ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: LONDON FILE
Britain's 'footprint' fetish
February 2, 2007
The bananas pose a problem. Wrapped in plastic and lined up neatly in the grocery store, they look tantalizing enough.
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But for those Britons trying to be a good global citizen these days, this is a paralytic moment.
Those bananas are from the Dominican Republic. That means they've travelled thousands of kilometres by air; and now that flying is viewed here as an environmental evil, buying the bananas would be the wrong thing to do.
But the label says this is "fair trade" fruit.
That means that needy farmers in the developing world are getting a decent price for harvesting them. So wouldn't that make buying the bananas a good choice?
It's confusing enough to make you drop the shopping basket and bolt from the store.
In the U.K. today, "Doing the right thing" by the environment has become a national obsession.
And while many people may be confused about what the 'right thing' is, Britons by and large are not. A recent Mori poll says 48 per cent here consider global warming more of a threat to the world than poverty, war or terrorism.
Another poll, from YouGov, an internet marketing firm, suggests only one in five would object to citizens being fined for polluting too much.
Brits may secretly revel in these warm, sunny winter days, but they are determined to do something about them.
The carbon footprint
Another indicator of how serious Britons are about climate change is the phrase "carbon footprint." If you don't use it in a serious sentence at least a few times a week in this country, you just aren't with it.
It is just a catchphrase, of course, to describe how much we as individuals hurt the environment. Everything we do that pollutes forms our footprint.
When we fly, leave the tumble dryer on, buy those bananas from the D.R., we add to our personal tally of carbon emissions, making our footprint bigger. And big is bad.
The best estimate, and it's really more of a guess, is that the average British lifestyle generates about six tonnes of carbon emissions a year. That's enough to fill about three hot air balloons.
Ideally, Lucy Siegle would like us to get that down to about 1.5 tonnes an individual. That's the equivalent of about one return flight from London to Toronto. You'd have to stay in bed for the rest of the year to ensure you didn't pollute anymore after that.
"Minimizing that is immediately an empowering thing, you can do something about it, you can change," she explains with the enthusiasm of a pumped-up personal trainer.
The carbon coach
That's no surprise. Siegle works sometimes as what is known here as a 'carbon coach.' These are people who, for a fee, will come to your home and tell you how you are ruining the Earth with what you eat and with how you heat your house. Then they will rearrange your kitchen and furnish your nursery.
Siegle even brings a remarkable gadget with her that displays in British pounds and kilowatt/hours the cost of your energy consumption. Watching how much it jumps when you turn on the dryer is a bit dizzying.
That knowledge, as well as the fact that crocuses are budding outside in mid-winter, is supposed to horrify individuals to immediately shrink their carbon footprint.
Is there any proof that individual actions are making any change whatsoever to the British national footprint?
"Well it's not something that we can prove right now," Siegle says. "But I think if we had this kind of mass interest and engagement before the Kyoto Accord was agreed it would have been a very different set of negotiations."
Then she's off to another room to shriek at a TV that's off but not unplugged — and so still consuming a small amount of energy.
The offset industry
Britain reportedly produces about two per cent of the world's carbon emissions (about the same as Canada actually).
If it were to stop every emission right now — an impossible feat — it would take only a few years before the emission growth in a place like China would negate the positive effects.
Those who don't believe that individuals can make much of a difference often cite that depressing reality. But most Britons, it seems, aren't having it.
This is a country filled with "carbon neutral" cabs prepared to take you to "carbon sensitive" stores selling "carbon friendly" goods. To at least make an effort, it seems, is culturally critical.
The biggest endeavour is known as offsetting. It's a strategy whereby you atone for the tonnes of carbon you emit when you fly by paying a small fee to a company that is supposed to invest in something ecologically sound on your behalf.
The problem is that the internet is full of these unregulated and inconsistent, carbon offset schemes. The 'carbon counters' can give different calculations for your pollution tally and different costs for offsetting.
Still there seems to be more of this offsetting going on in Britain than anywhere else in the world. It is a big industry that's getting bigger by the day. In fact, some estimate globally conscious consumers will spend upwards of $600 million on environmental offsets over the next three years.
Paying the $15 to offset that trip home to Canada can certainly help make someone feel better about it, but some environmental groups question whether it does any more than that.
In a recent statement, Friends of the Earth said it feared offsetting "can encourage businesses to continue or even increase unnecessary polluting activities, promoting the mindset, 'I've offset so it's okay to fly.' "
It's getting harder to know when you are doing the right thing. But this British footprint fetish seems to be sticking, and size clearly matters.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Biography
Adrienne Arsenault is CBC-TV's senior European correspondent, based in London, a position she took up in the fall of 2006 after having spent the previous three years in Jerusalem. From 2003 to 2006, Arsenault was the CBC's Middle East bureau chief covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and regional politics. Before that she was the Washington correspondent.
Arsenault joined CBC in 1991 as an editorial assistant and has worked on a wide variety of assignments. She was named the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's journalist of the year for 2005. She was also nominated for three Gemini Awards and has won awards from the American Society of Professional Journalists, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, and the New York and Columbus festivals.
