So here is the third of the sideshows which will shortly be available to churches and schools in the Cambridge area to borrow. The picture is a prototype, and the images on the wine boxes will be renumbered to give a clearer message. The sideshow is called 'The Good, The Bad and the Smoggy’. Playing is very simple: players toss or lob a beanbag at the array of wine boxes (an interesting way of re-using them) which are numbered to reflect that clean air technology is way more superior to dangerous, dirty fuel energy generation.Smog was that dense and life-threatening form of air pollution that the UK experienced way back in late forties and early fifties, until the introduction of The Clean Air Act in 1956.
Thus, the (revised) highest score of 10, needless to say, furthest from the player, features a Tokamak. A Tokamak is a nuclear Fusion energy generator. It operates at colossal temperatures and pressure, in effect emulating the method by which the stars produce heat and light. Tokamak processing, which leaves no nuclear waste, unlike the present fission power stations, has been under development for decades. The development costs have been so vast that only international collaborative funding has been able to put up the huge amounts that have been necessary for progress to be made. Then, in May 2025, CNN reported that a commercial enterprise was building a Tokamak just outside Boston USA. Amazingly, and encouragingly, funding of US$2billion is backing this enterprise. Clearly, even usually hard-nosed investors believe Tokamak will deliver, and a date of 2030 is slated. It is hard to envision just what this will mean, but with a projected target of producing four times the power input, the enterprise will undoubtedly be a game changer in the energy market. So the incorporation of the Tokamak at the top end of the sideshow scoring is intended to give a message of HOPE to children playing the sideshow. Not that many of them will want to be bothered with such detail, but on the basis that every child is likely to be accompanied by a responsible adult, this message maybe part of a drip-feed of encouragement to be optimistic that Clean Air Technologies will sweep away their dirty and dangerous predecessors in the not-too-distant future.
Scores of 5 - 9 (inclusive) are allocated to various established clean air technologies, wind turbines, solar panels, sub-sea (near surface generators, which operate in races of water and produce three times the energy density of wind turbines) sea-borne booms and tidal lagoons. There are no scores of 2, 3, or 4: the scoring drops to 1 represented by Coal, Oil, Gas and Shale - all dirty and dangerous fuels which also leave scars on the landscape when they are abandoned.
'Should these score at all?' one asks - but then, this is only a sideshow game!
The concepts behind the sideshows will all be explained in a small pamphlet entitled ‘Our Sideshows: what they mean’, available to borrowers of the equipment. At the time of writing this post, the pamphlet is in embryo form.
For now, to better understand the purpose of the Eco-Fayre, go to The first Mini Eco Fayre entry that you will find HERE
