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Carbon offset, web upset
- 31 Oct 06, 05:53 PM
The house is lit up like a Christmas tree, the central heating is blasting away in an attempt to keep the street warm, and both the stereo and TV are competing for my attention. In light of the yesterday on climate change, I can鈥檛 help wonder if a change of tack is called for. Not least before my ass gets taxed into oblivion. Oh yes, and I should really help to save the planet, too.
Websites already exist for individuals to offset their personal carbon emissions. The idea goes basically like this: you work out your impact on the environment (Carbon Footprint) and then the site calculates how many trees should be grown to suck up your carbon (plants breathe the stuff) and you pay money for the planting of the trees and other such plans.
It doesn鈥檛 take much searching to find some websites to determine what the impact of my lifestyle is on the environment. offers a carbon footprint calculator. It鈥檚 in Flash, so it looks quite interesting. I couldn鈥檛 get it to work with my screen reader, but I could just about get around it with the keyboard, even if the tab order was a bit random.
Much plainer, is the calculator offered on . It looks like it should be easy to use, but it isn鈥檛. It鈥檚 usable, but not user-friendly. And why they have used drop-down selection boxes when there is only one option is a mystery.
Be warned though, whichever one you want to try, be armed with as much information as you can before filling it in. I for one, couldn鈥檛 tell them or you how many miles I鈥檝e travelled on the underground this year.
In anticipation of the long haul flights I鈥檒l doubtless have to take to exotic locations to cover conferences for this blog (and someone, somewhere, must surely be thinking of running one in Hawaii, I hope) I also looked into what I could do to offset my emissions on these flights. I鈥檓 not an unreasonable man 鈥 if the 大象传媒 pays for the journey, I鈥檒l happily cover the environmental impact.
is one such website where this can be done. It offers an introductory animation, which is both narrated and has subtitles, which is a nice touch. Again though, whilst the calculator should work, the website could be a little easier to use. An absence of ALT text for images makes guessing which one is the 鈥渃alculate鈥 button a bit of a trial for screen reader users.
A much better idea might be to visit the website. It looks far more user-friendly. You can鈥檛 calculate your exact emissions however 鈥 you choose from a range of five packages.
Climate change, unquestionably is going to be one of the big issues of our time. If we are going to all be given our own personal carbon rations, then being able to manage it by keeping green and buying carbon credits from other people as easily as possible will be rather important. The internet will undoubtedly be the platform for this service - it already provides a way to make a difference as I've mentioned above. This will only increase as time goes by, and innovative methods are created to reduce emissions.
Heavy industry already has this carbon trading system in place, we may all need access to it too. And surely it鈥檚 only a matter of time until someone combines social networking tools, so that the travelling high-powered businessman can pair up with the ardent green vegan.
For us all to contribute to saving the planet, these websites must make a greater effort so that we can all get involved. File this one under "see how we're building our lives and future around the web".
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There's a very interesting article here as to why carbon offsetting is not neccessarily the way to go:
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Polititions and people you are wasting your time,China is building a coal fired power station every week ,do you think that you can stop any one from flying abroad for their holiday? Or get the Yanks to drive small cars?
Prepare Britain to be a collection of islands,in any case stop building on flood planes and at the sea side.
I am not a prophet of doom ,just pragmatic.
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In reply to frostyoldsod we can effect as a country if we were to insist on smaller engined cars. If Britain were to do this and, for instance, ban all cars over 1600cc from being manufactured and used in UK then other countries would follow suit so as not to lose a valuable market. I realise that firms like Jaguar and Range Rover would have to change or cease trading but we had the same problem with the coal mines and steel manufacturers but it had to happen. Possibly we could get the EU to agree as well. Also, there is no reason for cars to emit any bad emissions if silencers were made to do this or exhaust filters were made mandatory on such cars. Along with the above, car dimensions could be restricted so as to improve efficiency.
China's coal fired power stations could also be filtered to dramatically reduce or omit emmissions as could any countries powerstations. All this could be brought in across the whole range of energy using equipment, i.e: don't allow kitchen, laundry machines or any household device to be anything other than A rated and even set a programme to improve the effectiveness of the rating. China seems to manufacture most of todays electrical goods and thus would be made to comply as they want to sell what they produce.
Another point, probably Turbo Prop or even diesel powered airliners would be more emmission friendly which would only mean flights would take a bit longer.
One thing that would save a lot of power usage would to make it compulsory that any large service corporation, e.g., Britsh Gas, Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk) etc., must have sufficient ability to answer callers with problems promptly and not keep you waiting on phone calls you are paying for to be answered this would encourage them to supply fault free services so as to save employing more customer no-care operatives.
Finally, carbon offset and extra taxes on large motors etc. is a waste of time and just allows the well off to excuse their emmission usage not save it.
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