I've been playing around on the internet a lot today, and I decided to calculate my carbon footprint. This should be easy, right? Just type "carbon footprint calculator" into Google and have my pick of corporate, NGO, and government-sponsored calculators. Here's the problem. Most of these calculators assume that you live in a developed country, usually the U.S. or Europe. I did find one that had "China" as the only Asian option, so I selected it. But then the questions started: "How do you insulate your house from the cold?" Um, how do I break this to the calculator? It's not what you might call "cold" here. The house I live in is made up of one layer of boards, placed next to each other, with no insulation. Any insulation would just fry us all in our beds come hot season.
The calculator also wanted to know what my primary vehicle is: a motorbike, diesel small car, diesel truck, or regular-fuel car or truck. I looked hard but couldn't find "mountain bike" in the list of options.
Clearly, I am not emitting enough carbon to use these fancy calculators. In fact, my internet search for carbon calculators today has probably resulted in the emission of more carbon than any day full of normal activities back at my site. Still, I'd like to know for sure.
2 comments:
Ok -- see this is why you must come home. I was at work really late one night, and so I thought, hey -- let's try out this green calculator. Well, my vegetarian, bike riding, recycling ass, got a terrible score. I ran around the place yelling to no one, because I was the last one there. It was soo irritating. It was all about stoopid house insulation.
Wha...? I should come home so I can start leaving a big-enough footprint that the calculators can assess me?
Better idea: Bucci comes to Cambodia! Then you can teach me to surf. (OK we have no waves here. We can go to Australia to surf.) I'm counting on you!
Post a Comment