Guilt and penance

Off-setting our carbon footprint has become a most mathematical endeavour (just when I thought I had escaped that dreaded subject when I embarked on a humanities path of study). It’s not that I’m not bothered to sit down with a calculator (not just any old calculator, mind, but a carbon calculator!), it’s just that I feel it somehow misses the point. Do you need a calculator to know you’re being wasteful? Getting all happy because you’re carbon neutral, because you plant enough trees to off-set your fast car obsession, just seems to miss the point of attempting a real life-style overhaul. Our current problem is not simply one that can have trees thrown at it.

Lies, damn lies and statistics?

Statistics can you wake you up to stark, shocking realities but they can also obfuscate, and sometimes they do both at the same time. For example, this one cited in the independent, ‘800,000kWh provide all the electricity needs for 153 families’, makes one wonder what era of family they mean (the nuclear family with 2.4 children, the catholic family with 11.4 children, the ethnic minority family with 4.4 children, or the hippy commune family with innumerable children?) Anyway, I’m not going to bother calculating my carbon as it won’t tell me anything. I would insulate my loft if I had a loft to insulate. Do the carbon crimes of landlords implicate their millions of tenants who can’t afford their own homes? What’s more, I have a very dirty secret (which is not in fact a secret as I’m about to tell you what it is). I still use incandescent light bulbs, because I am under the impression that, for some reason, they are better for my already poor eyesight and that they emit less radiation of some sort. It is a heinous environmental crime, nonetheless- using energy saving light bulbs is considered being in the dark ages of environmental consciousness as even the average Joe and unconscientious celebrity are doing that much. But let’s not lose site of the bigger picture here. How often do those celebrities fly back and forth for birthday parties and shopping trips? How many cheap long-haul holidays does the average Joe take? I, in comparison, take zero. I’ve only been on 4 air flights in my whole life and I don’t drive a car, and this is alongside a general low energy-consumption lifestyle. Isn’t that enough penance for my guilt?