I’m a Climate Criminal doing time…
Last weekend I flew from Cork to Stansted to see my mum for her birthday. The feeling of being a ‘climate criminal’ was worse than ever and the disparaging looks from various friends since has been quite interesting…. But – I’m paying back for my crimes!
No daft carbon sequestration nonsense round here. I simply haven’t lit a fire for four days. The (three year old) council house we live in has open coal fires (…don’t get me started – that’s a different post…). In an average winter week we burn about 50kg of coal. I used Resurgence’s carbon calculator to work out that this is about 121kg CO2 released per week. In a previous post I estimated that the return flight to Stansted uses about 25 litres of fuel per person. This is about 67kg of CO2 released according to the Resurgence calculator.
I reckon that by not lighting the fire for half a week (I’ve been wearing 4 layers and a think hat whilst working on the computer and Ruth and the kids are away) I’ve saved about the amount of CO2 that my flight gave out. OK – I know that aeroplane emissions are more damaging per kilo and all that… but you can’t tell me that Ryanair would get away with the sulphur dioxide and a million other nasties that come out of our chimney. (On a still day our estate is shrouded in smog – and we burn smokeless – who knows what that’s doing to some Polish community somewhere…)
So have I nearly done my time yet? Or should I do another 8 days without the fire on? My point is that the aeroplane has become to climate change what the fox became to animal rights: They’re both not good things to do for the persecuted but we’re all focusing on the fox whilst the battery farms carry on regardless, or the aeroplane whilst we’re all driving around every day and not insulating our homes. OK – I’m off to put another jumper on….
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
2 responses to I’m a Climate Criminal doing time…
KEEP YOUR JUMPER ON!
There seems to be some fairly contradictory information out there about emissions from flying and it may be that your calculation of 67kg of fuel for your flight is right. However if you actually enter the flight time into the Resurgence calculator (ave Cork – Stsd = 1.33 hours) you’ll find you spewed out a whopping 1,157kg of CO2!
That means you’re not gonna have a fire for the next 10 weeks I’m afraid – although what with the unusually warm winter we’re having who needs one?
N.b that Resurgence go on to say that sustainable levels of CO2 waste are 2000kg per person per year (I imagine this is on the high side). When we go on to calculate all our other uses including our industry share we are almost all way over the mark.
To get the real perspective everyone should do the whole calculation and realise how much we are all a part of the problem. This includes our car driving, flying, computers, food and heating. So I definitely agree with you there.
But I guess we’ll all be doing time for our carbon crimes when the rivers have run dry and we can’t grow any food anymore.
Well spotted Mike – I hadn’t even scrolled that far down their page [blushes]… not sure where they got those figures from though – if the plane spewed out over a ton of CO2 per passenger it would have needed about 50 tons of fuel on board (assuming 150 passengers and that all the fuel was carbon and bound with 2 oxygen atoms on combustion).
I’m having a bit of a Paul Kingsnorth ‘we’re all fucked anyway’ thing with climate change at the moment – but when I say that to justify my actions it doesn’t sound very sophisticated!