With 2016 now confirmed by NASA as the hottest year on record, beating 2015 into second place, it’s a good time to keep cool heads and hopeful hearts. For a balanced view of 2016 ‘The Good The Bad and the Ugly’ see this Guardian piece. It finishes on a note of hope: “I am also hopeful that the economic position of renewable energy continues to improve. If so, the president of the USA won’t matter. We will be on a path to a cleaner safer world just based on unstoppable economics.”

The Guardian has also provided some helpful hints on reducing carbon emission from Chris Goodall, with 15 ways to cut carbon here. It is noteworthy that cutting down on meat is second on the list. The same could be said also for dairy products – with health benefits from change of diet too.

If you have not yet done so, please consider making the Geetotal commitment. (A late New Year Resolution perhaps). If you have done so, now may be the time to do your annual CO2 assessment and offset. This can be done on the carbon independent calculator.

We’d like to get feedback from others who have also used the calculator. To avoid being over-complex it asks same fairly broad questions – some are more easy to respond to than others. It also may be somewhat out of date, and overly negative, with regard to use of green electricity tariffs, for which it only makes a partial CO2 allowance. This may be fair for green tariffs from some large utilities for which genuine additionality has been questioned. But the CO2 reduction from high quality green tariffs eg Good Energy and Ecotricity we think deserves more  recognition. You can make your own decision as you use the calculator since you can insert your own figures.

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