This morning I was sent a link to an amazing collection of art by Chris Jordan called Running The Numbers. The thumbnail of the detail view to the right really doesn’t do it justice either – you have to see the full size image to understand exactly what this image is. What it represents is 28,000 42-gallon oil drum: the amount of oil consumed in the US every 2 minutes.

And then keep looking at the other images in the collection. Others that stood out for me were:

• One hundred million toothpicks, representing the number of trees cut down to support the junk mail business (what a total waste);
• One million plastic cups: the number used on US airlines every 6 hours;
• Two million plastic bottles: the number used in the US every 5 minutes (that’s an amazing 576 million bottles a day!);
• 426,000 cell phones being “retired” every day in the US (most probably still working perfectly);
• 1.14 million brown paper bags: the number used every hour in the US;
• And finally, 60,000 plastic bags: the number used every 5 seconds in the US (that is over 1 billion every day).

In addition to the environmental issues represented by these numbers I’ve highlighted, there are also other social issues in the collection, including an image representing smoking, healthcare and even the issue of prisoners, both in the US and in US run detention facilities outside the US.

Light Bulbs

One image though I have a slight disagreement with: the image of 320,000 light bulbs floating in space. Said to be equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.). The issue I have with this statement is that it is missing the real solution to this problem. The solution is not for consumers to unplug everything. The solution requires two parts:

1. More equipment designed to really use a lot less power when in sleep mode;
2. More electricity being generated from clean and renewable sources.

The second of those is perhaps the most important. Once we can produce enough electricity from clean renewable resources, why shouldn’t we use it to make our quality of life better? Sure, cutting consumption helps keep the bills low, and in the short term, while the world still depends heavily on dirty coal, and other non-renewable resources for our electricity, will help reduce emissions. But the logical extrapolation of that argument is to say that we should just stop using electricity completely. That’s a stupid argument. Much better to talk about how we can use technology to bring our clean generation levels in line with our consumption needs. Sure, don’t waste electricity unnecessarily, but the Vertography position is one of moderation. Sleep mode, done correctly, is a useful compromise, and better than just leaving the kit on all the time!

When booking the trans-Atlantic flight, on United Airlines, we were offered the choice to pay for upgrades and given links to partners for booking cars and hotels, but nothing more. When we booked the Venice flights with EasyJet, a UK based low cost carrier, right there on the booking page, in addition to other offers, we were offered the option to buy carbon offsets for our flight.

Carbon Offsets?
What are carbon offsets? How much are they? Do they do any good? And, if they do, why don’t US airlines like United offer customers a chance to buy them too?

Essentially, a carbon offset scheme is a financial mechanism allowing you to buy credits in a project designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to offset the emissions associated with an action you take. In the case of our flight from London to Venice, easyJet calculates that we contributed 102kg each way, per person. And the cost to offset that via easyJet’s UN certified emission reduction projects is just £1.33 (about $2.45) each way, per person.

Obviously, given that every airline we looked at booking the flights within Europe with offered them, there is a widely held belief that they work in some way. Some would argue they just allow people (or companies) to continue generating greenhouse gas emissions, but erase any guilt they have about it. Some are concerned that the amount of emissions the projects receiving the money can reduce is hard to quantify, so does the money really cover the emissions from the flight?

More pragmatic people seem to believe that if people at least feel guilty enough to contribute to a carbon reduction project voluntarily at the checkout, that in itself is progress!

Why did United not offer them for the trans-Atlantic segment of our trip? Well, it looks like they’re getting there, but just haven’t finalised the plans. Other US airlines do have plans, or are working on getting them set up as well, so expect to see the option to buy carbon offsets when booking a flight in the US soon too.

Should You Buy Them?
I look at this somewhat pragmatically. You can choose to not fly somewhere, but realistically there are few other ways to travel long distances. Buying carbon offsets for your flight seems like the next best thing to me (and, yes, we did buy them for the Venice trip).

Independent Carbon Offsets
Since the trip, I’ve also discovered that you can buy carbon offsets for your flight from a third party like the Carbon Neutral Company. I just used their calculator to work out an estimate of the emissions for our San Francisco to London flight: around 4000kg for two people on round trips. That would cost between £30 ($55) and £60 ($110) depending on the type of project being contributed to – the Carbon Neutral Company lets you choose.

The top two states in terms of absolute carbon output are Texas (670 million tons) and California (389 million tons), but the per-capita numbers are very different with Texans producing almost 3 times as much CO2 as Californians.

Top 5 & Bottom 5 States
This section of the chart shows the best 5 states in terms of per capita carbon output:

And this one shows the five worst performing states in terms of per capita carbon output:

The Telegraph article claims the researchers at the Argentine National Institute of Agricultural Technology estimate that every cow produces 800-1000 litres of emissions every day. With 55 million heads of cattle grazing in Argentina, these emissions could amount to as much as 30% of the countries greenhouse gas emissions (and methane is 23 times worse than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat).