Carbon Footprints and Bananas

I recently read a book that has been on my reading list for months now: How Bad are Bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything by Mike Berners-Lee. Yes, that name is famous but that is not why you need to pay attention to this book. You need to pay attention because the message conveyed in this book, and Mr Berners-Lee’s other work and advocacy, is absolutely worth heeding.

Does what it says on the tin

In the book, the author takes several everyday objects and activities and counts their approximate carbon cost from a UK perspective (in mass, grams and kilograms, of Carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO₂e). From a pint of water (~568 ml), through bananas, conference calls, social media, and a day’s protein, right up until he gets to the funny numbers (do you know what a billion tonnes look like?) with space travel, countries’ total emissions, and burning all of the world’s ‘proven’ fossil fuel reserves. The author uses a 5-tonne lifestyle as a broad goal, which in 2018 was just a little less than the per capita emissions in France and Turkey, and about 2.5 times those of a person in India.

I started the book with a certain smugness, blissfully thumbing my way through public transport trips and vegetarian protein. Until I got to flights, whereupon I put the book down and went for a jog to continue the smugness a while longer.

Small actions good, big actions better

The book is an enjoyable journey through popular science and number-crunching. The best part of this book, for me, is how it is organised: from activities that clock in at a few grams carbon to events and infrastructure emitting billions of tons. It makes you realise that while it is silly to waste paper towels, it is sillier still that our governments continue permitting more coal mines or fail to install enough EV charging infrastructure.

I think that for this sense of perspective alone, this book is a masterclass in environmental communication.

I am not suggesting that individual choices aren’t important, they do contribute and can clearly play a psychological role in helping people feel part of the solution (unless it leads to moral licensing). It is just far more important for governments and organisations to act in meaningful ways. So the next time you see a steel mill talk about installing LED bulbs, or an oil company asking you about the sacrifices you are willing to make, feel free to roll your eyes. By all means, keep turning off unnecessary lights and taking the bus to work (if your government bothered with clean, safe, cheap public transport), but remember that it will make a very big difference indeed if you are able to pressure your government and large companies into making real changes to fossil fuel consumption and embodied emissions.

Honesty in the methods

The author talks a little bit about the method and details of each object or action without getting overly pedantic. The author conveys facts and figures, and clearly states where he is getting them from. And like some of the best scientific writing, he is quite candid about how reliable the numbers and assumptions are. I think one of the most endearingly honest bits of the book is when the author admits that he occasionally searched the depths of the internet to find any scrap or titbit of information about the carbon cost of this or the air miles of that, found himself clutching at straws, and could not bear to hide that from his readers. Like when your boxing coach admits he slept in late last Sunday and missed breakfast.

If there is one slight quarrel I have with the book, it is how some of these lightly-researched ideas are mixed in with the more solid stuff. Like biting into a solid cardamom halfway through a biryani, which we all know is worse than a coal mine with labour violations. The occasional throwaway remark about how the author has been told this or that, about the benefits or harms of something by an unnamed source is slightly irritating and distracting. However, I am sure that most readers are far more enlightened and less pedantic than I am, and will not be distracted by this.

Count this, count that

The nature of carbon accounting and life-cycle analysis is such that this book is full of enjoyable nooks where one could really go down the rabbit-hole. I especially love that the author gets the bits about buildings broadly right: renovate an old building if you can instead of building a new one, insulation in the UK usually pays for itself quickly, solar panels also (surprisingly) make sense in the UK, for a new building the cement and steel will constitute probably the largest chunk of the carbon budget, and so on.

So, while it tackles a complex and interesting subject, the book is full of the kinds of activities I would do with my nephew, like estimating how much carbon it takes to boil a kettle for tea. Or maybe just by myself, when the spouse is away at work and not waiting for a cup…

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then…

The book left an impression, even if I was broadly familiar with the magnitude of the figures presented. Admittedly, I didn’t realise that a bottle of Australian wine in the UK is about as carbon intensive as the French stuff, and less so than a bottle from Sicily. But these are first-world problems compared to the choices I really should think about: my house (energy-efficient and, preferably, renovated), my air travel (little to none), my appliances and other possessions (few), and my diet (seasonal and plant-based as far as possible).

I encourage everyone to read this book, and then act on it. But keep a sense of perspective in your home and work when it comes to environmental action. In other words, …

… make good choices when it comes to the big stuff, the rest is all noise.