With any new developments which involve a world wide issue there are both great benefits and losses to implementing a new strategy.
Carbon offsetting is high on the agenda of a lot of major players in the transport and public industry, with some of the UK’s largest airline companies belonging to a carbon offset programme, and even key figures like Richard Branson having alternative fuel vehicles, so why you may ask, is there such negativity to something which seems to be so positive?
With carbon offsetting you donate or equal out in monetary terms the amount of CO2 you send into the atmosphere by your carbon footprint (air travel, car travel, home use of energy). This money is then used to help organisations whose primary goal is to re-balance the world’s resources which have been or a being destroyed by our current way of living. One of the ways this is done is by re-plating trees and crops which will use the extra CO2 being produced to grow and replenish with much needed and less harmful oxygen.
What is primarily a fantastic plan is causing some controversy in some circles, as it is being said that the land which is now being used to plant trees and crops is taking away land from farmers and causing an adverse effect on the communities it surrounds.
This, of course, has no solid bearing on what is happening everywhere but may have some resolve by organisations working close with the local communities and in doing so bring new jobs and opportunities.
Alternative fuel is no different. Each option which is available has the “pro and con” factor involved.
The Hybrid vehicle is one of the better known and more distributed of the alternative fuel vehicles. It does benefit from some of the lowest CO2 emissions and a more advanced technological engine, with it being able to switch between petrol and electric motor power automatically. But, to build and then scrap a hybrid is potentially the biggest impact to the environment. Why? Because of what the vehicle's power cells. The battery is of course, the on of the most difficult to deal with. All the chemicals and components of a battery are incredibly harmful to the environment when not dealt with properly and is already a considerable problem within the recycling system.
The other element with a hybrid involves energy. There is no doubting that the hybrid is the best on the market for fuel economy and you can go further on a tank (primarily with urban driving), but the energy it takes to build and then scrap the vehicle will balance this saving out. We see the benefits directly to our bank accounts but not this is not so on the environment on a whole.
The Bio-fuel vehicles are foremost in the news at the moment with its advantages and disadvantages with running and fuelling. The impact on farming and land is foremost in the arguments. It has been said that the amount of grain used as fuel would feed a family for a year. This of course sets alarm bells ringing in all directions, but with a lot of farms collapsing due to importing and many fields in Britain are currently not in main production use, there is plenty of land to start bio-fuel production and Britain’s soil is best for the grain and sugar beet needed for the production of ethanol. There are farmers in Britain already producing the crops and have the equipment in place to create the ethanol product, but is waiting for the government to agree for main stream production to start.
The cost to fuel your vehicle with bio-fuel is also of no particular advantage at this time. With more fuel being used per mile than regular fuel, and no major difference in the price to regular fuel it will cost more to run your vehicle on bio fuels until the government offsets this price to make it an even scale.
Balance is the key.
For making alternative fuel a primary in the market, there is a lot the government still needs to do to truly make alternative fuel as beneficial as regular fossil fuel. The small tax breaks and advantages which Mr Brown has in place currently, are not enough to truly entice the regular driver to do more in changing their vehicle to a more eco friendly machine, but with 2010 looming we, in the motor industry, are hoping for a dramatic change in the governments budgets for the future, and for a balance to be made with the pricing.
With carbon offsetting, the thinking behind it and what is being done can do nothing but good, but care needs to be taken with considering the effect of the human population. A strange turn of events when you think about the many species of animals and plants which our de-naturalization have destroyed or are on the brink of extinction, so a balance has to be made between humanities needs and the natural world.
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