| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| JB |
What's a reasonable carbon footprintAssuming a fair global distribution and a sustainable level of cosumption for the planet what would be a fair carbon footprint per person per year?(inspired but a mock argument in the office where I was trying to tell a colleague that he was single handedly responsible for destroying the planet as he took one return flight to Morocco) |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
Obviously a ' fair' footprint would be 1. in that if everybody lived like you we would only need 1 planet to sustain our population. But the world isn't fair and 1 isn’t realistic for a Westerner. 
|
||||
| JB |
1? 1 what? 1 tonne, 1 MWh, 1 flight? |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
The original carbon footprint ratings gave a score of say 4.5 for a person. This equated to the fact that if everybody on earth lived at that level we would need 4.5 planets worth of resources to maintain us. This rating system is much easier to understand than tonnes of carbon etc, which is difficult to equate. That is why 1max per person would be fair. The last time I did a test I, with my low impact life measured 3.75, but the test was flawed in that it assumed I heated my whole house etc. No test is 100% accurate. | ||||
| LynneA |
When I did the test on the computers at CAT, I came out at 1.75, which seemed ridiculously low. | ||||
| hamster |
http://www.riot4austerity.org
This is a US movement that used the figures given by George Monbiot in 'Heat' for an (I think) roughly 60% global reduction, but in order to make it fair (i.e. not going to a village in Chad and saying, 'Well, you have a clinic, a school and a community centre: to do your 60% cut you have to get rid of the clinic.') that works out as a 94% cut of the average US per capita emissions and 85-ish% of the average European per capita emissions. It doesn't claim to be as accurate as other carbon calculators, but it does at least try and take in more issues around sustainability that don't necessarily make much difference to your carbon footprint. I've been using it to work out what my 'fair share' is. We're doing pretty well on food, electricity, consumer goods, rubbish and transport, but not great on water and gas use. |
||||
| James |
I fully agree. There are quiet a few assumptions made in any C-footprint analysis, so there's an intrinsic degree of variability within the answer. What I've done to counter-act this is run the C-footprint calculator many times with slightly different inputs. I found that many of the variables make only slight differences to the final figure. I found that my C-footprint came in at between 3.2 and 3.8 worlds. But the important thing is that even with all the measures we've put in place I still require over three planets of energy if everyone lived like me. So I'm still unsustainable. The aim is to get to 1. And its extremely hard. In fact, I'd argue that given the population of the UK, its going to to be impossible to get everyone in the UK to a C-footprint of 1 |
||||
| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
linky to the one you use, please? |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
Do any of the more reasonable carbon-calculators show their working out? At least that way you have some idea of where the biggest savings are. | ||||
| Green Rosie |
Is this one any good?
http://www.myfootprint.org/en/ |
||||
| LynneA |
did that one - came out at 1.53. |
||||
| Nick |
Do we know what figures would be revealed for the average subsistence farmer in China, or India, or Africa? James is right, in the UK, we will NEVER get to 1, but, if 3/4 of the world's population are running below 1, (I hesitate to say it doesn't matter), on average, can we make things balance? | ||||
| Nick |
I did the quiz above, hitting all the 'right' answers, and it gave me a figure or 0.1 earths. It's clearly designed for Westerners, (I'm not sure how many Chinese peasants actually have automatic stand by savers on their DVD players, for example), but can we launch a Carbon Footprint offsetting scheme, and keep our sports cars? 
|
||||
| Treacodactyl |
I think it's better than some, I require 1.6 earths, but still over-simplified and doesn't allow you to play with your answers to show how you can best change things. |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
Problem is there's far more people increasing their consumption than there are people reducing theirs. Even if we do make a balance that assumes the Earth is in fine shape at the moment and doesn't require reductions in CO2. |
||||
| Nick |
Indeed.
So, you're saying we need to Make Poverty The Future?
Can I get Bono to run that one, too? |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
I've spent years in higher education and work to get to a point where I can give it all up and spend all day tending my crops. |
||||
| orangepippin |
It's called downsizing!
Joking aside, as I have said before, you do need to have a sufficient level of education in order to appreciate the importance of sustainability. The "earths" methodology is interesting, but some kind of ready-reckoner of common activities and their sustainability cost would be useful. We all know flying is "bad", but how does one flight to Spain for an annual holiday compare with driving 40 miles to work 5 days a week for the rest of the year etc etc. |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
I've been informed this might do what I want and allow you to see where you can make the best changes. http://www.bbcgreen.com/actionplan
However, as with many of these daft sites, it's too complex to run on an old PC so I can't use it. Step 1, buy a new PC to run carbon-calculator. Step 2, get told not to buy unnecessary electrical goods. 
|
||||
| Jonnyboy |
I find a lot of these carbon calculators tiresome. We were mostly born into a capitalist, carbon hunger, over populated, westernised society. So the changes we are capable of making are restricted by those facts and taken within the laws that govern us. | ||||
| Jamanda |
They are useful for introducing the concept of sustainability though. Kids always fill them in as if they were members of the jet set and end up needing 10 planets. | ||||
| orangepippin |
Thanks, I had a look at that one. Still not much the wiser, it seems to suggest that using a tumble dryer is slightly worse than using a car. Maybe I need to actually login to it, which I might try later. I think what I am looking for is something a bit like the government drinking guidelines, you know, one glass of wine is the equivalent of half a glass of whisky or whatever. So something that shows me the carbon impact (or whatever it is we are trying measure) of 4 people flying to Spain, vs one cycle on the tumble dryer vs 1 bag of apples from South Africa etc. |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
You wouldn't get very far in a tumble drier.
|
||||
| Bebo |
Depends if you perched it on the edge of the Grand Canyon, climbed in and someone pushed it off. You'd go quite a way pretty fast and then come to an abrupt halt. |
||||
| Jamanda |
But you wouldn't need any irreplaceable hydrocarbons to do that. Well maybe to get it up there in the first place. | ||||
| gnome |
i have two feet, so i assume a two carbon footprints are quite reasonable.
seriously though, you can't assume that just because a farmer in China doesn't have a DVD player or fly to the Bahamas for his holidays twice a year that his carbon footprint is negligible. China's carbon footprint his huge - far greater than the UK's. low tech is sometimes more of a strain on the planet than hi-tech. if that farmer heats his home by burning wood and coal, has no insulation, and gets rid of all his waste by throwing it into the river, his carbon footprint is probably bigger than mine. |
||||
| gnome |
i found it somewhat alien to my lifestyle. it seems to be geared towards someone with a lifestyle way beyond mine - i dont even own a car, and my home is a flat in a converted victorian terrace. the quiz seems to make assumptions based on where you live and what you earn which are probably quite unfair assumptions. in many cases my situation was nothing like the choices offered and i had to make a nearest guess. i suppose some people which have never really given it a lot of thought might take the quiz and then suddenly go "OMG!". it's a little over simplified - surely my carbon footprint is not so much affeced by how much i recycle as how much i use in the first place? someone who recycles all their paper is still doing more harm than someone who never recycles their paper, if the recycler has a daily newspaper delivered, a huge stack of sunday suppliments, a TV guide, and half a dozen magazines, whilst the non recycler doesnt get any papers. i dont have central heating - that possibility never occured to the person who created the quiz. turning the lights out when you leave the room does not neccesarily save energy. if you use energy efficient light bulbs, you use more electricity switching them off and on again an hour later than if you left them switched on all night. it didnt question how you recycle . if you drive a 4WD vehicle 10 miles to a recycling centre to take six wine bottles, a kilo of magazines and newspapers, and a dozen empty dog food cans to a recycle centre - are you really helping the environment or harming it with carbon emmisions? did it occur to them that maybe when i do my shopping i walk into town? |
||||
| gnome |
ah - now this one is a bit better. the small error is that it suggests i should use public transport more. the reason i dont' is simply because i rarely travel anywhere, so using public transport more would increase my carbon footprint. the suggestion that i fit loft insulation is a mistake too - i live on the ground floor.
http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/launch_fullscreen.aspx?url=http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html it estimated my carbon footprint at 1.46 tonnes a year. mainly coz i live in a drafty old victorian hovel with no insulation or heating. also my bad habit of leaving the computer on standby when i go to bed. |
||||
| gnome |
as anyone foun one of these things for busineses? that would be really useful at work. | ||||
| Maxwell Smart |
The only problem with the "one planet" footprint is that the definition of just how big that footprint is that makes up that one planet is constantly changing with each increase in our global population.
All of our efforts to downsize will be for naught if the global population keeps growing at the current rate. My question is whether the human race is in a symbiotic relationship with our planet or a parasitical relationship... |