The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce recently launched a project called Carbon Limited. It’s a neat idea that allows users to sign up, answer a few questions and then see how your personal carbon emissions compare versus a 5 tonne per year target. There’s also an interesting feature that lets you compare your emissions to celebrities, such as Environment Minister David Miliband, ex-Blur bassist Alex James, Channel 4 presenters Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy and environmentalist George Monbiot.
I did the assessment and came out at just over 6 tonnes per year – 0.5 t domestic, no car travel but one long-haul flight. I though this was acceptable (the flight’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip) but when I compared myself with the celebrities, they all did better than me. Not that I’m competitive or anything but that really bugged me. Fortunately the interface allows you to drill down and compare emissions by sector. And when I did, I discovered that celebrities don’t fly.
The instructions say to omit business travel and I imagine that the Channel 4 presenters must travel quite a bit for work. Even George Monbiot, who is self-employed, could, I suppose, count flying to Toronto to promote his book as business travel. But I found it hard to believe that the celebrities had no personal air travel whatsoever.
Since discovering this, I’ve checked back a couple times and I think it may just be a poor programming job at the RSA’s end. On the 24th for example, the celebrities weren’t emitting any carbon at all. And then today, they are all emitting the exact same – about two tonnes domestic, one tonne for flights, and no car travel. Clearly something’s not right here.
Initiatives like this and the ECI’s iMeasure domestic energy comparison site are valuable tools to help people understand their carbon footprints. Yet while comparison with others is an important feature of these sites, the numbers must be trustworthy if there’s to be any real value. So while I hope that the RSA will address any technical glitches with their website soon, if they really want to maximise its impact, interviews with the celebrities should be posted to guide readers through their emissions profiles and to highlight the steps they have taken to save carbon.
