Big Foot

A few days ago I saw the article called "Big Foot" in the book and hoped it was about the legendary animal. While turning through pages to get to the article I ended up in the middle of it and enough "green" words jumped off the page for me to realize the title was just a clever way of describing our carbon footprint. I shut the book, disappointed, and put it out my mind until now...

Specter uses the term "food miles" as a way of describing the distance between the farms food products are grown on and the homes of the people buying them, and the greenhouse emissions associated with that distance. In England many food products are having their total carbon output labeled on the packaging, but many people don't know how to interpret the numbers and there are different ways of considering the total amount of emissions. Different considerations could include anything between the fertilizer used to grow the food to the energy it would take the consumer to cook it. Near the end of the article, Specter includes a claim that "we are in an era of creative destruction". The claim deals with the fact that companies and technology today strive to reduce carbon emissions but these same companies are also the ones causing the damage. It's an interesting claim because we certainly do continue to find new creative ways to destroy things.
I don't really feel personally responsible for global warming. While I recognize it as a problem that needs taking care of, so much damage has been done even before I was born or a consumer myself that I can't feel personally to blame. While we as a society tend to be wasteful, I don't really think anything I do is that damaging. At least in the sense that I'm no more damaging than anyone else. I don't mean to come across as holier than thou, but with all the damage corporations/industries/factories are doing, and all the potential resources they have to correct the damage, they should probably be the ones looking into the situation.