Island News & Views
World Food Traditions · 21st June 2007
Ray Grigg
Carbon dioxide is transforming into conscience. This is not some strange modern form of medieval alchemy. It is simply a growing awareness that our emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels are altering Earth’s climate, setting in motion a cascading series of changes which — if unchecked — will eventually have cataclysmic effects on weather, ocean life, species survival, sea levels, human settlement patterns, agriculture, tourism, and just about everything happening on our planet.
The implications are now entering our collective awareness. Scientists who have assessed the future are expressing their concerns ever more stridently. Scholarly environmental work at universities has reached a feverish pitch. Governments are trying to respond to the mounting pressure, desperately searching for the political balance between practical solutions and public support. But most importantly, ordinary citizens are beginning to consider carbon dioxide emissions a moral issue.
Moral reproach is now being directed toward those who are profligate emitters of CO2, who disregard their ethical obligation to reduce their output by driving SUVs, flying long distances for holidays, and living in houses of excessive size. Luxury is being censured by the new measure of waste. Decadence is being gauged by inefficiency. Is the yacht really necessary? Is the heated swimming pool excessive? Does warming and cooling all those rooms consume too much energy? Carbon emissions eventually connect to environmental damage and then to counting and judging. Carbon conscience is the leading edge of an emerging ethic that will alter our perception of almost everything we do.
In response, governments are hurrying to formulate laws, corporations are scrambling for environmental respectability, businesses are marketing green products, and energy production is being assessed for its carbon dioxide output. Even professional sports is being subjected to this emerging scrutiny.
The Vancouver Canucks, for example, during their 2007 hockey season, spent 150 hours travelling 95,667 km by air to play their scheduled games, according to a calculation by The Vancouver Sun (May 5/07). This required at least 46 flights from their home city to Los Angeles, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Denver, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix and Minneapolis, with at least 18 connecting flights to other cities such as Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and Montreal. A rough calculation indicates that this flying produced 1,160 tonnes of carbon dioxide. (An Airbus 320 or Boeing 737 burns about 3,000 l/hr of jet fuel, and a burned litre produces 2.58 kg of CO2.) Some climatologists contend this tonnage should be multiplied by 2.7 to account for the more serious damage done by high-altitude emissions. Such carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere from 50 to 200 years, long after the hockey season is over.
The connection of carbon with conscience will eventually justify carbon taxes. Paying to pollute will be a cost added by public censure as an incentive to reduce emissions. These collected taxes, added to the price of everything from hockey tickets to newsprint and electricity, will then be directed to carbon mitigation projects such as wind farms, solar projects, public transportation, research, energy efficient houses, and a host of other corrective strategies.
At some point in the march of history, when the thrust of circumstances are too powerful to be avoided, certain developments become inevitable. The question of “if” shifts to “when”. The threatening prospects of human-caused climate change will force us to count carbon emissions and then take action to reduce them. What we are seeing now is the initial shift in individual, public, government and corporate awareness that presage more specific and concrete measure. The measures we once resisted as being unthinkable, we will soon be embracing as necessary.
Little signs taken in the context of this larger picture become meaningful indicators. We know that each person’s breathing produces about one kg of carbon dioxide per day. (Will living become the environmental equivalent of Original Sin?) So consider a seemingly facetious news item in the Globe & Mail (May 23/07). Exercising for 30 minutes, five times per week, will produce an extra 1.3 kg of CO2. But, the item contends, “if everyone held just one breath in three”, humanity could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere by 630 million tonnes per year.
Whether holding one’s breath will lower our metabolic processes sufficiently to reduce our individual carbon dioxide production is a moot point. What is not moot is our sensitivity to the CO2 issue as demonstrated by this news item. Even facetiousness, when considered at a deeper level, reflects meaningful information about our values. If we are considering our own body’s production of CO2, then we are certainly evaluating the output of all our other personal activities, as well as our cars, homes, airplane trips and industries.
We are witnessing the birth of an intense and powerful new ethic, an environmental morality that will reshape everything we think and do. The carbon conscience has finally arrived. Now, just watch it grow.
The implications are now entering our collective awareness. Scientists who have assessed the future are expressing their concerns ever more stridently. Scholarly environmental work at universities has reached a feverish pitch. Governments are trying to respond to the mounting pressure, desperately searching for the political balance between practical solutions and public support. But most importantly, ordinary citizens are beginning to consider carbon dioxide emissions a moral issue.
Moral reproach is now being directed toward those who are profligate emitters of CO2, who disregard their ethical obligation to reduce their output by driving SUVs, flying long distances for holidays, and living in houses of excessive size. Luxury is being censured by the new measure of waste. Decadence is being gauged by inefficiency. Is the yacht really necessary? Is the heated swimming pool excessive? Does warming and cooling all those rooms consume too much energy? Carbon emissions eventually connect to environmental damage and then to counting and judging. Carbon conscience is the leading edge of an emerging ethic that will alter our perception of almost everything we do.
In response, governments are hurrying to formulate laws, corporations are scrambling for environmental respectability, businesses are marketing green products, and energy production is being assessed for its carbon dioxide output. Even professional sports is being subjected to this emerging scrutiny.
The Vancouver Canucks, for example, during their 2007 hockey season, spent 150 hours travelling 95,667 km by air to play their scheduled games, according to a calculation by The Vancouver Sun (May 5/07). This required at least 46 flights from their home city to Los Angeles, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Denver, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix and Minneapolis, with at least 18 connecting flights to other cities such as Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and Montreal. A rough calculation indicates that this flying produced 1,160 tonnes of carbon dioxide. (An Airbus 320 or Boeing 737 burns about 3,000 l/hr of jet fuel, and a burned litre produces 2.58 kg of CO2.) Some climatologists contend this tonnage should be multiplied by 2.7 to account for the more serious damage done by high-altitude emissions. Such carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere from 50 to 200 years, long after the hockey season is over.
The connection of carbon with conscience will eventually justify carbon taxes. Paying to pollute will be a cost added by public censure as an incentive to reduce emissions. These collected taxes, added to the price of everything from hockey tickets to newsprint and electricity, will then be directed to carbon mitigation projects such as wind farms, solar projects, public transportation, research, energy efficient houses, and a host of other corrective strategies.
At some point in the march of history, when the thrust of circumstances are too powerful to be avoided, certain developments become inevitable. The question of “if” shifts to “when”. The threatening prospects of human-caused climate change will force us to count carbon emissions and then take action to reduce them. What we are seeing now is the initial shift in individual, public, government and corporate awareness that presage more specific and concrete measure. The measures we once resisted as being unthinkable, we will soon be embracing as necessary.
Little signs taken in the context of this larger picture become meaningful indicators. We know that each person’s breathing produces about one kg of carbon dioxide per day. (Will living become the environmental equivalent of Original Sin?) So consider a seemingly facetious news item in the Globe & Mail (May 23/07). Exercising for 30 minutes, five times per week, will produce an extra 1.3 kg of CO2. But, the item contends, “if everyone held just one breath in three”, humanity could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere by 630 million tonnes per year.
Whether holding one’s breath will lower our metabolic processes sufficiently to reduce our individual carbon dioxide production is a moot point. What is not moot is our sensitivity to the CO2 issue as demonstrated by this news item. Even facetiousness, when considered at a deeper level, reflects meaningful information about our values. If we are considering our own body’s production of CO2, then we are certainly evaluating the output of all our other personal activities, as well as our cars, homes, airplane trips and industries.
We are witnessing the birth of an intense and powerful new ethic, an environmental morality that will reshape everything we think and do. The carbon conscience has finally arrived. Now, just watch it grow.