A Short Rant About Carbon Offsetting, Carbon Footprints and Carbon Neutrality

The 5 A Day campaign is a great example of how to engage the public with a simple message and solution. Below the surface of the easily digestible sound bites (puns fully intended) is a well thought out campaign. Looking past the surface this campaign is not just about eating five items of fruit and veg a day but also aims towards a balanced diet by including dried fruit, beans, tinned fruit and of course fresh fruit and veg. There are other similar campaigns where '7 a day' is the recommendation but designers of the US and UK campaigns knew their audience and accepted that the target of '5' would be perceived as an obtainable goal.

Another government led campaign uses carbon as a measure of environmental sustainability. It too could have been a well thought out vehicle for engaging with the public on environmental awareness and sustainability but instead it just focuses on the single issue of carbon production.

There is a direct relationship between the production of carbon emissions and the consumption of traditional fuels. Fuel usage is an environmental concern but is a more significant issue to a country's national infrastructure. The UK is not self sufficient in the supply of fuel so to stabilise our economy our demands need to be curbed. Reducing our carbon footprint will achieve this but fails to address more significant environmental issues such as pollutants.

There are natural mechanisms which cycle carbon between its many different forms. However, many man-made pollutants have no place in nature and have no natural cycle to break them down. Mercury is an example of a pollutant which accumulates in fish as it can't be excreted once consumed. Fish higher in the food chain concentrate this toxin to the point where certain fish (such as swordfish and marlin) are considered hazardous for human consumption.

Environmental issues are unbelievably complex and there have been so many failed initiatives where the public have just lost interest maybe through being bombarded with messages of how to totally change their lives in order to save the planet.

The single issue of carbon awareness has lead politicians to argue in favour of nuclear power stations where the waste product is a pollutant taking tens of thousands of years before being safe enough to stand next to. I can't think of a worse legacy.

The natural carbon cycle is balanced and sustainable whereas man made production has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution and can't be kept in control by natural mechanisms which take much longer to adjust to change. We know that carbon dioxide levels were much higher in the past and the planet did cope but was a very different place. There have never been the kind of pollutants we are producing now so this isn't about nature adjusting but instead creating totally new ways to deal with them.

Carbon dioxide and methane do result in climate change which will have an affect on the planet but this is only one part of the environmental impact we are causing.

Carbon offsetting and all the other nonsense around this environmental buzz-word at the moment should be taken as part of a bigger picture. Awareness and the embrace of this could easily have been embraced in the same way as the 5-a-day campaign.

In real terms. 'Carbon Offsetting' is an example of how true environmental awareness can be missed completely. Quite a funny portayal of this has been made by Cheatneutral...

http://www.scenewon.co.uk/scene_movie.php?movie=485and this is their site...www.cheatneutral.com

Reducing the overall impact that each individual has on the environment is the goal. Reducing your 'Carbon footprint' could be one part of this. For me, carbon reduction isn't my sole or even primary environmental concern. Pollutants and other unnatural wastes are - all of which should be reduced in a holistic way which considers multifaceted environmental impacts, not just carbon.