I'm An Eco-Criminal. You Are, Too.

Although this article in New Scientist is UK-centric (written by Scots climate scientist (hunh?) David Reay), you might find "Five eco-crimes we commit every day" entertaining... if you get off on enviro-weenie misanthropic bombast. But there is humor there, of course.  And as you might expect... I'm guilty of numerous eco-crimes, including Numero Uno on Reay's eco-misdemeanor hit parade:

1 Coffee

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But the average cup of black filter coffee is still responsible for 125 grams of CO₂ emissions. Of this, two-thirds comes from production and most of the rest from brewing.

Opting for the more prosaic joys of instant coffee reduces that figure to around 80 grams. Yet that still means a six-a-day caffeine habit clocks up more than 175 kilograms of CO₂ each year. That's the equivalent of a flight across Europe - from London to Rome, say. Add milk, and the methane belched by dairy cows means you increase your coffee's climate-changing emissions by more than a third.

It doesn't end there, though. The environmental group WWF has calculated that it takes 200 litres of water to produce the coffee, milk, sugar and cup for just one regular takeout latte. So if everyone ditched their pre-work coffee fix that would do wonders for the planet.

Holy Crap!  I had NO ideer about the Gaia-pillage I'm responsible for!  I suppose I can disregard the last graf since I brew my 12 cups per day (minimum) at home, thus dispensing with at least four paper cups I'd need to hold that amount of eeevil brew if bought at Starbucks.  

But...assuming there's no statute of limitations on eco-crimes,
and why would there be?... I'm in deep kimchee for past offenses.  Said offenses being four grandes (that's "medium," in Starbucks-speak) every day, five days a week (and some Saturdays),  for two and a half years.  At a minimum.  Well, there are mitigating circumstances... coz I drank straight coffee and didn't do the lattes and caramel macchiato stuff... so deduct points accordingly.  That reduces the severity of the offense(s) considerably, I would think.  Except I'm still at least partly responsible for Juan Valdez and his cute little burro's eco-felonies.  I'm one of his chief accomplices.  He's grateful, too.

One more thing... who the Hell has time to calculate the environmental impact of  producing "the coffee, milk, sugar and cup for just one regular takeout latte?"  And what methods do they use?  Can I see the raw data?  What?  They threw it OUT?  Bastards!  I can't BELIEVE they did that!

Now ask me if I intend to quit.  And then there's...

5 Food wastage


Of all the facets of overconsumption that plague both human society and the global environment, food wastage is the most shocking. US households throw away around 30 per cent of their food, worth $48 billion every year. Similar levels of wastage are seen in Europe. In the UK, some 6.7 million tonnes of food is binned annually. Most of this joins the layers of unwanted clothing in landfill sites, where it decomposes, emitting the powerful greenhouse gas methane. Potatoes top the pile, with 359,000 tonnes going uneaten each year. Bread and apples are not far behind. Meat and fish are next, accounting for over 160,000 tonnes, followed by 78,000 tonnes of cooked rice and pasta. A staggering 4.8 billion grapes go the same way, as do 480 million yogurts and 200 million rashers of bacon. The annual cost to UK consumers of all this waste is £10 billion and the cost to the environment is the equivalent of an extra 15 million tonnes of CO₂ (The Food We Waste, WRAP, 2008; bit.ly/urUFj).

The cost of food wastage reverberates down the supply chain, increasing requirements for storage, transport and packaging. But the biggest impact by far comes in food production. For almost all the food we buy, the bulk of its greenhouse gas emissions arise here. This is especially true for meat and dairy produce. For example, 40,200 tonnes of milk are wasted each year in the UK, adding up to the equivalent of 40,000 tonnes of CO₂. This is comparable to the annual CO₂ emissions of 10,000 cars, or of flying 30,000 people from London to New York and back.

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Wasting food has always been an issue, to get serious for a moment.  I am ashamed at the amount of food I let spoil before I get around to consuming it. That said, I'm thinking it would cost quite a bit more for me to pack up my spoilage (before it goes bad, as if I would or could think that far ahead) and ship it off to Bangladesh or some other deprived third-world country... in both absolute (read as: shipping costs) and eco terms (read as: yet another gazillion tons of emissions and the addition to my carbon footprint).  And Mom's admonishment isn't lost on me, either: "Clean your plate! Think of all the starving kids in China!" (Chinese kids apparently have become well-fed since I was growing up; we worry about Bangladeshi and African kids now).  But how many millions of obese children are running around the US because Mom's concerned about the Bangladeshi?  Think about that!  I submit throwing out some food is preferable to the epidemic of juvenile diabetes and other overeating debilities... not to mention the aesthetics of adding more fat people to the population.  Oops. Major digression.

Still and even, I remain astounded that eco-weenies actually calculate the amount of methane emitted by decomposing food in landfills, among other things... like counting up 4.8 billion wasted grapes or weighing the aggragate amount of thrown out potatoes.  Sure they do.  I've seen 'em standing at the entrance to Waste Management plants/sites with their scales and clipboards, rummaging through every garbage truck that comes in.  More amazing is these numbers are presented as absolute fact, not "estimates" or in other  rational terms.  We're expected to believe this stuff?  Really? 

So... there's more, of course.  Own a widescreen teevee?  Eco-criminal!  Ever bought a plug-in air freshener or sat under a patio heater?  Gaia-raper!  And you people who let your kids take the Playstation along on road trips or opted for a factory-installed system in your (gasp!) SUV are due for a comeuppance, too.  You defilers, you!

I'm not making ANY of this up.  Chase the link and be amazed.