allegedly as a result of global warm- ing. Water vapour is a much more significant part of the dreaded greenhouse effect than CO2. I suppose they will put it down to our selfish consumption of the world's finite resources, of which the motor car and energy consumption are the cur- rent number one culprits.
The British delegates to COP3 want to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is pledged to encourage business in the search for ways to deal with the threat posed by climate change. He told company chiefs and envi- ronmentalists at a Green business breakfast at No. 10 Downing Street that this is the beginning of the process, not the end — like it or lump it. Mr Blair was speaking before the final round of negotiations on climate change at the Kyoto meeting, when countries will set legally binding targets to curb greenhouse gases.
Which brings me to another problem. The Japanese are very fond of rather large motor cars. BMWs, Mercedes-Ben- zes, Range Rovers, Jaguars, even the occasional Rolls-Royce, fill the Tokyo streets. I asked the Japanese minister for trade and industry, whom I met on an official visit to the Diet (Parliament) building, if he endorsed Mr Blair's plans for a sharp cut in CO2 emissions. Any such policy would play havoc with their car industry, a mainstay of the increasing- ly shaky Japanese economic miracle. The minister was fairly inscrutable.
'We are thinking of around 5 per cent, as a good compromise,' he said. 'Tell the min- ister that his sensible views are music to my ears,' I said through the interpreter. A broad smile lit up his face. I winked. We had an Anglo-Japanese understanding. In the land of the rising sun and high technol- ogy I had not only discovered the loo of the future but a fellow conspirator against the loony ecofascists currently on a freebie in Kyoto.
There are many scientists — members of Nasa included — who believe that the the- ory behind global warming is junk, generat- -ed by computer models on a garbage-in-garbage-out basis. Thank good- ness President Clinton seems to be listen- ing to them. There's no point in screwing up your industries on the basis of bogus sci- ence.
The author is Conservative MP for Billericay, a scientist and a Fellow of the Linean Society.
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