Of course I ‘get your point’, but we are talking about the whole planet here, not about one country having more rights than others. My point about China et al is that they must be allowed to increase their emissions, whilst we should be encouraged (forced!) to reduce ours. This is the whole principal of Contraction & Convergence. We all have an equal right to our planets resources, no matter where we live. However we do need to get down to ‘One Planet Living’.

Kevin
If we were all living in the benign way (in terms of emissions) that some ‘underdeveloped’ (but happy!) countries are then producing more offspring wouldn’t be the biggest issue. In the developed countries like ours it consumption of resources and needles waste that we need to curb. We have been brought up to believe that belongings = status & that consumption & growth are desirable. Watch http://www.storyofstuff.com/ – it made me really think about the madness we have become used to.

LHR-EDI takes between 1h 20m to 1h 35m (can change variable on weather, traffic and wind) on BA, not 3.5 hours.

KGX-EDB takes between 4h 20m to 4h 50m (variable on traffic, etc) on East Coast.

If you’re going to inflate air travel times with the periphery of actually travelling (getting to the place of departure, getting from the entry point to a seat on the vehicle, the vehicle actually departing, etc), then you must do the same with the train too, otherwise it’s not a fair equation.

As for your comment re per capita, all it takes is for the largely rural nature of China to become more urban, Chinese car use to increase, electricity use to increase, manufacturing to increase, and their national output will go through the roof. You absolutely have to take the size of the population into account. The Netherland Antille’s per capita output is 22.8 tons, but with a population of only 195,253, their total output is a relatively small 4.45m tons. If China’s per capita output was 22.8 tons rather than 4.6 tons, their output would skyrocket to 30.2bn tons. See my point?

My research into plane emissions shows a wide range of conflicting figures on carbon cost per mile, but as my fave exponent on European travel is the man in seat 61, I give his figures from
http://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm –
- London to Paris, by plane 3.5 hours = 244 Kg/CO2, by Eurostar 2.75 hour = 22 Kg/CO2
- London to Edinburgh, plane 3.5 hours = 193 Kg/CO2, train 4.5 hours = 24 Kg/CO2
- London to Nice, plane 4 hours = 250 Kg/CO2, by Eurostar+TGV, 8 hours = 36 Kg/CO2

I’ve pledged not to fly again – I would only break this promise for emergencies & my sis lives in Australia so its been a difficult pledge to make. However, if we don’t start living in a low-carbon way ourselves, how will we ever teach our kids how to live within the future restrictions of life with really expensive oil, financial stresses & climate change?

I’m also intrigued enough to work out all my flights taken, ever! (only one trip to Oz)

As for Anton, yes, that’s true …

[ref for figures: http://bit.ly/skixj
The figures for aviation emissions are derived from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) emissions calculator and Civil Aviation Authority CAA) data, and are based on actual load factors achieved during 2007(latest available data). Eurostar’s carbon dioxide emissions are derived from analysis conducted by Paul Watkiss Associates in February 2009. They are based on actual supplier mix of electricity and actual load factors achieved during 2008 (first full year of services on High Speed 1).

Radiative Forcing Index – the non CO2 climatic effect of aviation – has not been added to the aviation emissions calculations.]

I think China (and other developing nations) are aware of all this though and aren’t just blindly increasing their emissions without a care. The point that China (and other countries) are absorbing a huge chunk of Western emissions is still valid. Part of the UK’s efforts could be in helping reduce UK emissions that we ‘outsource’ to places like China. Not just (as we are now, I think) reducing our own domestic emissions by shuffling them off to other countries.

I agree that leading the way gives us a good leg to stand on. It also reduces the amount of CO2 etc in the atmosphere that the UK is responsible for in total. I think CO2 hangs around in the atmosphere for up to a century, so a lot of what’s up there at the moment is down to us and other similarly long-time industrialised countries. Which, again, makes it morally difficult to throw our hands up about China’s recent entry to the party.

Obviously it’s still a good target to pursue as it all helps and would give us more of a leg to stand on asking other countries to do the same, but it’s a bit depressing.

UK population = 61.4m (in 2008) = ~ 577.16m tons
CN population = 1324.6m (in 2008) = ~ 6.159bn tons

I know the years don’t quite tally, but I’ve used the same World Bank public data from Google: http://bit.ly/aWPOgp

The UK is largely industrialised while large swathes of China will still be rural and egrarian, and while we in the UK are at least aware of our carbon output (although it shouldn’t be the only metric by which we live) and some are doing something about it, China’s output will undoubtedly only increase.

The relatively new book “How Bad Are Bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything” might be interesting as well. Like you say, knowing has worse carbon footprint is difficult.

Could you put any more numbers on “a massive amount more than individuals in India”? I’m concerned that if we’re twice that of developing countries like China, then a 75% reduction will be hard work. Comparing to India might set me more at ease!