Carbon neutrality: Individual responsibility vs corp/government

Climate change is such an all-encompassing set of problems with the probability of huge impact on the world, that it is hard not to feel overwhelmed. The causes are simple enough to grasp. Greenhouse gases trap energy from the sun in our atmosphere, gradually heating the planet leading to warmer winters and more extreme summers. Dry places become dryer, wet places become wetter, eco-systems are destroyed and the oceans rise swallowing coasts and cities. At its most basic the science is well understood and not in dispute. Doing something about it is much harder as almost everything we do in our life and work causes of greenhouse gas emissions.

The public debate around stopping climate change tends to focus on three main parts: • Energy • Transport • Food Solutions to these problems are already widely available. We have renewable energy for our homes, electric vehicles for our transport and low carbon alternatives to most foods. Because of this a huge portion of the current dialogue around sustainability is centred on ‘personal responsibility’.

Personal responsibility is important, but this hugely over-simplifies the problem. Our industrial world uses energy on a vast scale. Most of it comes from burning fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases. Taking responsibility to reduce our own personal contribution is necessary, and this website aims to help with these choices, but it is very far from sufficient. For example, driving an electric car or installing a heat pump will eliminate emissions only if the electricity supply does not burn fossil fuels and if the processes of making and distributing the cars and heat pumps (and everything else) are carbon neutral as well. Based on today’s electricity supply industry, the savings from driving an electric car only save the amount of greenhouse gases generated in making the car after about 8 years. This pattern is repeated across the economy. Much of the CO2 we are each responsible producing for can be traced back to the ‘embodied’ carbon created when the products, houses and services we buy were made. We can’t change this by individual action. If the world is to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050, our whole, global economic system will have to be to be re-engineered. That is not a simple task. For sure we must all to take responsibility for the changes we can personally make, but more importantly Governments have to phase out the use of fossil fuels in power generation, heating and industry, and to force changes in agriculture, building, manufacturing, distribution and transport. ‘Carbon neutral’ by 2050 does not mean zero greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050 it is expected that the average greenhouse gas output in the UK will have dropped from about 13 tonnes per person to around 2 tonnes per person. To be carbon neutral the remaining 2 tonnes will need to be recovered from the atmosphere and stored permanently. That is going to require new technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to be developed, industrialised and deployed rapidly. Just planting trees, even on large scale, will not be enough.

Furthermore as we in the UK have become richer we have polluted more. The UK is now one of the world’s richest nations and we emit per capita about 2-3 times the world average of greenhouse gases. As the rest of the world develops we will have to ensure it is done in a way where that pattern is not repeated or we will have no chance of maintaining tolerable levels of global warming and species and habitat loss. To address this is a huge task. We ourselves have to make the necessary choices to reduce our impact, and we have to push organisations and governments to take the steps to eliminate carbon from the energy systems of the world while recognising that these steps may be difficult and costly, at least in the short term.