Carbon sins

Awoken the other night by cold and concern for global warming, I searched my conscience for ways to reduce my carbon footprint. The trouble is, a large part of it is simply my existence. During the now-forgotten demographic panic of the 1970s, I knew a man who killed himself in the interests of population reduction, though it would have made greater demographic sense to kill lots of us. Deciding against either option — for the present — I got up and gazed at the silent snowscape outside. My own tyre tracks were already obliterated and that set me thinking: are there any particular tyre-track sins that might damn me for ever to eternal roasting?

Something recent came uneasily to mind. I might plead that it was in another country and besides the car wasn’t mine, that the planes to Spain would have been flying anyway, that the hotel would have had air-conditioning and kitchens working without me, that the launch would have taken place in my absence, that I didn’t drive many miles in the beast or attempt its official 204mph top speed (let alone the 10mph extra I suspect it would actually do). I might plead that since it runs happily on a mixture of 85 per cent ethanol and 15 per cent petrol (or any mix between), all derived from biomass grown on unproductive land, I was demonstrating environmental responsibility. I might also point out that, because only a few thousand are made and their owners tend to do low annual mileages, their total contribution to the atmosphere (even at 17.3mpg and 388g/km) is far less than that of millions of the Holy Prius. And it’s quantity that matters, we’re told, not relative output.

So far so true, but sin is in the mind as well as the deed.