I apologise for being self-promoting in this blog, but as I spent four weeks writing an article on an issue that just doesn’t get covered in the environmental media, let alone the mainstream media, then I hope you will excuse me for alerting the dear readers of The Sietch to it.

The article highlights a huge thing that is missing in our calculations of carbon “footprints”. I am struck by the number of so-called “carbon calculators” that ignore the impact of our behaviour with regards to both diet and the purchase of goods from far off lands : only the estemable www.ecofoot.org comes close to what we need. Yes, some countries desperately need the earnings from selling goods for export, but that should not make us feel guilty for not buying things from far away, it should make the entire industrialised world feel guilty for having such an uneven system of wealth distribution : the rich nations have systematically raped the poorer ones for their own benefit for centuries, and it carries on today.

So please read this article or at least heed these words from it:

Throughout the world, companies in every highly industrialised nation are moving their manufacturing output to cheaper, less efficient, and more distant countries. Global trade is growing – according to the WTO – by 5% per year, and there is no sign of this slowing down. All the time we consume more, and ignore the impact of our consumption – the dirty factories, the rising carbon levels, the tide of consumer goods moving around the planet. Because we are exporting the responsibility of our emissions to other places they become invisible to the consumer, yet remain deadly to the Earth.

http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/20579

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.reduce3.com
And proud member of The Sietch