g-Think | Issue 16 | Carbon Footprinting

It’s 2012. The world continues to warm up. The Arctic ice cap is melting rapidly, and northern sea lanes are entirely free of ice during the summer season. Glaciers are retreating all over the world, and Europe has just experienced its hottest summer on record, with over 25,000 heat-related deaths reported across the continent.

Go to the market for groceries, and every product, in addition to having its nutritional information listed, has a clear, easy-to-read box stating its carbon footprint (the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere during the product’s life cycle, calculated as a cost per ton). Carbon footprint labeling is now a federally (and internationally) mandated scheme and is turning manufacturing, distribution and retailing upside down.

In 2018, the labeling initiative will move to a new phase: the carbon footprint cost stated on the label will have to be included in the actual cost of the product as a tax (the federal carbon tax). The things we buy, the way we shop, what we consume will change radically as the real cost to the environment becomes a fact of life.

A pot of organic yogurt that’s transported from a farm in Vermont to the Midwest will cost three times as much as one produced from a factory in a city where you live. The reason: it’s got be transported hundreds of miles.

The concept of organic agriculture will change. The organic fruits and vegetables flown in from Chile or Mexico will become prohibitively expensive. In fact, “organic” won’t mean much anymore unless it’s locally (very locally) sourced. Those huge organic farms in California will be rendered just as bad for the environment as regular farms. It’s all in the transportation and in the machinery employed to undertake big-scale farming.

The cost of air travel will skyrocket. The tons of CO2 that aircraft spew into the atmosphere will be included in the airfare as a tax. No longer will it be a voluntary donation to help offset your carbon footprint when you fly. That trip to “pure” New Zealand or ecologically certified Dominica will become prohibitively expensive for most people. Perhaps we might even have a carbon “ration”—flying across the ocean may use up a year or more of our ration.

Back home, if you live in a regular single-family home in the suburbs of a big U.S. city, you’ll be taxed royally. Your carbon footprint is the greatest—you are the worst offender. The four-bedroom, three-bathroom, SUV-driving, appliance-buying, air-conditioning and disposable culture will come to be seen as a throwback to a bygone era. You’ll be jealous of your friends living in apartments in cities like New York (the most environmentally efficient city in the United States). The carbon tax for New Yorkers will be one of the lowest in the country.

Does all this sound like a nightmare? While such draconian measures are unlikely to be implemented in the United States anytime soon, the idea of a cost associated with one’s carbon footprint is rapidly gaining traction. Plain and simple, it’s going to have to come down to the consumer to make informed choices on what to buy and what to forgo. While many Awakening Consumers probably know this already, few of us seem willing to radically alter our consumption patters (at least to the levels necessary to effect a roll-back in CO2 emissions). For the past few years we’ve been lulled into thinking that you can be green and kind to the environment without having to make real sacrifices. This is a head-in-the-sand attitude. Ultimately, international carbon emissions standards, mandated by governments and implemented across all stages of extraction, production and consumption as a tax, will be the only way to effectively ensure the reductions in CO2 emissions required. Are we willing, as consumers, to bite the bullet now, or will a carbon tax become a nightmare that we all wish had never happened?