Calculating the problem away

A fair few summers ago, maybe back in 2004, I toured the UK festivals with some carbon footprint calculator courtesy of the Centre for Alternative Technology.

Because of the ways my mind work, numbers stick in my head, and I still recall most of the figures. A return flight to Sydney (27,000 miles) has the equivalent impact of about 20 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide, what with radiative forcing and all.

The Resurgance Carbon Calculator still reckons this is so, and yet the current CAT calculator now reckons I can fly to Oz for only 5 tonnes?

British Airways beat that calculating the distance at 21,000 miles and the impact at the flight at 3.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide. I guess they ignore the forcing effect, and all.

Better yet the last email I have seen on the subject, from a group called think before you fly, tried to make these numbers real to people, and suggested that by turning off your central heating for 3 years, I could balance out such a flight. I reckon this works out at about 1.5 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide.

So if I wait long enough perhaps the refined technology of the calculator will make the problem go away, and I can be lazing on a guilt free beach by tea time?

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Totemic campaigns

Capitalism seems to have survived the march against climate change, despite the best efforts of the legions of socialist workers to predict its downfall through the sale of slightly soggy newspapers. Perhaps next year?

And the March initiates a thousand networking events in pubs across London, as key campaigners from diverse organisations bash heads as to where the next battle should be.

Even the mainstream behemoth of a coalition that is Stop Climate Chaos, is looking for that key intervention, that totemic campaign that will ramp the issue further up the agenda.

So to drunken conversations in the Synergy Centre about direct action and iconic pictures that shook the world. Should that totemic campaign be new coal (Kingsnorth), aviation (perhaps Heathrow), a return to the climate change bill for Valentines Day or something arcane such as feed in tariffs.

Yet I can’t imagine how we will tackle climate change without getting to grips with aviation, with binge flying, with love miles, and with the addiction of NGO supporters to just another fix.

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Arguments Lost

Of the dozen tools to change the world, of the ways to get the message through to decision makers, of the voices you can use to drown out the clatter of coins, I hate marches the most.

I don’t get it. How can walking slowly from a to b, change anything. I’m unconvinced, I find them exasperating, does anybody listen, does anybody care, so I’m going anyway.

Why because I lost the argument to a good friend a long time ago. Marching to Stop Climate Change may well achieve nothing. Staying at home in bed definitely will.

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