October book review

Date: Thursday 1 October

This month, Alastair fraser has sent in a review of "How Bad Are Bananas?"

Here it is:

How bad are bananas?  The carbon footprint of everything.

By Mike Berners-Lee,   Profile Books, first published 2010, latest Edition 2020 £8.99.

For anyone who is serious about tackling Climate Change, this book is essential reading if they wish to try to maximize their contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.  It explains the difference between the direct emissions from activities such as driving a car, which burns fossil fuels and the carbon footprint, which takes account of all the emissions that have resulted from the production of the vehicle and the extraction and processing of the fuel.  For a country like the UK which imports more goods than it exports, some of the emissions that we are responsible for occur in other countries.

The book has 10 main sections, each giving several examples of the carbon footprint of a range of everyday common activates, starting with those that are less than 10 grams of Carbon dioxide equivalent and increasing by more or less a factor of 10 for each section up to those that generate more than 1 million tonnes.

For each activity listed it give details of the assumptions made and a range of values according to the assumptions; for example the footprint of a hot bath will vary according to how full the bath is, how hot the water and what fuel is used to heat the water.

Two Introductory sections explain the purpose of the book and provide a guide to carbon and carbon footprints, and two sections at the end discuses some specific issues related to food and provide additional information such as details of some of the assumptions and some international comparisons.

Until the day when some form of carbon footprint labeling becomes mandatory on all good sold, this book will help readers to work out the adjustments to their lifestyles that will make the greatest contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.  As the book makes clear, it won’t be easy.

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