Brian Atherton
Well-known
For my part, I feel it behoves all of us to be better educated on environmental issues, to not be suckered into believing the disingenuous and sometimes blatant misinformation about what we purchase.
As a recent example I have a good friend who this year, after getting rid of his diesel powered car, has bought a fully electric car, lauding to me its environmental ‘greeness’, until I pointed out it isn’t: not in manufacture, shipping to the dealer or the fact it relies on electricity produced in a power station. Yes, it is pollution-free running around the streets but in its charging the vehicle is just pushing pollution farther down the national power grid to the source, a convenient fact not mentioned in the glossy advertising.
As has been pointed out, enormous volumes of ’stuff’ ship from the East, principally by sea on ships powered by diesel engines; in their sheer size the ships are efficient carriers but their combined total exhaust pollution footprint per year globally is huge, and rising.
The only way I, as an individual, can get my own head around all of this is to attempt to keep my purchase miles as short as I possible, in essence buying locally produced, un-prepackaged goods, which at present mainly is food; it isn’t at all easy. We can all do our bit at an individual, micro level if we just challenge ourselves to do better, smarter.
Again, I thank everyone contributing to this thread. I thought when I made the original post it might descend into an uncivil ‘environmentalist vs deniers’ argument at the lowest common denominator, but it hasn’t.
I am delighted to say I have learnt at lot from the posts. I hope that others have, too.
As a recent example I have a good friend who this year, after getting rid of his diesel powered car, has bought a fully electric car, lauding to me its environmental ‘greeness’, until I pointed out it isn’t: not in manufacture, shipping to the dealer or the fact it relies on electricity produced in a power station. Yes, it is pollution-free running around the streets but in its charging the vehicle is just pushing pollution farther down the national power grid to the source, a convenient fact not mentioned in the glossy advertising.
As has been pointed out, enormous volumes of ’stuff’ ship from the East, principally by sea on ships powered by diesel engines; in their sheer size the ships are efficient carriers but their combined total exhaust pollution footprint per year globally is huge, and rising.
The only way I, as an individual, can get my own head around all of this is to attempt to keep my purchase miles as short as I possible, in essence buying locally produced, un-prepackaged goods, which at present mainly is food; it isn’t at all easy. We can all do our bit at an individual, micro level if we just challenge ourselves to do better, smarter.
Again, I thank everyone contributing to this thread. I thought when I made the original post it might descend into an uncivil ‘environmentalist vs deniers’ argument at the lowest common denominator, but it hasn’t.
I am delighted to say I have learnt at lot from the posts. I hope that others have, too.
