How Green Are You?

[Andrew G]

Has anyone done the CO2 test at [url]http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html[/url]?

My scores:
Home = 2.02
Appliances = 1.59
Travel = 0.76

[John the old'un]

Who cares. ????

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

Home 1.17
Appliances 0.45
Travel 6.14

[Snoop Doug]

Not sure about the debate on which came first, CO2 or temp increase and there is a lot to be said in both yay or nay camps.

However, errrrrmmm, I care. On a number of fronts, primarily incurring unnecessary cost through waste and excess usage of scarce resource.

A lot of my work focusses on sustainability and trust me on this, we are using all kinds of resources far quicker than we can afford. There are some scary things coming down the tracks. There are also some big and small opportunities to act and think more sustainably. eg buy local where you can, gorw yer own grub (are you scared by how little people are willing to pay for food these days - cjd anyone?) and use energy wisely are two simple and effective actions. We can have the debate about China, India, USA and Euope later, don't forget that we've had a rare old time building our economy and prosperity in an unsustainable way for years so I don't think we can start with too much finger pointing.....

Oooops - went off a bit there - any road up here come the excuses. I moved into a windy old house last Jan with a 30 yr old boiler (no reference to the lovely Mrs Snoop before anyone asks) and I've been all round the world this year so you can bet your ass my figures will be waaaaaay out of whack. I'll have a go and top the hall of shame later

Snoop

[Andrew G]

John, as you can imagine I care about all things Green.

Snoop, you're not one of these people who fly all around the world to tell them to be ecologically aware are you. .

You're spot on about China though. If I were in their shoes I'd be sitting there saying, hang on let us have some fun while you sort yourselves out, and then I'll do my bit.

[kieran]

Well, I haven't done the test, interesting in the latest copy of the 'professional' magazine of the Royal Statistical Society there was an article on this and the conclusion was that population rise over the coming years will be the biggest factor to play in global warming and resource use and if recent trends continue (even with a slowing down) the pop increase will swamp any improvements in energy efficiency. It made very gloomy reading.

Maybe China/India should seize the chance to gain a moral (and technological) victory and go green, It aleady is one of the largest producers and users of wind turbines and its demand for wind turbines has been growing every year.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

[quote]There are some scary things coming down the tracks.

[John the old'un]

[quote="Andrew G"]John, as you can imagine I care about all things Green.

[MJ_1993]

Yes we do have control. You see we contribute a mere 5% to the carbon cycle. But this five percent causes an imbalance which the natural process cannot remedy. The problem is we are attempting to stop China and India from having an industrial revolution via coal and oil and gas, when Britain and the U.S. and the rest did it 50 yrs ago (yes I know the UK revolution was a long time before, I am talking about the developed countries in general).

China needs to be credited for attempting to reduce the CO2 by doing things such as hydrogen powered cars and pumping CO2 into empty oil/gas wells.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

Interesting that there are no "Global Warming" concerns over the recent shuttle launch - that must be the equivalent of a few aeroplane journeys

[MJ_1993]

Its called industrialisation. the U.S. and the USSR did it. In fact since its an unmanned rocket/shuttle not as much as the NASA missions.

Yh but Sean, we cant stop a country from industrialising in this way, when we ourselves did it can we?

[MJ_1993]

Okay, so because Britain robbed India via mercantilism, they have to the pay the price, by not only being backward for a good century+, but having to come up with a greener, and inevitably slower way of becoming developed.

Also, it is not China's mostly, its because us foreigners decide to dump factories there, because of cheap labour etc. We need to shoulder some of the blame here.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

[quote]mercantilism,

[kieran]

Sadly, what India and China probably realise that if global warming continues then they will probably suffer worse than USA and Europe given the size of their populations (e.g. water wars) and large areas of poor land (large tracts of China are turning into desert etc due to change in rain fall pattern). it would not be sensible for them to do as the west did over 100 years ago.

[John the old'un]

[quote="Mo Jaffer"]Yes we do have control. You see we contribute a mere 5% to the carbon cycle. But this five percent causes an imbalance which the natural process cannot remedy.