Carbon footprints / Empreintes de carbon

There’s a campaign in the UK and the rest of the world for everyone to reduce their carbon footprint by 10 per cent by 2010. It something small which we can all do for the future of the planet, even though I believe that politicians have to take a much bigger role in this.

Il y a une campagne pour la réduction d’émissions de carbon de tout le monde par 10 pour cent avant 2010. C’est quelque chose que tout le monde peut faire pour l’avenir de la planète, mème si les politiciens doivent prendre un role plus important.

I used the calculator on the website Carbon footprint to calculate our footprint and found that Lo Jardinièr and I are each responsible for 4.74 tonnes of carbon emissions per year:

House 0.41

Flights 0

Car 1.16

Bus & rail 0.06

Secondary 3.11 (food, entertainment, clothes, etc.)

J’ai calculé sur le site Carbon footprint et j’ai trouvé que chaqu’un de nous deux, Lo Jardinièr et moi, sommes resonsable pour 4.74 tonnes d’émissions de carbon par an. La moyenne pour la France est 6.2, mais il faut réduire ce chiffre pour le monde entière à 2 tonnes pour sauver la planète.

Our problem is that we already lead a comparatively low-carbon life, so that it’s difficult to find ways we can reduce it further. The average for France is 6.20 tonnes, for the UK it is 14 and for all industrialised nations it is 11. We can’t let these figures make us feel complacent, though, since the target – what we must do to save the planet – is 2 tonnes per person.

There are some suggestions for cutting emissions on the Guardian website – here. I’ll be reading through them carefully to see what we can do. / Il y a des suggestions (en anglais) pour réduire les émissions de carbon sur le site du Guardian – ici.

While I’ve been writing this it has started to rain! We hope it will be enough to make a difference to the garden, as we’ve had no proper rain for three months.