Big Foot — In measuring carbon emissions, it’s easy to confuse morality and science.

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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter

Big Foot

In measuring carbon emissions, it’s easy to confuse morality and science.

by Michael Specter February 25, 2008

A little more than a year ago, Sir Terry Leahy, who is the chief executive of the Tesco chain of supermarkets, Britain’s largest retailer, delivered a speech to a group called the Forum for the Future, about the implications of climate change. Leahy had never before addressed the issue in public, but his remarks left little doubt that he recognized the magnitude of the problem. “I am not a scientist,” he said. “But I listen when the scientists say that, if we fail to mitigate climate change, the environmental, social, and economic consequences will be stark and severe. . . . There comes a moment when it is clear what you must do. I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy. In saying this, I do not underestimate the task. It is to take an economy where human comfort, activity, and growth are inextricably linked with emitting carbon and to transform it into one which can only thrive without depending on carbon. This is a monumental challenge. It requires a revolution in technology and a revolution in thinking. We are going to have to rethink the way we live and work.”

Tesco sells nearly a quarter of the groceries bought in the United Kingdom, it possesses a growing share of the markets in Asia and Europe, and late last year the chain opened its first stores in America. Few corporations could have a more visible—or forceful—impact on the lives of their customers. In his speech, Leahy, who is fifty-two, laid out a series of measures that he hoped would ignite “a revolution in green consumption.” He announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products. “Customers want us to develop ways to take complicated carbon calculations and present them simply,” he said. “We will therefore begin the search for a universally accepted and commonly understood measure of the carbon footprint of every product we sell—looking at its complete life cycle, from production through distribution to consumption. It will enable us to label all our products so that customers can compare their carbon footprint as easily as they can currently compare their price or their nutritional profile.”

Leahy’s sincerity was evident, but so was his need to placate his customers. Studies have consistently demonstrated that, given a choice, people prefer to buy products that are environmentally benign. That choice, however, is almost never easy. “A carbon label will put the power in the hands of consumers to choose how they want to be green,” Tom Delay, the head of the British government’s Carbon Trust, said. “It will empower us all to make informed choices and in turn drive a market for low-carbon products.” Tesco was not alone in telling people what it would do to address the collective burden of our greenhouse-gas emissions. Compelled by economic necessity as much as by ecological awareness, many corporations now seem to compete as vigorously to display their environmental credentials as they do to sell their products.

In Britain, Marks & Spencer has set a goal of recycling all its waste, and intends to become carbon-neutral by 2012—the equivalent, it claims, of taking a hundred thousand cars off the road every year. Kraft Foods recently began to power part of a New York plant with methane produced by adding bacteria to whey, a by-product of cream cheese. Not to be outdone, Sara Lee will deploy solar panels to run one of its bakeries, in New Mexico. Many airlines now sell “offsets,” which offer passengers a way to invest in projects that reduce CO₂ emissions. In theory, that would compensate for the greenhouse gas caused by their flights. This year’s Super Bowl was fuelled by wind turbines. There are carbon-neutral investment banks, carbon-neutral real-estate brokerages, carbon-neutral taxi fleets, and carbon-neutral dental practices. Detroit, arguably America’s most vivid symbol of environmental excess, has also staked its claim. (“Our designers know green is the new black,” Ford declares on its home page. General Motors makes available hundreds of green pictures, green stories, and green videos to anyone who wants them.)

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19191249

Interviews

Michael Specter: Count Carbon Along With Calories

Fresh Air from WHYY, February 20, 2008

That guilty feeling after a big meal might be about more than calories and cholesterol. New Yorker science and technology writer Michael Specter joins Fresh Air to explain how carbon emissions released during food production are having an impact on the environment.

Calculating carbon output is a complex, if not counterintuitive, process, Specter says. In the February 25 issue, he writes about the difficulties of measuring carbon footprints in an article titled "Big Foot: In Measuring Carbon Emissions, it's Easy to Confuse Morality and Science."

Specter was formerly The New York Times' Moscow bureau co-chief, and before that the national science reporter for The Washington Post.

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(Follow the NPR link for audio from Fresh Air.)