I was just finishing off a nice Iberia korma-chicken-thing with rice, salad and tasty airline cake when I realised that I’ve done a lot of flying since July 2007. A quick count-up revealed that in the last 7 months I have flown about 40,000 miles over 20 legs. I’ve spent about 109 hours in oh-so-comfortable airplane seats. And I still haven’t worked out whether it’s an aeroplane or airplane. I favour the latter based on the film title alone.
But the upshot of all this means that I cringe whenever people mention “carbon footprints”. I dread to think what my carbon output for the year 2007/2008 will be when all is done and dusted with my time at Armonia. Factor in the science that tells us that CO2 emitted into the upper troposphere has about double the impact of grond emissions and it becomes the stuff that environmental tree-huggers have nightmares about. The weird thing is that, for someone who probably has above-average awareness of the issues, this hasn’t bothered nearly as much as I thought it would. But it does bug me because if I’m not tearing my hair out in order to offset then who will? And even if I did offset, does paying a man on the internet to tell me he’s planted a tree actually do anything towards saving the planet from what is looking like an increasingly probably environmental disaster (if it isn’t already)? I really feel like I should think this through more while I fly even if it seems like an ironic use of my spare time!
Which brings me onto another thing which I’ve had time to chew over at 10,000m (so to speak). Now, I’m all for reusable cutlery, having complained every week Eden Church uses disposable tea and coffee cups (which is only slightly less offensive than the liquid served inside). But I was sure that metal cutlery was banned on most airlines. Not so Iberia. The paranoid American air companies use plastic knives so blunt that a rolling pin would do a better job of cutting through whatever they are calling food on that day but it seems that Iberia has judged a cutlery-armed Spanish terrorist to be less effective than his USA counterpart. It reminds me of some lines from a recent Flight of the Conchords song:
I saw a man lying on the street half dead
With knives and forks sticking out of his leg.
And he said,
"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow
Can somebody get that knife and fork out of my leg, please?
Can somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees?"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLEK0UZH4cs)
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2 comments:
Hey Chris,
> But it does bug me because if I’m
> not tearing my hair out in order
> to offset then who will?
Quite. There's a lot of media coverage and yet, the average person probably has no understanding of energy. Take our company office. The toilet and corridors have no windows (the way it has been designed) which necessitates illumination using 36 halogen bulbs at 50 watts each. That's 1.8kW being used continuously. Likewise our cafe area has 48 bulbs, so another 2kW, which no-one ever bothers to switch off (except me) when no-one is in there. And we also have a large plasma screen at 400watts, to display messages. This is fine, except that it nevers gets turned off at night or weekends when no-one is there. (I've tried, but the switch is too high to reach).
So through poor architecture and lack of care, we're using a good 3kW most of the time which really doesn't need using. Multiply this by thousands (as many other offices and shops have been designed this way) and there's your problem.
A replacement for halogen bulbs would be a good start. 50 watts is a lot of power for light which is concentrated into a very small area; which is why fashion-conscious designers seem to like them.
Basically, I think we're doomed. Like the dodo and the (almost extinct) black rhino, human selfishness is the root of the problem. Yes, we need to travel, but our company has opened offices in Beijing and Bangalore and seems to send managers out there just for a week at a time. Do they really need to travel all the time?
I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness, sometimes...
P.S. I forgot to mention my American uncle, who used to be Professor of Chemistry. He has a house in Philadelphia and another in Stanford, California, and in his Christmas circular letter mentioned that he had travelled over 100,000 miles by plane this year. Basically, he switched houses every couple of weeks. Now I don't want to be a hypocrite as I love travelling too, but this lifestyle really isn't sustainable. And yet I reckon it's "normal" for quite a few Americans (and perhaps Europeans too)
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