Yes, today is earth day so I really should say something about it. One big change recently has been in France where they have banned flights where there is a train connection of less than two and a half hours. I’m not sure why anybody would want to fly if a rail journey only took two and a half hours – but then the two and a half hours was supposed to be four hours originally. But then we have learned we can live without travel a lot of the time in the last year.
I remember a lot of people living by candlelight on previous earth days – and of course that resulted in a carbon release many times greater than incandescent bulbs. With LED lights these days it is even worse.
Just a year or so ago we were encouraged to use the calculator on our computers rather than asking Google to do the calculation – because of the carbon footprint. Today Google claims to be carbon neutral – how many home computers are?
Things are changing quickly these days, we need to learn to adapt to new realities. And that makes things hard to plan for.
For example, are electric cars the way forward, or maybe hydrogen cars (I think not – mainly because it is a gas). But what if the Formula 1 fuel actually becomes more than a test? Their goal is to have carbon neutral fuel (like the stuff you currently put in your car) in the very near future – that would mean we would not need a new charging infrastructure, or a new type of car – it would mean we could all go carbon neutral without changing anything.
And what about heating systems – should we go for heat pumps (I remember they were being called the future when I was at university)? Or maybe we should hold out for hydrogen?
The hard thing is that a lot of these decisions involve significant changes in infrastructure. My take has always been that there is a large core of people that simply don’t have any interest in getting greener. To me it seems better to opt for the solution that makes life easier for the end user. Maybe, just maybe, that new electric car will become a white elephant (see – white can be used as a negative term).