reduce my carbon footprint

Public meeting at the Friends Meeting House, Euston Rd, London, England. George Monbiot to speak. Free entry.
Tel. 020 7833 9311
Email info@campaigncc.org
web www.campaigncc.org

My challenge was to reduce my carbon footprint by yesterday. Seeing as I hadn’t done much I replaced some bulbs in the apartment with low-watt longlife bulbs.This wont make much of a difference. I would like to do something larger in scale.

Take Ireland for example- a country where emissions have risen a quarter since 1990– double the generous increase allowed under Kyoto. The response of the Irish government? A multi-million euro PR campaign called The Power of One link… which offers ‘ten top tips’ to ‘make a difference’. The tips include such earth shattering proposals as: unplug your mobile charger, fully fill your dishwasher and don’t overfill your kettle. That sounds much nicer than curtailing roadbuilding or industrial growth. They are not called ‘easy tips’ for nothing.

So let’s start again from first principle. We have to rethink the way we talk about climate change. It is insulting to assume that people can only be energized with the pint sized options. We need to present all lifestyle changes as part of a radical vision for a smart, healthy and just 21st century.

Let’s be clear that voluntary action will never be enough- we will need radical political economic and social change. So let’s start with that wretched phrase ‘you can save the planet’. Who wants to be the first town to ban it?

This is a revamped and more opinionated version of an article that was published in The Guardian on September 13th 2007 Link… The Guardian also commissioned a counter piece which led to a discussion of the merits of ’small actions’ link…

Mike Tidwell has also written a great critique of small steps for Grist magazine which led to an intense debate link…

http://climatedenial.org/2007/09/18/death-of-a-thousand-tips/

George Marshall is the founder of a climate change charity, the Climate Outreach Information Network (COIN)

This asked more questions than Yahoo carbon calculator.
The questions are more specific and allow for answers from people living in various countries.

Earth lab carbon calculator said I emit:

2.8tons CO2/year

and gave me a score of 189 ( I am going to retake the test because I guessed my energy bills)

http://www.earthlab.com/ecp.aspx

The problem with this is that if you are not living in the USA it only allows USA answers. I had to choose NYC instead of London and 7X 1to4hr domestic round trip flights instead of 7X 1to2hr European flights. I dont know if these are comparable however.

Yahoo carbon calculator says I emit:

6.1tons CO2/year

(2.0 at home, 0.0 on the road, 4.1 in the air)

http://green.yahoo.com/calculator/

Linsybyster, thanks for the suggestion with the carbon calculator. I am going to calculate my footprint this evening and track my progress. Perhaps other people can do the same and we can help eachother with feedback. There seems to be lots of good ideas posted about this goal already. Well done everyone. Lets see what we can do together.

The concept of the carbon footprint grew out of the longer established concept of the ecological footprint. Ecological footprint measures total area of the Earth needed to support our consumption levels and this is what I am going to concentrate on first. The area measures average productivity in hectares for growing crops, grazing animals, harvesting timber, catching fish and absorbing CO2 emmissions.

I have no idea how big my apartment is so I guessed it at 150metres squared.This put my ecological footprint at 4.8 HECTARES.

To put that in perspective, US average is 9.5 hectares. UK avg. is 5.4 hectares. Bangladesh avg. is 0.53 hectare. Worldwide avg. is 2.8 hectares.

Or to give further perspective my 4.8 hectares
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE ME, WE WOULD NEED 2.7 PLANET EARTHS to support us.

Breakdown of my ecological footprint.
CATEGORY : GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD : 1.5

MOBILITY : 1

SHELTER : 0.9

GOODS/SERVICES : 1.4

TOTAL FOOTPRINT : 4.8

Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in The Great Global Warming Swindle, has said that he was “completely misrepresented” in the film and had been “totally misled” when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film “grossly distorted” and “as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two.” Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.Filmmaker Durkin responded, “Carl Wunsch was most certainly not ‘duped’ into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said.”

Wunsch wrote in a letter dated March 15, 2007 that he believes climate change is “real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component”. He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance “over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts”. He raised objections as to how his interview material was used.

The British Antarctic Survey released a “Statement” about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: “A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years.” Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4’s editorial standards, the statement says: “Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct.” It uses the feedback argument to explain temperatures rising before CO2. On the issue of volcanic CO2 emissions, it says:
A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO2 are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO2. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO2 concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions

This documentary tried to tell us there’s no need to feel bad about global warming. According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn’t your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it!!!!!!!!!!!!
The problem with this documentary was that it was presented as hard fact backed up by science, with graphs and data. It is hard for a typical viewer to question the scientists. Perhaps one would expect that Channel 4 may have scrutinised this on behalf of the viewer.