Rearranging chairs on the Titanic

Part of my job is to coordinate a UN agency's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Strategy. This is part of a UN wide initiative. At the annual meeting of all the Environmental Focal Points of the UN recently at FAO in Rome, I had the chance to share some ideas and hear what other UN organizations are doing to reduce emissions. The Greening the Blue website presents some of these.

Giving up business class

Here is a non official, voluntary idea - instead of the business class we are entitled to in the UN, we will forego the privilege to travel business and head to the back of the plane instead.

Like international chef David Chang, I really LOVE travelling business class but travelling business has around twice the carbon footprint than economy because of the extra space taken up in the plane.

Today, I will blog about the environmental case for going economy and why you shouldn’t worry too much about how much paper you print…

Why is climate change a serious issue?

On current projections, the Earth will be around 9C warmer in places by the end of the century. This means mass extinctions of species (50%+) are likely. For humans it also means billions of people living (and dying) in misery through destroyed agriculture, coastal flooding, lack of water, increased spread of tropical diseases.

The very scary thing though is feedback effects (already being observed) when increasing temperatures unleash further emissions of gases such the release of methane from the tundra of Siberia which further speeds up the warming effect and melts more tundra…(a vicious cycle).

So on current projections of economic growth, there is, as like to say, a nonnegliable risk of catastrophe….or put another way, it is possible that Plant Earth will not be somewhere worth living in the life of our children and grandchildren.

Why bother being a climate altruist?

Taking voluntary actions like flying less or taking the bus to work are seen as futile acts to many. Paul Krugman argues that climate altruism is pointless because you are simply freeing up space for someone to emit carbon. This is partially true and a strong argument for why we need carbon taxes to make markets work in favour of the environment not against it.

But change isn’t happening fast enough - bottom up initiatives are needed to signal to those in power that we will vote for them if they introduce strong green measures.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

How do we know what is the best action to take to reduce emissions? Everyone is telling us what is best. Supermarkets label food for its carbon to reduce our shopping basket’s carbon footprint. At work we are reminded to reduce printing and turn off lights. But are these actions really that effective or do they just make us feel like we have done something useful?

Simple calculations reveal where we should concentrate our efforts where we work:

In one UN organization (fairly representative of many), emissions per staff member per year are coming from
Lighting an office - around 0.1t CO2 eq
Paper - around 0.2t CO2eq
Travel - one business class to South Africa from Europe equals 3.0t CO2 eq (the per staff average is 9t CO2eq from travel in many UN agencies)

If just one flight to Africa emits 50 times more carbon than a year’s worth of printing, doesn't it makes sense to think more about alternatives to flying than fretting about lights and paper?