“DIVORCE adds to the impact of global warming as couples switch to wasteful single lifestyles”
by Family First senator Steve Fielding
Steve oh Steve, is there ever a more appropriate time to bring up family values and climate change! I admire how Senator Fileding brings this infront of the Australian Senate. In the news article, he further stated that he was quoting from an American report.
So I searched around and found this 2007 paper by Yu and Liu. They surveyed thousands of married couples and divorced individuals from 12 countries. In particular, they concluded that for thte year of 2005, divorced households in the USA:
spend 46% and 56% more on electricity and water per person than married households; and
could have saved more than:
38 million rooms;
73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity; and
627 billion gallons of water.
Using the DOE’s average emission factor for the US in 2007 of 0.676 tonnesCO2e/MWh, staying married can save 49,348 tonnes CO2-equivalent. Or, in other words, the amount of pollution that US divorcees could have saved is equivalent of reducing 4441 large SUVs driving 24,000 km (or 15,000 miles) per year!
Yes, Google has done it!! Scientists at Purdue University have developed a web based interface, named “Vulcan“, integrateing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels across the US which can be accessed via Googl Earth. You’ll be able to find where CO2 is produced from a set of sub-sectors. You may need to download a plug in for it.
It’s pretty cool and worth checking out. Just a few minor problems:
data only as new as 2002; and
covers only the US.
This is a demo from Youtube:
More about the three year project Vulcan can be found here. Do you think it’s worthwhile to have such interactive tool for the entire world? Who’ll maintain and update it?
“Carbon credits” discussed in this article, as demonstrated by the cartoon in yesterday’s posting, is something that we can buy to “offset” our personal carbon footprint. This is the wiki link if you want to know more about personal carbon credits in the voluntary market. So where do these carbon credits come from? Well, that is a huge problem right now because the credibilities of these carbon credits vary a lot, and so is the price on them!
Here is a really interesting example from a friend (Hi Chris!) that I’m sure you will enjoy:
If I decide not fart for an entire year, the amount of CO2-equivalent that I will have saved is 1-tonne (ok, i really don’t know how much I fart but let’s say it’s equal to 1 tonne CO2 equivalent). Now I can sell 1-tonne carbon credit to anyone who would be willing to pay for it. Sounds crazy? Well, this is how credible some carbon credits are right now!
So who are the credible carbon credit sources? The good news is there are credible carbon offset accredidation standards in the voluntary market! Who are they? Well… I’ll have to get back to you on that. Do you have recommendations?
Can we shop our way to sustainability? Well… Tom the Dancing Bug certainly explained it well =). I tried to find a link to the original posting on Rubin Bolling’s blog, but had no success…
carbon offsets "R"US
That’s right, it looks like buying carbon credits can fix everything! Well, do you wonder where does the carbon credit come from? How do you know the carbon credit you have bought is actually going to somewhere useful? For the rest of the week, I’ll briefly introduce the carbon credit and how does it fit into the BC Climate Action Plan, which as you know, includes Carbon Tax as one of the measures to reducing the province’s GHG emissions.
I find this powerful because humans are born selfish (or at least i believe so) as a survival instint. Since the environment isn’t us, we tend to be a lot less careful with it. If we can believe that the environment is part of us, then we can address climate change much more efficiently.
Green Tag Line | flo | 
February 26, 2009 7:29 am | 
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