Triangle Sustainability Blog

I’ve previously speculated about some ways to calculate a carbon footprint (see post). My methods were pretty basic, but I hope they at least gave some ideas of how we can start tabulating or carbon costs.

While other carbon calculators do exist – such as Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth calculator – they only provide the high level information about what all goes into our carbon footprints – both individually and nationally.

For those who would like to take a more serious look at what comprises your carbon emissions, I highly recommend the book “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” by David MacKay.

MacKay, a Physics professor at the University of Cambridge, goes through a thorough investigation of all the direct and indirect carbon emissions that we’re each responsible for. He then tabulates those emissions against theoretical renewable energy alternatives. And I do mean theoretical – MacKay envisions such extreme scenarios as putting wind mills on almost every available acre in the UK or solar panels on every home. He focuses on what’s possible if we all used about as much renewable energy as we could.

The downside is that MacKay lives in Britain, and so his numbers are focused only on what the UK could do and don’t take into account U.S. consumption habits or potential renewable resources. But his book still provides a fantastic overview of the challenge behind actually going to a completely renewable-based energy supply, and he does it in a fun and very readable way for non-technical folks.

Best of all, MacKay gives his book away online for free, so you can download it in chapters or all at once and start reading today.

China is changing everything. In the U.S., we witness China’s effects all the time: many of the goods we buy are from China; we hear about how the Chinese manipulate their currency to keep the prices of their exports low; newspapers carry stories on their massive infrastructure expansions and political suppression. Without a doubt, China is what the technology world might call “disruptive”.

From an environmental perspective, China has major problems. According to a World Bank Survey, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. The Chinese government – notorious for padding the numbers – admits that at least 400,000 Chinese people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses annually. Half the population drinks water polluted with human and animal waste. Those numbers could be far higher, and the list of environmental offenses goes on and on.

Americans should be careful to point the finger. We are the most wasteful nation in the world in terms of energy and raw materials, and China isn’t likely to take that crown from us anytime soon.

But the reason China makes for such a fascinating case is because it’s just such a big country: four times the size of the U.S. in terms of population. With so many people and with such rapid economic growth, China’s potential to pollute the global environment is huge.

Some signs, however, are pointing to China’s problems with its abuse of the environment. Besides the millions who die from exposure to pollution, environmental problems are starting to hit China in a particularly sore spot – its economy.

In the last few years, Chinese products have come under international scrutiny for a multitude of quality and safety concerns – items directly related to the triple-bottom-line concept of sustainability. In one of the most recent episodes, Chinese drywall installed all over Florida was purported to have high levels of sulfur, causing corrosion to piping and electronics and, to add insult to injury, producing a really bad smell. Other product scares and recalls have involved children’s toys, high pesticide levels on vegetables and melamine-tainted infant formula.

While the bad press might be easy to hush up within China, in the rest of the world Chinese products are losing any brand value they might have had. At the moment, attempting to avoid the “made in China” label is pretty tough. But this should get a bit easier thanks to country-of-origin legislation, like the 2002 Farm Bill requiring labeling on seafood, meats fruits and veggies.

So what will the long-term ramifications of China’s unsustainability be? It’s hard to say for sure now, but the Chinese hunger for short-term growth is almost certainly going to result major, possibly insurmountable, economic hurdles in years to come. Just how far can China push its environment before its environment starts pushing back even harder? They seem determined to find out.