Hack at work.
Killing Bono
"The best book I have ever read about trying to make it in the music business" - Elton John
"A fantastic book, which manages the difficult trick of being simultaneously very funny and very sad." - Bob Geldof
"I was Neil McCormick's fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he'd make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count. He's written a great book" - Bono
Ecological: Does Zero Carbon = Zero Luxury?
Three words to strike fear into carbon-neutral housewife: no tumble dryer.
Published: 12:00PM BST 04 Jun 2009
“Are you going to put this in your eco column?” my Dearly Beloved called as I dashed for the taxi waiting at my door. With my day-job rock critic hat on, I was on the way to a music festival in Denmark. This involved all kinds of cars, trains and aeroplanes, with each new form of transportation piercing my eco worrier heart with savagely sharpened shafts of guilt.
In Aarhus, to salve my conscience, I visited the world’s first zero-carbon house. And I borrowed a bicycle to get there. It looks like something assembled from a kit, small and compact, all sharp angles, grey bricks, triple-glazing and solar panels. It has been constructed in such a way that it should create an excess of electricity which, as it flows back into the Danish grid, will cancel out the cost of building it. There is only one drawback that I could see. The house has an interior climate control computer, two flat screen televisions and a washing machine, but (in order to meet an energy consumption target of under 4,000kwh per year) there is no tumble dryer.
And there are three words to strike fear into housewives contemplating a carbon neutral future. No tumble-dryer.
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