How to go carbon neutral or free?

[Riverman]

As cyclists, we are in a good position to try this.

In terms of going carbon free, disregarding the carbon dioxide that we breath out, this seems almost impossible.

Take using the internet for example. It is very hard to verify how much carbon is used through the load you put on each server.

However regardless of this, have any of you managed to go carbon neutral and how have you calculated it?

The obvious things are reducing, reusing and recycling stuff, using charity shops, switching to a green electricity tarriff, buying stuff locally instead of from Australia etc.

Also unless you work from home, it's very difficult to avoid adding to the total unless you avoid work altogether.

 

[Aperitif]

I don't ride my Look much anymore...

 

[rich p]

I've stopped burning the toast

 

[buddha]

In my next life, I'm going to be a tree

 

[Mr Pig]

Well we could stop buying things made in China, that might help.

 

[Night Train]

Well we could stop buying things made in China, that might help.

That would make a big difference, affecting the economy in China at the same time.
The difficulty would be in finding locally made products to replace some of the cheap stuff from China. We just don't make anything much here and we should.

 

[ASC1951]

stop buying things made in China....

I think the Chinese get a bad press on this. Their use of resources per person is still about 10% of the average European and about 4% of the average American - and half of it is taken up manufacturing wasteful tat which the US can't produce cheaply enough but still demands, paying for it with the savings of the Asian middle classes.

The elephant in the room is population. If there were 3 billion of us instead of 6, that would just about solve the problem, whereas if we carry on churning out people at the current rate nothing we do about climate change will be enough. Yet politicians never talk about it.

Actually the only large country to do anything about population growth has been, well, China.

 

[jimboalee]

As cyclists, we are in a good position to try this.

In terms of going carbon free, disregarding the carbon dioxide that we breath out, this seems almost impossible.

Take using the internet for example. It is very hard to verify how much carbon is used through the load you put on each server.

However regardless of this, have any of you managed to go carbon neutral and how have you calculated it?

The obvious things are reducing, reusing and recycling stuff, using charity shops, switching to a green electricity tarriff, buying stuff locally instead of from Australia etc.

Also unless you work from home, it's very difficult to avoid adding to the total unless you avoid work altogether.

You put a Current Clamp on the Live Cable to your electricity meter and use the calorific value for methane.

Or one of these...
http://www.mygreenerhome.co.uk/energy-meters-6/eco-eye-mini-energy-meter-263.html

 

[ASC1951]

buying stuff locally instead of from Australia etc.

You see, even that is contentious. It actually uses less energy, start to finish, to buy tomatoes grown outdoors in the sun on Gran Canaria than to produce them in heated greenhouses in Essex.

IMO the most efficient way to deal with it is to use market mechanisms, specifically a carbon tax maintained at a substantially higher level than anything currently proposed. Manufacturers and consumers will then automatically respond without having to employ an army of bureaucrats. I think that is where we shall end up, once our venal politicians catch up with reality.

No-one is going to find this very palatable. Everyone is in favour of 'doing something about it', so long as the changes to their own lifestyles are only at the gesture level. The Guardian Travel supplement, for instance, is full of long haul 'eco holidays', but imagine the outcry if there was an individual travel allowance set at a figure which included the world's poor i.e. not even enough for one trip a year to the derided Benidorm.

We might be a clever, adaptable species, but there is a very real risk that we won't do anything about it in time and that our grandchildren will live much harsher lives than ours in a violent degraded world.

 

[Norm]

You see, even that is contentious. It actually uses less energy, start to finish, to buy tomatoes grown outdoors in the sun on Gran Canaria than to produce them in heated greenhouses in Essex.

I think the issue there is that you should only have tomatoes when they are in season.

 

[numbnuts]

Unless you live in a cave and eat nuts and berrys you have no chance

 

[montage]

As cyclists, we are in a good position to try this.

In terms of going carbon free, disregarding the carbon dioxide that we breath out, this seems almost impossible.

Take using the internet for example. It is very hard to verify how much carbon is used through the load you put on each server.

However regardless of this, have any of you managed to go carbon neutral and how have you calculated it?

The obvious things are reducing, reusing and recycling stuff, using charity shops, switching to a green electricity tarriff, buying stuff locally instead of from Australia etc.

Also unless you work from home, it's very difficult to avoid adding to the total unless you avoid work altogether.

The frame of my Isaac is all carbon, so that is me screwed

 

[montage]

I don't ride my Look much anymore...

ah crap... IT got there first

 

[Mycroft]

I think the issue there is that you should only have tomatoes when they are in season.

+1

it amazes me to see strawberries, etc. in the supermarkets

 

[ColinJ]

The frame of my Isaac is all carbon, so that is me screwed

No, that's good - you've locked up some carbon that might otherwise be released into the atmosphere!