Everyone talks about the Price paid in pounds for gas and electricity. But with the Americans about to oh-whopsy-daisy-silly-me-overspent-again and about to issue themselves another Trillion $ to keep things going for a few more months. Are pounds and dollars the wrong units to think about the Value of things ?
Now with world population of about 8 billion people presently using stuff which adds up to a Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) of about 60 billion tons of CO2e, one would think that British averages of about six tons CO2 per person seems less than average and inside your fair share. But that is government official figures which neglects for example production of half of your food, which is imported, and neglects most of what you buy, which is mostly imported.
Furthermore, most of the 2022 60GT(CO2e) greenhouse gas emissions are going to measureable ocean acidification and measurable CO2 and gases in the atmosphere. The safe quantity which the oceans and trees can reprocess to oxygen for us is a lot less and nobody has published a definitive number to say how much less given the degraded oceans and forests of the 2030's. It could be as low as 8GT(CO2e) per year; 1 Ton per person per year on average. That is, if you want to buy high carbon intensity materials such as cement, that uses up part of your ton for that year.
https://ukcsma.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...rials_2012.pdf for example. Most people don't have time to look up every material going into every product which they buy, so computer accounting software could do that for you, if everyone really started thinking about how to spend their one ton per person per year.
How much of your one ton per person per year would you want to use up on your household and workplace energy bills, and how much would you have left to save up for the next car ? So I say, don't think in pounds and dollars because those just get handed out willy nilly and cannot buy enough new trees to clear the pollution. Think about how you intend to spend your one ton per person per year. And do try to sort it out before the oceans and forests get degraded further and can only reprocess 4 GigaTons (CO2e) per year worldwide.
