Tag Archives: carbon footprint

Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project – A Moral Dilemma

We don’t usually consider the moral implications of our carbon dioxide emissions, but an article in The Economist (December 23, 2023) presents this issue in the bluntest of terms. How many people are dying as a result of our personal contribution to the global warming crisis?

The mathematics to calculate this are not complicated. Consider the per capita emissions of each country in the world, count the number of people globally who die as a direct consequence of climate change, and it’s possible to determine the responsibility that each person has for the death of others.

Continue reading The Quadra Project – A Moral Dilemma →
Transportation

The carbon footprint of longer distance travel to and from Cortes Island

The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) just released a report on the carbon footprint made by longer distance trips to and from Cortes Island. 

Many of their findings are to be expected. Taking a plane off the island creates a great deal more emissions than driving a car, and people who carpool or take a bus are responsible for only a fraction of that vehicle’s pollution.  

One of the biggest contributors to our local footprint is the Cortes-Quadra ferry, which creates approximately 1 kg of carbon emissions for every walk-on and 12 kg for every car. 

Continue reading The carbon footprint of longer distance travel to and from Cortes Island →
Cost of Climate Change

Talk is Cheap, Part 2: the worst possible choices

Evidence of climate destabilisation — aberrant weather — is now everyday news. “Record-breaking” has become a routine description of wind speeds, rainfall, flood levels, mudslides, wildfires, high temperatures and drought.

The drought which afflicts BC this October of 2022 is a record-breaker and a tragedy; near Bella Bella, tens of thousands of salmon have died trying to return to their breeding grounds in streams now too warm and shallow for them to survive in. Over the last few summers, BC has lost millions of hectares of forest and entire towns to wildfire; “fire season” and multi-day smoke palls are becoming business-as-usual in mid to late summer. In December last year, flooding destroyed livestock and crops in the lower mainland. These events are happening more frequently and their severity is ramping up, slowly, year by year.

Continue reading Talk is Cheap, Part 2: the worst possible choices →