Carbon Literacy


Concepts to look into:

  1. Carbon Literacy Standard
  2. Silvopasture – continued meat production that produces less emissions
  3. Material Circularity
  4. Billion Tonne Solutions
  5. Nine Planetary Boundaries
  6. Donut Economic Model
  7. Life Cycle Assessment – a systematic process that evaluates the environmental impact of a product, service, or system throughout its entire life cycle. (energy usage → CO2E to calculate)
  8. Product Environmental Footprint
  9. The five tonne lifestyle
  10. The social and environmental impact assessment (SIA and EIA) model is a methodological tool that helps predict the potential consequences of a project or program on the environment and community. – important to consider when 
  11. Gold Soil Standard – Catering
  12. BREEAM Certification – Energy consumption within buildings
  13. Material Circularity
  14. Reporting of carbon – Scope 1, 2, and 3
  15. Offsetting – buying into wind farms, solar farms, etc. to offset the amount of energy used

Notes:

  1. Perceptions about Climate Crisis, Carbon Emergency, Climate Change – especially in communications or marketing 
  2. Nine Planetary Boundaries
  1. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion – CFCs
  2. Atmospheric Aerosol Loading
  3. Ocean Acidification 
  4. Biogeochemical Flows – 
  5. Green Water – water in the soil for plants to use
  6. Carbon Sink
  7. Radiative Forcing
  8. Novel Entities – “things created and introduced into the environment by human beings that could have positive or negative disruptive effects on the earth system” – Plastic, etc.
  9. Donut Economic Model
  1. Greenhouse Earth
  2. Troposphere; tropo – to twist, to change; a layer that changes constantly
  3. Greenhouse Gases – 80% is CO2 | Methane, N2O, F-Gases, Ozone, Water Vapour
  4. GWP – Global Warming Potential – how hot can it get? In comparison to CO2
  5. CO2E – E-Equivalent – to have considered other Greenhouses Gasses in the emissions
  6. CO2 E (Gt) – Gt – billion tonnes & gigatonnes
  7. Methane emission sources – landfills, rice production (already produced in a way that is less methanogenic), wetland degradation, enteric fermentation – waste from cows and sheep, fugitive emissions – used by oil and gas industries for technical faults in oil and gas leaks, 
  8. methane is stored in the soil, it bubbles up naturally, wetlands
  9. N2O – fertilizer use, fossil fuel combustion
  10. F-Gas – refrigerators, air conditions
  11. 5000kg per year, so carbon budget per day =5000/365
  12. Sending emails? – carbon emissions?
  13. People and Planet University League – to measure the sustainability of universities

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *