1000 Flowers for the Planet - #336 Query Carbon Neutral Products
Have you ever heard a bird say, “Shit! I just pooped in my
nest. Wait! It’s okay folks – I covered it up with 100% natural feathers, so I
can’t tell I’ve pooped in my nest.”
The phrase “carbon neutral” is a misleading one. As long as
you are using fossil fuels you are creating carbon emissions. You could go live
in the forest without electricity or a car, but as soon as you start a fire to
cook or keep warm, you are creating carbon emissions. Nothing can ‘neutralise’
that. You can try to ‘compensate’ for it, but you can’t actually neutralise it.
Our marketing people have become so incredibly good at their jobs they can sell
fossil fuels alongside a rescue package that doesn’t exist.
In order to ‘neutralise’ our carbon emissions we need to
plant trees. We would need to plant 50 million hectares with trees every year to compensate for our current
fossil fuel usage. And here’s the catch: in order for those trees to
‘neutralise’ the problem they would have to stay there forever. That means never
chopping one tree down, and continuing to plant 50 million hectares every year. To give you some
perspective, 50 million hectares is about the size of Spain (get your atlas
out). [source: http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/carbon_offsetting_tree_planting.htm]
But then, planting trees may not go far towards a solution anyway. Read http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article256-the-carbon-neutral-myth.html
for more information.
Stop being one of those people that puts their hands over
their ears and sings la-la-la-la in order to avoid being aware of the problem.
Acknowledge that what we do has an impact, try to reduce your impact and become
more educated. Beware products and companies who make claims that they are
“carbon neutral”, because once you shit in the nest, covering it up with
feathers won’t make the shit go away. The solution is to not shit in the nest in the first place.
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