Basically this is a ten-year extensively revised update to the University of Lancaster researcher’s 2010 How Bad Are Bananas? that I greatly enjoyed reading when it was first printed. He also owns a company called Small World Consulting. More scholarly and less politically charged than Naomi Klein’s 2014 This Changes Everything, or Al Gore’s 2006 An Inconvenient Truth, there is something here for every thinking human being. Throughout, he expresses the carbon footprint of various activities in carbon dioxide equivalents, in metric units of weight.
No human activity except dying is entirely devoid of some impact on carbon emissions and even that has a one-time effect, depending on how one’s corpse is disposed of. (He concludes that cremation is the least harmful, but does not mention the possibility of acid decomposition.) I would prefer burial at sea, only allowed if you die on an isolated boat or in a shipwreck.
Berners-Lee acknowledges the often extensive uncertainties in his calculations, and provides detailed notes and a long index. Often his conclusions are counterintuitive e.g. electric bikes are better for the environment than standard ones because they allow for travelling twice the distance for the same amount of energy expenditure and exercise, thereby decreasing the need for travel by motor cars. Texting is more eco-friendly than emailing, though neither are very harmful. He accepts that there are often ‘truncation errors’ in calculations because not all inputs can be included.
Space travel, sea cruises, air travel and air transport are large sources of greenhouse gases, often not included in official reports of government bodies. But cryptocurrency mining is particularly harmful, because of the massive amount of energy used for cooling their stacks of computers. “Some are worried that if the trend continues, Bitcoin alone could push the world over 2 degrees C warming within the next 20 years.”
Obviously, not everything is included. I would have liked to see a comparison of living in a multi-story apartment vs row housing vs single family home with similar amenities and of similar size. I have some lingering concern about accepting nuclear power plants as a source of green energy, not because of radiation hazards, which are minuscule, but because of the massive amounts of energy used in the mining of the minerals, the construction materials, especially cement, and the disposal of the spent ingredients.
While I do not doubt the author’s honesty, brilliance, and integrity, close attention is needed as he spells out wide estimates of the carbon footprint of various activities, lest you lose track when he is comparing items and activities that are not at all alike in their effects.
The chapter on negative emissions is thought-provoking but leaves out one intriguing possibility that I just read about. Geneticists have tweaked the genes of soy beans and rice to ramp up their chlorophyll efficiency by up to 25%. This would seem to me to be a win-win development-more carbon capture with more production of sugar, water, and oxygen. But if the plant material is then used as fodder for methane-belching ruminants such as cattle and sheep, that could at least partially negate the benefit. Could this maneuver be scaled up to broad-leafed grasses and trees?
Loaded with pie charts, graphs, and lists, this is a valuable reference work. The two charts in appendices, of the carbon footprint of some foods (36 items purchased in Britain) and the carbon footprint of spending money (48 items, expressed in British pounds) could usefully be referred to frequently by any shopper.
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Thanks, Vera.
The Passionate Reader 