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CARBON ACCOUNT

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The purpose of this sheet is to present your greenhouse gas emissions in simple and understandable terms

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It presents emitting carbon as being like spending money, and the amount you have as a fair share as like earning money

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The symbol for the carbon currency is ¢, and ¢1.00 = 1.00kg of carbon dioxide equivalent

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The income – the amount you can emit without causing global warming, according to the IPCC 2007 report – is set at ¢1,200 per person a year, or ¢100 monthly.

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IPCC 2007 found that we safely spend about ¢2,400 per person annually. The things we can control in our daily lives are about half this, thus the ¢1,200 figure.

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Of course you may decide that your income should be higher or lower, and adjust it.

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Apart from your fair share of ¢1,200 annually, the only way you can earn income is by planting trees, paying for them to be planted, and harvesting food

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Carbon offset schemes other than tree planting are based not on absorbing carbon, but on emitting less.

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If you help your friend spend less, that's good, but doesn't add to your income, especially if they're still spending more than they earn.

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Just go through and enter your information each month into the yellow and off-white text boxes.

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Enter the information when you buy things, don't spread them out according to how you expect them to be used.

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For example, if you buy 40lt of petrol in August but don't expect it to be used up until November, still just put 40lt in for August. It'll average out over time.

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Each item has its own unit of measurement, according to how it's usually bought – in kilograms, litres, and so on.

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For food, each of “organic” and “local” (made within 60miles/100km) makes it count 25% less; eg 10lbs of organic apples count as 7.5lbs

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For consumer goods, only count new things bought. Borrowed and secondhand are considered to have zero cost – whoever bought them first paid.

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There is a metric sheet, and a US measures sheet. The US sheet is filled with typical US household values.

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There's also a sheet of the authour's household; purchases are added the day we make them, transport and utilities are updated every week on Mondays.

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The end result is given in the blue areas.

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Just like with money, you want your spending to not exceed your income. The balance should be zero or more

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For advanced users, there is a hidden column, B. It's this which has the emissions for each item.

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Use different figures if you want, but remember that this sheet is designed to be usable by anyone in the world.

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Because of uncertainties in various items, and variation in the way things are done worldwide, I could only put in average figures.

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You can expect that the overall result will be within +/- 10% of the truth.

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The exact figure is not really important, what's important is that over time your spending should be less than your income, and your income should go up.