Green Options » CO2+emissions

Plane Speaking. Lorries Too.

Pem Charnley — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:43:09 +0000

As EcoWorldly continues its theme with transport news and views from across the globe, two items have come to my attention here in the UK.

Air Pollution

Aviation tax proposals have been outlined by the government. Under the new guidelines, due to come into effect in November this year, it will be the planes, not the passengers, that will be taxed.

New Government figures released showed that emissions from air travel are continuing to rise. Between 1990 and 2006, emissions from aviation fuel use more than doubled.

21 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions will be attributable to air traffic by 2050, and the Treasury report insisted the proposed tax system would, “introduce fairer duty, more in line with the environmental impact of flights, including the distance travelled”.

CO2 Emissions in Real Time

Pem Charnley — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:49:44 +0000

As a simulation giving some idea to the web visitor of how much CO2 is emitted per 1000 tonnes in real time, this is remarkably useful in giving us some idea of how fast it is happening.

Not for the faint hearted perhaps. Just follow the link and hover over a country.
Breathing Earth.

Image obtained from Flickr

London - The Big Smoke? - Maybe Not …

Pem Charnley — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:37:49 +0000

I live in a rural part of England. Yet the size of my country means that to get to the capital - London - it is a mere two hour’s train journey.

London is often called the Big Smoke by those not living there. An almost reverent and hushed tone is applied to our country’s largest city.

The clue’s in the name. Big Smoke. Whilst London may well be an internationally vital centre for commerce, a city rich in culture, it is far from being an environmentally friendly corner of the world.

Perhaps this is about to change.

Voluntary Carbon Standard

Pem Charnley — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:56:36 +0000

Last month was a busy time for the voluntary carbon standard (VCS). Admittedly, it’s not a phrase that rolls smoothly off the tongue.

Like corporate social responsibility (CSR), you find yourself semi-exhausted before the next sentence.

You sense inherent good in each of these phrases – sure – but just want them to make sense in a realer world.

And so to the VCS.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is big business. In 2006, there was a huge surge in this market resulting in a 200% growth.

Big brands were, and are, getting into carbon offsetting in a big way. Google, Nike, Coca Cola, Yahoo! – all are now part of this market.

I don’t think it at all beneficial at this stage to analyse their reasons for announcing green credentials. Whether it really is genuine CSR or in each case a PR exercise is redundant. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re doing it.

So, yes, multinationals are offsetting their carbon within the voluntary sector. Good.

But what’s drawing them to the market? Two reasons.

Green Parenting: Driving in Circles

Wendy Strgar — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 17:01:57 +0000

I want to live a green life, and for most of the years of parenting my four kids, I lead my family with a devoted environmental consciousness. In ways big and small, a decade of nursing four kids, cotton diapering, and family beds, my life style choices reflected deeply-held values. Food choices were equally deliberate, and, for a while, we even lived on a small farm and the kids grew up with goats and lambs. Along with these environmental choices, I also made the decision to allow my children to guide me in helping them find their passions. My role as their mother increasingly became the activity coordinator and well, driver to their variety of music, horse back riding, acting, art lessons and zillions of year round sports activities.

In the early years, as I drove in larger and larger circles around our community, I held fantasies of how all this driving and devotion to their development would pay off in college scholarships. As they grew and lost interest in one activity over another it became clear that the real benefit of all this driving around was in each of them finding some piece of themselves that made their lives meaningful.

But, each year it became more difficult to coordinate their activity schedules and figure out how I could drive across town to three or four different locations within twenty minute intervals. I justified the time I spent driving my kids as “our time together” and tried not to think about how frequently I filled up the tank. Yet, the stress of the scheduling and trying to sort out the routes occupied so much of my mind that I could barely focus on the time together. It wasn’t the kind of parenting that I imagined when I was making all the green choices that came so easy when they were little.

The gnawing doubts about my parenting choices and our driving lifestyle came to a head after watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Calculating the actual monetary costs of all those circles is mind-boggling even if I use only half of what employees get in their mileage reimbursement. What was worse than the close to 1000 gallons of gas per year that I was consuming in these concentric circles was the realization that I was producing 18,195 lbs of CO2 per year. Somehow in the practice of parenting, I got so busy accommodating everyone’s desired schedules that I lost touch with what I was trying to create in the first place.

I still don’t have the answer to this dilemma, but I have taken small steps towards re-establishing the balance between my kids expectations and our ever more essential environmental values. I have given up my time with them in favor of carpooling whenever possible. I limit the number of activities and sports each kid can participate in and I work hard to advocate for gaps in activities, for slowing down, even to experiencing boredom sometime so that they have the opportunity to discover themselves in quiet also. And thanks to this great job I learned about www.terrapass.com which is not only an incredibly easy site to help you learn about your own emissions levels but offers real solutions to helping deal with them.

Let me know how you have dealt with these issues in your family…