« Google sees FCC progress | Main | Fully In Touch » Cheeseburger CascioI chuckled when I saw this piece by Jamais (about the carbon footprint of his trip to Colorado – to talk about carbon footprints. What's funny is that, because he's so well identified now with the "cheeseburger footprint" concept, he's adopted the cheeseburger standard for ongoing analysis. Let's do the math. According to Terrapass, my flight out to Denver and back ran about 867 pounds of CO2, total (per passenger). In the course of filming in a variety of locations, we drove two vehicles -- a standard pickup truck and a minivan, carrying a sum of six people and a huge amount of gear -- about 250 miles apiece. According to EPA estimates, pickups and minivans of appropriate size and vintage emit anywhere from 8 to 12 tons of CO2 over the course of driving 15,000 miles; call it 10 tons for easy math. 20,000 pounds of CO2 for 15,000 miles equals 1.3 pounds per mile, so 500 miles equals 666.7 pounds of CO2. That brings us to 1533.7 pounds for transportation alone; add in the incidentals of the day (power to charge the camera batteries, meals, and such), and we can reasonably estimate 1,600 pounds of direct CO2 emissions as the result of the day's activities. This made me think about Popeye's pal Wimpy and his monolithic cheeseburger consumption... somehow we have to replace the SUV with Wimpy as our symbol for excessive carbon spew. jon posted this at 8:22 AM |
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