AndrewC's Profile

Apparently, I came away with a far different interpretation of the article. I'd go so far as to say the original post and previous comments are based on a serious misinterpretation of the article. The author's premise is that if you're going to get people to do their bit to fight climate change then you should get them to use their limited time and money in the most effective way and that the six cited myths actually encourage people to waste their time/money.

His arguments are sound, even if they don't cite sources or go into great detail. Here is what I think he's saying

1) It's foolish to install cfls if you've just bought a plasma tv. You'll never undo the damage done by that tv.

2) Air travel is a bigger concern than the airline industry makes is appear

3) Removing plastic packaging from foodstuffs isn't as effective as reducing food waste (2kg of plastic waste is relatively more benign than hundreds of pounds of decaying food)

4) You're better off buying a small car and using the money you save to insulate your house than to spend more on a hybrid.

5) Eating less meat and eating locally is better than eating local meat.

6) For a given amount of money, you'd save more energy by insulating British homes properly than you could by using the same amount of money to subsidize solar panels on peoples roofs.

To clarify point #2, air travel is 2% of CO2 emissions globally, but 6% of the UK's emissions so the 2% figure cited by airlines is misleading. The 20% number is the 6% times a factor (2.7) that accounts for increased damage done by jet exhaust.

Best Buy Canada is prone to overpacking thing. You'd think that it'd be in the best interest of these companies to minimize the amount of packaging to reduce their shipping costs. Maybe they need to take a trip to the nearest IKEA and see how efficiently it's possible to pack things.

As a side note, I did spend a few years unloading trucks at a Sears Canada store and they were usually pretty minimal with the pre-consumer type packaging. Of course if you're shipping a container full of pillows from Indonesia, there's more money at stake if you pack efficiently. We also did a fair bit of long-distance shipping by rail. If we had to transfer a whole truck load of mechandise to a store a long way away, they'd send us an intermodal trailer, we'd load it, and they'd drive it to the local rail yard and put it on a train. I doubt that Sears was alone with their efficiency gains.

On a small lawn, it's often less work to use a reel mower since it's much easier to turn, reverse or reposition a reel mower than a heavy gas mower. While I don't think that massive lawns are aesthetically or environmentally pleasing, there is something to be said for walking in nice soft grass in your bare feet. Of course a few dandelions or some nice clover don't take away from that feeling at all.