Sainsbury’s cannot say they will be carbon neutral by simply ignoring the consequences of its own actions. Doing so is, in fact, is a caricature of the denial implicit in the whole climate crisis to date, where it has always been pretended that emissions are an externality and someone else’s problem. They’re not. And in this case Scope 3 emissions are Sainsbury’s concern. Their claim that they will be net-zero carbon is not true unless they take them into account.
This is sustainable cost accounting again.
Scope 3 is emissions from things people sell. So, Sainsbury’s sells me petrol, Sainsbury’s is on the hook for the emissions I make.
And don’t forget, everyone should be bankrupt if they can’t go net zero.
A potato cannot be net zero. I eat it, I convert the contained energy into the ability to inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. I don’t eat it, it rots, there could be, anaerobic style, methane emissions. Non-anaerobic, CO2. Or it’s eaten by the mice who do the exhale thing.
If all are responsible for their Scope 3 emissions then it is impossible to sell a tuber.
Unless, of course, you’re a Tuber selling yourself for a grant cheque.
So Sainsburys sells me a bag of coal, and they have to account for the emissions when I burn it – then surely I don’t have to worry about the emissions, otherwise we’re double counting.
Similarly, the producer who sold it to Sainsburys should be accounting for the emissions, so Sainsburys don’t have to.
Doesn’t this just mean that anyone producing raw materials is responsible for all emissions everywhere?
Try writing hat on Capt Potato’s blog, Rational Anarchist. Your time there will soon be over in order to preserve free speech
When a potato grows it absorbs CO2, so surely Sainsbury’s purchases this negative carbon emmission when they buy the potato, when netts them to zero balancing out their carbon emissions.
Oh, I forget, the Climatistas want *everything* to have zero emissions, having redefined the word “nett”.
The thought of a hessian-tunic-clad, carbon-neutral Potato, roaming the fens of Cambridgeshire stalking a fox to club to death for his tea, makes one hope for our extinction.
“makes one hope for our extinction”
Why? That vision fills me with joy. The idea that I might have to share that existence doesn’t, of course, but the vision is delightful.
I think you Blokes have it all wrong.
He, and others like him, don’t use facts and reason. But that’s what you’re trying to fight them with. Facts and reason.
Ok, I am being unfair. Thank you for taking the trouble. It makes for an educational hinterland for that percentage wot cares. Call it, maybe, 10 per cent?
But his kind of shakedown racket predates even Praise God Barebones. It’s mendicancy. High middle-age stuff. And not just in Yurp, but also in parts of Asia. A brilliant business model. For the cost of nothing they’re selling feelgoods where, on the mere purchase, the purchaser must feel bad and therefore ‘need’ more.
Not for nothing did the monasteries end up being so wealthy.
Of course what they do is destructive. But as a path to riches (for its advocates), it is centuries’ old, tried and tested. It works. And it works as poesy, as life-coaching, as the confessional. It’s the best snake-oil there is. And you can’t beat it with facts and logic any more than you can persuade a lady above a certain age that the Shiseido face cream at £75 will do her no more good than will the Nivea at £10.
So, thanks for playing. But, also, this is where the likes of Ayn Rand enter, stage left.
A vision or a path must be offered. As Smith might have said, it’s all about incentives, and incentives are not purely pecuniary (so says Lud, and possibly Smith).
@Edward Lud, exactly right. SCA is an excuse for governments to nationalise anything they want for zero compensation on environmental grounds. It is Ritchie telling the left what they want to hear in the hope of a job/grant/peerage.
@Diogenes I did ask him about what seemed to be inherent double counting, asked if he were taking a VAT approach maybe and didn’t get very far. Apparently it’s all still conceptual and he’s waiting for others to deal with the details and then he will issue his god-like opinion on if they meet his vision.
Vot heppenz if everyone iz benkrupt, inkluding ze benkruptzee djuddzees?
Don’t ask me, I ain’t got a Scoby.
m’Lud
Is it your evening vizz Ingrid?
I’m rolling down the stairs from her boudoir as I type, Mr B. She sent her regards.