This Challenge is designed as a first step. I don’t think it’s “token,” because while the difference between 10 beers and 12 beer may not matter, the difference between 3 beers and 5 beers might. It’s also very important for folks who are just realizing they need to cut back that it’s actually achievable to not have those 2 beers, instead of figuring “Well, I can’t possibly cut back to just one, so I won’t even bother trying.”

I framed the challenge in terms of “saving” instead of “cutting out” specifically to appeal to people who are intimidated by your Carbon Account and the Riot 4 Austerity. I figured between us, we’d motivate more people to change their behavior. After all, different people are motivated in different ways. It seemed wise to me to frame the case for carbon reduction in a different way than what I’ve seen out there already, in order to help motivate the huge numbers of folks who are intimidated or feel only despair when reading other challenges.

And I do hope that once people start making changes in this more friendly and accessible way, they’ll realize that a) they can make these changes and b) they are just a first step – and move on to Rioting.

Emily

In this, carbon dioxide is the backing for a new currency, the Carbon (¢). Your allowed emissions are treated as an “income”. You can earn more income from planting trees and harvesting food. If you are a truly profligage Carbons spender today, perhaps you could take four months to reduce to the current Western average, ¢1,000. Then reduce this by ¢10 every month until you reach the world average spending, ¢300. After that you reduce it by ¢5 per month until you reach the safe level of ¢100 a month.

So you take 4 months to get to the Western average; then 70 months, almost six years, to get from the Western to the world average. Then you take 40 months, three and a half years, to get from the world average to a safe level. In all, in nine and a half years you’ve gone from profligate wasteful spending of Carbon to a level the world could sustain forever.

People generally take 2-5 years to completely change their lifestyle. In 2-5 years you can move to a new country and learn a new language, get married and have children or get divorced, find a new home and be well-settled in, get a new qualification and a new career, become depressed and suicidal, get deadly cancer and go through chemotherapy, go from being grossly obese to a bodybuilding champion, and so on.

So you ought to be able to make significant changes in your carbon-spending lifestyle in almost ten years. If you can’t, well it’s not that you can’t it’s just that you’re not trying. Ten years.

As Emily says, small steps do take you towards a far goal. However, I’d say that one stone is a bit too small a step. It becomes a token effort we know is useless, like Earth Hour.

The thing is that all these carbon calculations are not terribly precise. Maybe my coal-fired station is a bit worse than yours, so that I only get 4kWh for a stone compared to your 7kWh. Maybe my beef is grass-fed instead of grain-fed so it farts less.

In the Carbon Account Challenge, these inaccuracies come out in the wash, in that however inaccurate the particular figures, over time you’ll see if the trend in spending is generally up or generally down. That’s a bit harder if you’ve got 157 things to keep track of.

The other issue is that it’s presented as “carbon saved.” But the problem is not how much carbon we’re saving, rather how much we’re spending. If I drink ten Guinesses tonight, it will not help my head tomorrow that I said “no” to two more. Ten was nine too many. It’s easier to keep track of the drinks I did have than the drinks I might have had but didn’t. I cannot “save” drinks, I either drink them or I don’t.

Likewise, we cannot “save” emissions. If (say) 1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide will turn our planet into misery, that we “saved” 10,000 billion tonnes won’t matter. All that matters is the emissions we make. We have to get them down, and fast. It may be too much or too hard, but we’ve not any choice.

Once in the Army I saw that when blokes fall down on a cross-country run, a corporal or sergeant comes along and kicks them in the guts until they get up and keep going. Lying there gasping, you have a choice: you can lie there being kicked, or you can get up and keep running. Most get up and keep running.

That is overly brutal and people shouldn’t do that to each-other, but that’s what the Earth is doing to us. Hurricane Katrina, the Black Saturday bushfires, the Bangladesh cyclone, drought in Australia and the Sahel – the Earth is kicking us in the guts and saying, “get up, keep going.”

We can lie there in airconditioned comfort and in our SUVs munching on our burgers, and keep getting kicked in the guts by global warming. Or we can switch it off, get out and walk and find a decent meal, and keep running. It’s shitty and hard and unfair but we have no choice.

It’s also a social justice issue. One Bangladeshi man was interviewed after a flood. He said, “I am told that the flood happened because of greenhouse gases and global warming. But I swear to you, I have never owned a single lightbulb.”

We’re being kicked in the guts, but they’re being kicked in the balls.

Get up, keep running. You have ten years.

I had a look at riot4austerity and although that is the way to go ultimately, it’s such a drastic change, and I’m just not ready for it. I’m taking my own little steps though, and this stone challenge seems managable!

If I buy electricity offsets, it is theoretically funding some wind power somewhere, but in fact the coal plant at the end of my line is still spewing carbon. So I’m focusing here on actual reduction, not just offsets.

In this contest, does it count to either buy offsets or bury some biochar?