Thank goodness for China!

Being interested in lowering my carbon footprint (see konsk.co.uk/design/energy2.html for details) I'm always interested to hear how others are doing. Some people have exciting stuff to report but a familiar response runs along the lines of "well, I've reduced it a bit but really, with China gearing up to techno-industrial eco-catastrophe there's not much point."

Using that approach, any guilt that might arise from rushing off to distant parts for essential holidays can be (at least partially) mitigated. Thanks goodness for China, eh? Just think, if they got their act together and went all green, what would we do? How could we go on justifying our (essential) expenditure of carbon units? We might have to do a bit more about our own excessive guzzling of the black stuff. Or find another country to blame- India is currently looking quite promising...

Just a few points to make here. There was a good article in Resurgence recently describing China's increasing use of straw bale and earth render in dwelling construction. I wondered if this was in any way linked to the elder Permaculture Designer, Andy Langford's visit last year when he spoke to a (huge) audience of China's rural representatives and authorities. The techniques are going down well with the rural population and represent a considerable reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as compared to fired bricks. The Chinese authorities are actually considering banning the firing of bricks as a method of reducing their emissions. Good for them.

Also worth bearing in mind is the fact that though China's carbon dioxide output is BIG, so too is the population and on a person for person basis their outputs are still far lower than the average person in the UK or the US, at about 1 ton per head. Again, good for them. It would be interesting to find out how they achieve it, instead of moaning about them. But then maybe we'd have to start cancelling all those holidays to far off places.