Land, water and air play the biggest active role in absorbing human's excess carbon emissions but they're oversupplied. The people who are responsible for the emissions are pointing the blame anywhere but themselves.
The excess manufacturing and energy consumption in China is the biggest emitter in the world, taking over the US way back in 2006. Do everyday Australians still buy excessive products made in China? Wouldn't this be the first step to help cut emissions, to stop fuelling China's fire?
Naive urban dwellers, who like to point the finger at our own agricultural industry for excess carbon emissions, seriously need to look at their lifestyle.
Their computers, phones, technology, cars, building materials, furniture, linen, clothing, footwear, plastics, throwaway items are all choices that they are increasing China's emissions.
With the turnover of these items "needing" to be sooner and more often, it is only driving China's ginormous economy and astronomical carbon emissions higher.
Most rural residences don't have the luxury of a choice of shops with a magnitude of products available; we make do with what we've got and go without. We reuse parts, fix broken items, restore existing materials, have vast areas of land that through trees and soil soak up as much excess carbon as they possibly can. Our land should be praised and landowners treated as the unsung heroes in this carbon debate.
Would it be more purposeful to run audits on each person or residence to help them comprehend all their daily choices that indirectly have a carbon footprint? Could every product have independent labelling stating its carbon footprint based on where and how it is produced? Both pie in the sky and unpractical solutions that are bound to become corrupted anyway, but is the focus in the wrong direction?
With the whole world needing to become carbon negative to bring the earth's atmosphere back to equilibrium, who out there is busy developing a way to convert Co2 into another gas or a useable energy? There's a few innovative scientists working on some amazing solutions. Can people stop blaming, stop denying and focus on a realistic and workable path forward?
Utilising this oversupplied resource could be the most promising step forward, if we want to have the best of both worlds.
- Sara Westaway, livestock and property marketing