ZeroFootprint

Zerofootprint’s goal is to connect people who care about the environment for the purpose of reducing ecological footprint.

We aim to be the world’s foremost content hub for green, linking millions of people from across the globe engaged in sustainable commerce, and helping to inform people, who want to strive toward a more sustainable lifestyle.

See also ZeroFootprint Energy

2005 Another Record Year for Global Carbon Emissions

In 2005, carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels climbed to a record high of 7.9 billion tons, an increase of some 3 percent from the previous year. Annual global emissions have been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, when humans first began burning fossil fuels on a large scale to produce energy. Since the early 1900s, emissions have been rising at an increasingly rapid pace. Annual emissions have grown by a factor of fifteen since 1900, advancing nearly 3 percent a year over that time.

Friendly Fire

Most of those advocating the new energy technologies are not suggesting any reduction in overall energy consumption.

THERE IS A critical issue in the energy debate which has not received the attention it deserves: the problem of ‘friendly fire’. Friendly fire is the euphemism our military and press use to sugar-coat the presumably accidental killing of soldiers in battle by their own comrades.

The first time I saw the term ‘friendly fire’ used in a non-military context was in the book The Argumentative Indian, by the brilliant Nobel laureate economist, philosopher and historian Amartya Sen. In Sen’s words: “Sometimes the very institutions that were created to overcome disparities and barriers have tended to act as reactionary influences in reinforcing inequity.” One example he gives is the contrast between the immense government stockpiles of food in India alongside the largest undernourished population in the world. He states: “The positive hopes of equity through high support prices of food and payment of subsidies have ... tended to produce exactly the opposite effect.” This is friendly fire.

What does the idea of friendly fire have to do with the problems, especially the environmental problems, related to the energy crisis in the US? This becomes clear if we look at possible solutions to the energy crisis.

Read on...

The climate crisis is actually a crisis of consumerism.

CHRISTMAS FUELS consumerism. Production lines and shopping centres are waiting for Christmas to arrive. They are seeking greater sales and greater profits this Christmas than last. Christmas fuels consumerism and consumerism fuels global warming. Global warming fuels fear, guilt, doom and gloom. All these acts and feelings are a far cry from Christmas.

Whatever we consume – food, clothes, housing, agriculture, transportation, technology and holidays – is dependent on the continuous use of fossil fuels. Higher living standards, higher economic growth and higher consumption levels have been and still continue to be the unchallenged aspiration of all nations, all governments and all industrial societies.

But the challenge of global warming is slowly bringing about a certain shift in the consciousness of politicians, policy-makers and captains of industry. More and more people are realising that we cannot go on as before: that business as usual is no longer an option. It is clear that while the ice caps of Antarctica are melting and other intricate patterns of nature are being destroyed current energy systems are not sustainable. Even the mainstream media and conservative think tanks are beginning to talk about economy as a subsidiary of ecology.

However, this shift in consciousness is only skin-deep. It is limited to finding alternatives to carbon emissions (which are merely a symptom of the problem rather than the root cause). To treat the symptom policy-makers are looking at bio-fuels instead of fossil fuels. They are looking at technological solutions to find new sources of energy such as solar power, wind power and nuclear power. Their deep desire is to go on consuming as much as we have been, perhaps even more at Christmas time and at all times, but preferably through so-called sustainable sources. David Ehrenfeld in his article is exploding this myth. Ehrenfeld, a US professor of ecology, calls this technological fix “death by friendly fire”. In his view global warming is not an unfortunate occurrence but the inevitable outcome of consumerist culture.

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How Climate Change is Revolutionizing Economics

"The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs."

The sentence appears as a paragraph by itself, in bold, in the Executive Summary of the now-released, much-anticipated Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

The numbers underscore the point: addressing the problem now will cost about 1% of GDP per year. Doing nothing, say the economic models, will cost the world the loss of 5% GDP per year -- "now and forever" says the report, evoking an almost religious tone. That 5% figure is actually the best case scenario for doing nothing: if all the risk factors are taken into account, and they all hit home (an appropriate phrase in this case, since our homes are what they will hit), then the figure could be as high as 20%.
This conclusion, and these figures, are what will be most remembered about this report -- that, and the media/policy splash it's making. We'll get into the details (there are 700 pages of them, so we certainly won't get into too many) later in this article. Let's first consider the frame and context.

Breathing Earth

Trash Vortex off Hawaii

After 11 months traveling around the world, the Esperanza pulled into port last week in Honolulu. Its crew and I will be celebrating the recent creation of the world's largest marine protected area - right here in the Hawaiian Islands.

Unfortunately, the world's largest marine protected area ALSO sits next to one of the world's largest floating garbage dumps. This garbage dump is the size of Texas, where ocean trash, particularly plastic trash, is brought by currents from around the world and gathers in what we call "the Trash Vortex". Because plastic doesn't break down it chokes and tangles marine wildlife like turtles and feeding birds such as Albatrosses, while impacting on every level of the food chain. To learn more about this garbage dump or "trash vortex", http://www.email.greenpeace.org/lwzdws_hdwpjss.html click here.

An Invonvenient Truth

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

U.K. fears disaster in climate change

LONDON Britain warned Monday that failure to act swiftly on global warming will have a cataclysmic effect on the global economy, and said it was stepping up efforts to get other nations involved.

A long-awaited report predicted apocalyptic effects from climate change, including droughts, flooding, famine, skyrocketing malaria rates and the extinction of many animal species. These will happen during the current generation if changes are not made soon, the report said.
It said the costs related to climate change, if it is allowed to continue unmitigated, could devour as much as 20 percent of the world's gross domestic product, or GDP.

"The consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said in a speech discussing the report, which is one of the most comprehensive attempts yet to predict the economic impact of global warming.

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"This disaster is not set to happen in some science-fiction future, many years ahead, but in our lifetime," Blair said. "What is more, unless we act now, not some time distant but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible."