UK Government Unveil Definitive Footprint Calulator
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 06.20.07
There are hundreds of footprint calculators online, and that means that one can calculate hundreds of different totals. The UK Government has unveiled the calculator to rule them all, which makes use of their recognised data. It’s designed to cut through the confusion often caused when trying to discover a person’s footprint.
The site calculates a persons energy use and emissions, but also provides a kind of action plan, a set of ideas on how to reduce that figure. The Environment Secretary, David Miliband, rather cheesily launched the site at an Internet café in London, "there is a lot of confusion about what people can do and how effective those changes actually are," he said, "This carbon calculator will help people decide what they can do, and be sure it will make a difference."
Miliband appeared on television in the UK, and claimed that he had used the site to calculate his own footprint, at a rather low 2.76 tonnes. The average figure in the UK is 4 tonnes, so I find this rather hard to believe. "This calculator is a real innovation, using up-to-date, authoritative data and recognised calculation methods. As the calculator improves and develops I want it to become the gold standard for calculating CO2 emissions from individuals and families." ::The Guardian
See also ::BP's Carbon Footprint Calculator ::Convenient Truth Contest: Carbon Calculator, ::Slate Green Challenge
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there are 2 main things to calculate - 1. keeping warm in winter. difficult because british homes are badly insulated - and pretty terrible for poor, old people in britain. 2. transport. this is something people can remedy immediately. take the bus to the out of town shopping centre. get on your bike, or walk. shame car drivers like you do smokers.
you don't need a calculator to see that the cult of the car is over.
Well, British homes are NOT badly insulated in comparison with most of the new structures going up here in France. I am astonished to see simple open terracotta brick structures being built with a cement render on the outside and the ONLY insulation on the walls is a plasterboard sandwiched with a slim layer of polystyrene. This provides almost no insulation at all! British building controls are VERY strict on insulation values and they are getting stricter still. As to the US, I still reel in horror at one winter spent in Chicago in a luxury tower block apartment overlooking the lake. It was INCREDIBLY cold outside and INCREDIBLY warm inside, yet the whole building had poorly sealed sliding SINGLE-GLAZED windows. When you touched the glass it was very cold, the apartment radiators pumped out HUGE quantities of heat and there was no way to regulate them. The whole experience was very depressing!
As to this site, well the British Gov has many years of experience in doing things half-cocked - try to access the calculator - you can't! The server capacity has been exceeded! What can I say... Bravo!!! Nearly as efficient as the UK train system!!!