Hell on earth – yes that’s what climate change above 4 degrees will be. I know it’s a bit doomsday and some people don’t even want to acknowledge that it’s even true but deep-breath. Leave them to their conspiracies and complacency. Closer to the year 2100 we will reach 4 degrees – when your grandkids are your age – if we stay on the trajectory we are on, it will be hell on earth and if that doesn’t frighten you, then I don’t know what else would.
Climate change is the result of a simple mechanism – the carbon cycle. Carbon can be either a solid or a gas and it makes up a large bulk of the planet. The earth has a carbon cycle and when it loses its homeostasus, it’s not pretty. The effect of carbon in the atmosphere is that it traps heat particles. So does methane, water particles and a few other things. Ice reflects sunlight therefore heat, and trees, plants, soil and oceans store carbon as matter. {For a great synopsis on the carbon cycle watch a documentary called ‘Crude‘} But the speed that this imbalance is happening around us will disrupt ecosystems, food supply, weather, sea level and atmospheric conditions which will be quite frankly, frightening.
Anyhow, enough bad stuff.
However it makes me think – whenever I so much as prune a living branch off a tree, I wonder about the carbon sequestration we are now missing out on. Now times that by 6 billion people and “Houston! We have a problem” Sir.
And the same when I drive – which is almost every day and then x that by 6 billion.
Then times the amount of resources I consume daily which creates carbon dioxide in the waste process, and then times that by a billion or 6.
You start to get the picture that you yourself are a problem & that doesn’t fit well with me.
So where does herbal medicine come into it and what does that mean for me and my business going forward? I always felt fairly smug as a herbalist that I wasn’t contributing much Co2 to the atmsophere because plants are carbon sinks! We literally sequester carbon for a living! Or do we?
So I decided to get in touch with Ekos (www.ekos.org.nz) and do a full carbon footprint exercise on my business to determine if the amount of carbon I create and consume is positive, neutral or negative in terms of Co2. In other words, what do I add to the world, or take away, during the day to day running of my business compared to if I wasn’t running my business?
To find out what happens next, tune in for part 2 – ‘Assessing the balance of carbon in a small retail setting with 4-6 clinical medical herbalists’. Shout out to my excellent team on board with me 🙂
I was already planning to buy an electric vehicle, which ever since I was young I have wanted to drive, but there weren’t many around then i.e. none. Today we have some excellent choices betwen hybrid and electric and soon to be hydrogen. With NZs large renewable energy sector thanks to the governments think-big ideas of the 70s (back when governments actually invested money into things – or am I being too cynical/never mind) it makes perfect sense to drive electric as soon as possible in Aotearoa New Zealand.
So with this in mind I wanted to find out what my carbon emissions were while I still have my gas (dinosaur) car, then do the numbers to see what kind of a difference having an electric car would bring me (and I suspect it’s quite a big one).
So bear with me while I go through this process. I am already running a small business and working 1-2 days a week in the store, doing some clinic as well as staying home with my 2 year old while I do the rest of the business as usual stuff when I can squeeze it in with baby-sitters. He is a rambunctious boy so it’s nearly impossible to do work when he is around! But I decided this was an important exercise for HIS future as instead of fretting about it I decided I had the means to try and do something about it on a business level. And if I can encourage other similar size businesses to do it at the same time, then all the better for it.
Phil Rasmussen – I would love to know what your business is because that would give the industry good insight into how much carbon is consumed in the manufacturing of fluid extracts. Shout out to Phil 🙂
This is also great learning for our herbal community so I will share what I learn as I go and you can apply this to your business as well. Yes, please feel free to take what information I give you and use it.
I was also curious to see whether herbs were in fact carbon neutral as I always believed. Are they are carbon positive, neutral or negative? This would depend on how much they have travelled and how they are dried and processed I suppose. I have it stated on my website that if the product is made in New Zealand or from a local businesses (which I prefer) then I hail it as a low carbon footprint item – yes the irony of internet selling and courier deliveries is acutely ironic to me – bring on electric vans – once couriers cotton on that they’re cheaper to run they will convert their fleets but that’s another story!
Most importantly I want us all to learn something. As herbalists and naturopaths it is in our very titles that we care deeply for the earth – Papatuanuku, some call it Gaia, our planet, closest neighbours to Mars and Venus. I care deeply about the earth and it pains me to see what I have known since childhood (the 80’s) – that humans are really bad for nature. We have a male dominated thought system that encourages linear and reductionist thinking and we need to come full circle again. Our systems need to change but we have created greed so it is hard to break the bonds. It will be ugly and it won’t go down without a fight.
So that is my rant, you get my drift, and I will get back to you in a few months (or a year) to ‘reveal’ the carbon footprint of The Apothecary in Woolston, Christchurch, New Zealand. Stay tuned.
-October 2019
If you want to learn more about the trajectory we are currently on towards 4 degrees, read ‘The Uninhabitable Earth‘ by David Wallace-Wells.
-October 2019
