Green tea really is greener: the milk in a cup of white tea or coffee creates more CO2 than boiling the water.
I wonder how much CO2 writing the article in the Guardian about this cost.
I recently have started being very annoyed at the pathetic calculation of CO2 emissions of ordinary daily activities.
I understand of course, that small sacrifices can make a big difference to the planet. But I don’t feel that the focus should be on small sacrifices.
Take supermarket bags.
I am sure I can save a lot of carbon dioxide by re-using plastic bags. Like a few kilos a year or something. And if we convince thousands of people to save hundreds of thousands of bags, without wasting that much energy convincing them…
How about something a bit easier?
How about we convince a single planning officer in a single local authority to plan shopping areas so they are closer to where people live, and close to existing public transport links?
Surely if Tesco was just this little bit more conveniently located than a 2 mile drive, and surely if there were other options within a short walk, this would save more CO2 than the shopping bags ever will.
Similarly for the various car sharing schemes.
My office is located in the middle of fields, 2 miles from the nearest train/bus stop, with a train an hour servicing it during peak times. There is no way of getting to it than by car.
Though I like the scenery, one has to ask how someone got planning to build this, and how much CO2 is wasted daily by the thousands who work there and commute daily.
Surely more than can ever be saved by good souls who can share a car?
thoughts
Whenever I travel to developing or less developed countries, one thing that stands out is how inefficiently these places run.
The classic example is the restaurant. You often see more staff than customers, seemingly struggling to find something to do. Yet when you ask for the bill, you still have to wait for a long while. Coming from the UK where you expect waiters to be running around and trying to get you to eat fast and go, this seems very peculiar.
My transit though Atlanta though made me question how efficient even the UK is.
Apparently, this airport is by some distance the busiest in the world. Yet when you are here, you won’t be blamed to think this place is smaller and less busy than Stansted.
I recall once reading an article about Easyjet – back then a new business model for Europe. The article described with fascination how people queue up to board before the plane has even arrived to the jetway, and how airports no longer read the calls to board.
Here, this seems old school. Here people aren’t actually queuing and pretending getting on a plane is a big event. The announcement to board is read by a computer. The door opens by a computer. People land, run around the terminal and get to the plane by the departure time or they get rebooked on the next one. There is no real “waiting area” by the gate. No duty free shopping. Generally people arrive “just in time”, walk to the next plane, and off they go again.
It goes on. If you miss your flight, you scan your passport on a machine that prints a new boarding pass for the next one and a meal voucher. Customer service “desks” are actually staffed by telephones, not people, that connect you to a call centre. Flight departure times look peculiar (mine leaves at 5:23). 10 minutes late is considered a “delay”.
Pilots don’t arrive in style with the crew. They run from one gate to the next to catch the next flight, often picking up a McDonalds to go on the way.
The experience feels like I am travelling in a fast food restaurant where every process is programmed for as little human intervention as possible.
The whole thing is so efficient that I feel if any of these businesses set off to run something in Europe, they would clear millions and make Easyjet look as archaic as British Airways.
The question, of course, is why they don’t. This is a fundamental one. The US has always shown to the world how to do things, and made an economy out of this. The failure to continue this model is at the heart of the current crisis.
One explanation I can find is that politically, it is now “cool” to not be like an American. What once would be considered an innovation, would now be deemed a step backwards. In that sense, the US would need to re-invent its image and relationships with the rest of the world, and become a place people aspire to again.
Another possible explanation is that Americans themselves no longer feel they are part of a wider world which they can look out to. By focussing on their very narrow political discourse, they have forgotten that their future is in looking outwards, not inwards.
In the latter case, this would be a very interesting lesson for Europe. At this difficult time, the media focusses on internal matters, ignoring even what happens within EU borders. Perhaps the solution is quite the opposite.
thoughts
WarwickA weekend of nostalgia and memories. The same places, and some of the same people. A lot of things I would have done... »