CARBONCUT: SPONTANIOUS COMMENTS

2010-01-01 (1 page – abstract first published on “Twitter”)

By Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Feist, University of Innsbruck and Passive House Institut

This has been very often advertised: http://tinyurl.com/carboncut. It is now available in a lot of
languages. But, sorry, this is misleading. And I will tell in short why.

STEP 1: By playing with it, you soon will see, that you can not get below some 15 t/person
(what choices ever you take). But: the worlds average and a lot of averages in poor countries
(also India e.g.) are far below that. How can that be? What is wrong?

STEP2: The allocations! And the chains of influence. The influence of individual behaviour is
much more important than suggested by this simple calculator. And that is so sad:
“Carboncut” suggests, that you have only limited influence. And that is not true - well, I think,
these guys intended the opposite. But ended with a discouraging message.

STEP3: A deeper analysis on just one issue: Not only dwellings are heated! By taking
heating only into account on the household level, you underestimate this service by at least a
factor 2. Heating makes up ~40% of direct CO2 and we can influence that. But, with the
wrong allocations used, this influence is dumped in some “mystical contributions” you are
suggested you can not influence.

STEP 4: Another issue: Yes, nutrition is very important (because of methane CH4 for
example, has very high GWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential). And: If
you grow your own potatoes and vegetables in your own regional field, you can reduce the
CO2-equivalent caused by nutrition much further.

To avoid misunderstandings: I do not grow own potatoes and I do not recommend that as a
solution (it will not be a good one, I know what growing your own crops means, I was born in
a poor rural area). But we can establish working solutions coming near to that in CO2-
reduction, if we just reflect what is really important: Its not the mechanical work on the fields
(may be, reducing the weight of the tractors is important for other reasons), it’s the stupid
(sorry) way of chemical overkill-fertilization commonly used, it’s the far to high meat fraction
we eat, it’s the outrageous inefficiency in using food. Look at the fraction deteriorating in your
fridge only – and in the whole food-chain.

It is the “we” who can do more than just each of us. This is a concrete application of Ernst
Bloch’s: "The Principle of Hope". (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Prinzip_Hoffnung)
(there is no English wikipedia-article on this, but the English book is available – Bloch was
somewhat more a Marxist than most people in contemporary times will accept. But what is
much more important and the core of his work: He is one of the most outspoken humanists. It
is sometimes difficult to understand him, he quite often was quite abstract. But what our
challenge is now: To develop the principle to become much more concrete.)

To have at least one really concrete idea: see www.passivhauskurs.de and chose “English”.