Jane Powerson eco-criticism
This doesn't reflect well on me, but whenever I see a big black
SUV, I can't help my lip from curling. A little voice in my head
spits out: "Emissions: 250 - 380 grammes of carbon dioxide per
kilometre! Pah!" And the rest is unprintable. Yes, show me a huge
four-by-four, and I turn into an eco-fascist, a green
shirt, a holier-than-them enviro-smug-person.
But the cheek of me! There may be a perfectly good reason why the person behind the wheel is driving such a large car. Perhaps they live up a remote mountain track and need the versatility of a four-wheel drive. Or perhaps they don't. But maybe they have CFL bulbs in all their light fittings, eat local vegetarian food, holiday in Ireland, use solar water heating, have impeccable insulation and a wood pellet boiler - and the car is their one foolish extravagance. Maybe they have only a year to live and they want to spend as much of it as possible in a black BMW X5. How do I know?
And at the risk of sounding biblical, who am I to cast the first
stone? True, my car is tiny and hardly ever
driven, but my creaky old house is an eco disaster, with
single glazing and indifferent insulation. My lawnmower is ancient
and no doubt emissions-heavy. Plus, I'm guilty of regularly leaving
various bits of equipment on standby. I'm sure there are dozens of
other transgressions that I could confess, but I'll spare you the
breast beating. My point is that it's all too easy to make
allowances for oneself, while cutting nobody else the slightest bit
of slack.
One way of casting a rational eye on the matter of who's frittering away the world's resources is to make a tally of one's own usage. An "ecological footprint" calculator, for instance works out how many hectares each of us would need to carry on consuming the way we are now (see www.myfootprint.org). The earth's surface allows 1.8 hectares per person, yet the average Irish person's needs would use up the resources of nearly three times that, at 5.3 hectares.
Or we could do a carbon footprint calculation (at www.grian.ieor www.carbonfootprint.com), and work out whether by some miracle we might have stayed within our individual fair share of 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Then perhaps, we can indulge in a bit of eco-criticism.
