Don Marti

Mon 20 Apr 2009 03:08:11 PM PDT

Carbon footprint

Is it really fair to stick a conference speaker with the Carbon Guilt of his or her air travel? After all, the audience came to see the speaker. If I eat a kilogram of air-transported food, the Carbon Guilt is on me, not the company that operated the airplane.

So if I walk to join 199 other people to see a speaker who emitted 2000kg of carbon to come speak to us, that's 10kg of carbon on me. Or, if you want to think of it as everyone at the conference goes to meet everyone else at the conference, just take everyone's carbon and split it out equally.

Let's stop attributing such big carbon footprints to performers and speakers who travel. So no more smugness for locavores who attend travelers' talks and shows.