If you don't believe that doing anything about your co2 emissions is worthwhile, then I respect your opinion, and you can stop reading now.
If you do want to do something, then perhaps this is of interest.
This is not a recommendation per se - it's not a company I have used in any way (yet), and I have no connection with them. This is a simple Google result that I thought would be worth bringing to the attention of Backroomers.
You will find at this website (below) a calculator that will apparently show you approximately how much co2 your driving is generating per year. It also covers other areas such as houses and flights.
After you have entered your figures, it shows you how much co2 you are using annually for that activity - and then how much it costs to plant enough trees to offset it, giving you the chance to actually go ahead and make that planting happen.
I make no claims as to the veracity of the calculator, but for me, for example, it looks like £35 a year for my car and £90 for the house.
I for one am prepared to pay that sort of money annually (perhaps more, in fact, because I really like trees) to pay for enough trees to offset my co2 use. I would hope the figures include the co2 produced in actually getting the darned things planted too.
If you think this is stupid, that's fine. I thought it seemed quite attractive and there are enough drivers here that might find it interesting to follow this kind of philosophy, although of course you may not want to use this website to do so.
www.carbonneutral.com/shop/
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Excellent Dipstick. But what seems more likely to happen is that the govt and local govts will use global warming as an excuse to jack up their nuisance value to motorists to unprecedented heights. They will end up taking far more money than that off us, and of course they won't even consider planting any trees. Probably it will go on high-emission vehicles and polluting foreign junkets for bureaucratic ponces.
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I agree. Which is why I thought as an individual one could rise above all that and do summat personally.
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There are currently real issues about these tree planting schemes.
environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,...l
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What about those of us who have, in my case for instance over a period of 40 years, done everything possible to maximise their property's insulation and minimal use of energy or used public transport as and when it was suitable?
To start requesting further payments to plant trees etc is, in effect, a further stealth tax in such cases.
However, I'm still not entirely convinced that the current wave of environmental concern is absolutely and truly genuine - it's a subject that's been aired in one form or another for decades (the US for instance first had vehicle catalytic converters in 1973) and as someone who's been around for a good while I can well remember that pollution in the past seemed far, far worst than it is today. What's more it was even more serious before that time.
Don't get me wrong as I do appreciate the need to take steps to contain damage that may be/is being caused, but global "warming" and cooler periods have been experienced over many thousands of years ago - and you can't blame that on aircraft, ships, cars and public transport.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Thanks for the link , Daveyjp.
I particularly liked the line: "Oliver Rackham, a botanist and landscape historian at Cambridge University, . . .said: "Telling people to plant trees is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels."
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Indeed, thanks for the link.
Interesting, although the bulk of the objection appears to be about the management and politics of the concept of offsets, rather than the science behind it. The only objection to the method appears to be "what if the trees don't survive for the required 100 years", which again seems to me more of a management issue than a process fault.
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I realise that I'm a cynic but to me it seems to be a case of 'how can we make more money from this' rather than 'what can we do to stop/slow this' as in investiments and infrastructure.
---
Xantia HDi.
Buy a Citroen and get to know the local GSF staff better...
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Hi Dipstick, regarding your first sentence, regrettably too many of our fellow forum posters are unreconstructed petrolheads so it will attract their bile.
For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination for motor cars: their design, construction, marketing and use. But if the choice is between unnecessarily damaging the planet and moderating my motoring expectations then it's no contest. The years to come will accentuate this. I'm willing to bet that ten years from now there will still be a few misguided souls who regard it as perfectly acceptable for a car to drink a gallon of fuel every 30 miles or less.
Tut Tut.
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"it seems to be a case of 'how can we make more money from this' rather than,,,"
Don't knock financial incentives. The profit motive has its limitations but has been at least a partial factor in many advances. The people who built our railway network were hoping to make a profit. The system they built wasn't perfect but does anyone outside North Korea believe it would have been done better if centrally planned by government?
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Dipstick - well done. I accept that Global Warming is happening but I am not convinced by the claimed connection with CO2 - never mind that!
I have to drive a 20 miles round trip to work - 6 to midnight or 1/2 days at weekends. No public transport exists to enable me to do this. I live in the middle of nowhere, 10 miles from 3 very acceptable towns where I can shop. There are 3 buses a day to one of the towns which is also where I go to catch the train. The buses do not fit with the train times and it is a one mile walk from the bus station to the trainsstation.
I don't mind paying a green tax, partially designed I suppose to keep me from using my car, but there has GOT to be a worthwhile regular and cheap alternative ie buses, dial-a-ride service or whatever. I want a guarantee that the money raised will be spent on projects directly related to global warming. With the Goverment's record of collecting taxes from motorists and milking off
80% of it for other 'causes' I am not confident. I don't blame the present incumbents BtW - all governments, past and present have diverted funds in this way
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armitage shannks post [ Armitage Shanks {P} Mon 30 Oct 06 13:39 ]) said:
>> I accept that Global Warming is happening but I am not convinced by the claimed connection with CO2 ....
compare this with
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=43261&...e
[Hottest July day since 1911 - Armitage Shanks {P} Wed 9 Aug 06 21:44 ]
>> I can accept that global warming MAY be occuring but I have my doubts and I am not sure as to the source ....
i am so glad that in under 3 months, armitage has moved on from "may" to "is". :: ;-0 ! ! ;-) ::
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Three months is a long time - in ecological terms! I may have seen the light but I can't identify the source of it - if you follow my poor analogy!
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Don't knock financial incentives. The profit motive has its limitations but has been at least a partial factor in many advances. The people who built our railway network were hoping to make a profit. The system they built wasn't perfect but does anyone outside North Korea believe it would have been done better if centrally planned by government?
A major factor in many advances. On the railways, central planning has been used in this country to pull them to pieces and degrade them, the last (current) stage being to attack them with: the profit motive!
Central planning in agriculture is a good example of dumb ideologues getting everything the wrong way round. State farms managed by bureaucrats with workers paid a state salary... This is not the way to get people to get up before dawn in all weathers and put in the arduous effort needed. They will only do that if they are a) raised to do it and b) stand some chance of gaining personally from it. Otherwise like sensible people they will skive and skimp and be idle and discontented. No amount of ranting about 'sabotage' and 'corruption' will alter that fact, and putting people up against the wall as an example doesn't do much good either.
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It's gonna take alot more than just giving a company a few quid to plant trees, it requires a whole change of behaviours.
Wanna know more? - www.monbiot.com/archives/category/climate-change
and Mr shanks, with statements like that you are leaving yourself open to ridicule.
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Oh dear, I've just bought 10 acres of woodland and cut down 50 trees in order to get my Landcruiser through.
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In our neck-of-the-woods there are already enough trees to hug!
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In our neck-of-the-woods there are already enough trees to hug!
Ha! In the North of Scotland, the environmentalists want trees cut down. See, for example www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/donations/flowcountry/i...p
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If anyone wants to make themselves feel better, please send me a tenner and I'll gladly plant a tree for them. I can even send a piccie and a little certificate for that real feelgood factor.
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Carbon offsetting at first seems like a good idea but all that is happening with this tree planting scheme is that the carbon is being stored in the trees.
How long and how many tree will it be before we do not have room for more trees, or they need chopping down for housing and roads. Not many/long.
We need to produce less carbon.
So, the planets been through ice ages before, the planets flooded before, even been struck by a meteor that resulted in an effect similar to a nuclear winter, and come through it.
Humans could probably last through the thousands of years these events last, but a bucket load of us are gonna be wiped out, and noone is gonna volunteer to move to where the ice caps are gonna come down to or into the new flood plains are they, so it's not gonna be much fun.
And I'm not that much of a tree hugging hippie, cos my view of sports is if it ain't got an engine, it ain't worth doing.
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Are you by any chance, American?
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Are you by any chance, American?
**splutters tea all over monitor** No, I'm English.
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Is taxing (mostly necessary) car transport the best approach? It seems always that if there's a problem the answer is to cane people with taxes. Wouldn't it be better to incentivise research and industry to find new solutions, as opposed to mainly futile attempts to curb use of the current ones?
I suppose I don't mind paying extra if I know the tax generated is earmarked for good research. Most people can afford the extra taxation levied on them, they just resent it; but it has zip effect on reducing carbon emissions.
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I think all the "gonnas" may have given us the wrong impression - dude!
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I think all the "gonnas" may have given us the wrong impression - dude!
nah, not american, just a lazy typist - man
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