I joined the Glastonbury CRAG group when it launched in Glastonbury’s Town Hall at the start of October. I’m aware it’s now November and I still haven’t calculated my carbon footprint.
What I have been doing is thinking about it all, realising how complex my life is and how hard it is to be aware of the consequences of all the stuff I’ve been up to… Travel for instance, though that’s relatively easy – I keep a diary anyway and have been converting last year’s entries into a ‘travel diary’ summarising all the journeys I’ve made. From that it should be an easy step to calculating their carbon emissions. But food…? Where to start!
What I realise is that our society makes it incredibly easy to be aware of the financial costs of things, but not at all of their environmental costs. If a flights costs £50 it feels cheap – I can stay happily blind to the fact it produces two tons of CO2 because that’s just not visible the way £50 is. If an apple costs 30p I buy it, not noticing it comes from South Africa rather than Somerset… I wish our system allowed for environmental consumptions to be felt ‘in the pocket’ as quickly and easily as we feel our money coming and going. I want to develop an ‘environmental literacy’, even an environmental fluency, so I just know, sort of naturally, what things cost in environmental terms – in as much detail as possible. That’s the main reason I joined the CRAG group, really.
On the carbon reduction side – a bit of good news. I said to my landlady, “how about getting green electricity?” She loves making raw food juices and I thought it was a shame to be making such good food with such crap fossil fuel electricity. I didn’t know what she’d say, I just asked her. And she just said “Yes!” immediately. As though she’d been waiting for someone to ask her. I said, it might cost 10% more… She said, “I don’t care – just tell me what to do…!”. So that’s a result, I just need to get hold of the right papers and get them signed. And today I heard EDF (her present supplier) are planning to build 4 new nuclear reactors in the UK… So let’s do it ASAP I’m thinking.
Lokabandhu
