We don't own a car at present, but we are going to try and make up for it this afternoon by having a modest barbecue using 2.5 kg (about 5.5 lb) of charcoal, which according to my maths will emit about 8 kg (about 1.25 stone) of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to driving about 50 km (30 miles) in an average car.
That's about four times as much CO2 as we'd generate if we were really extravagant and had a patio heater on for the evening.
If you'd like me to feel guilty next time a low-lying coastal flood plain is flooded by a typhoon, cyclone or hurricane or something, please leave a comment!
Saturday, 10 May 2008
My carbon footprint
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7 comments:
Allow me to recommend ostrich burgers. Yum.
I picked up a green living catalogue from outside Neals Yard and it said that fire bowls, chimineas etc were all OK, and double OK if you bought them from ethic suppliers, preferably having been made by Mexicans/Indonesians what ever, from clay or recycled bottletops. There were two pages of various models. Apparently, it doesn't count as carbon if it is a fair trade bar-b-q.
So long as you didn't use charcoal briquets in an aluminium tray produced by exploitative multi-national corporations, and only grill free-range sausages humanely caught on a rod and line, you should be OK.
If you are having your barbie in Essex, kindly rememer you are in a low-lying coastal plain, particularly the Isle de Canvey.
Ah, but you're using charcoal, i.e. formerly wood, bones and other organic bits, so whilst you'll be releasing CO2, the carbon has only been locked up in your fuel for a short while. So it's a negligible short-term change in the composition of the atmosphere before more life locks it up again.
Contrast that with the petrol of the car which has had its carbon content locked up underground for millions of years prior to its combustion. Burn enough of it and you've got a significant long-term change in the atmosphere.
Try as you might you're being green. Or at least carbon-neutral.
... so life can 'lock up' the CO2 from charcoal but not from petrol? Dr Cllr Philip Thomas, I thought you had studied chemistry!
CO2 is plantfood
Don't be tricky! You know CO2 from petrol or other fossil fuels adds to the carbon revolving around the Carbon Cycle in a way that living things dying and decomposing (or your charcoal being combusted) doesn't.
That said, before the carbon in petrol was trapped underground as a oil, it was on the surface as living creatures. Thus the world has managed with that much free carbon in the Cycle before and can again.
I like the way you all think you can influence the weather yet you cannot rule the world.
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