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Green Goal of ‘Carbon Neutrality’ Hits Limit
Wall Street Journal
ROUND ROCK, Texas — Computer giant Dell Inc. said this summer that it has become “carbon neutral,” the latest step in its quest to be “the greenest technology company on the planet.”
What that means, and what it doesn’t, may surprise Dell customers and other consumers who have been bombarded with bold environmental promises from major corporations.
In the two years since Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” helped make climate change a marquee issue, companies from Timberland Co., the shoe maker, to News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal and FoxNews.com, have promised to become “carbon neutral.”
The term may suggest a company has reengineered itself so that it’s no longer adding to the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases scientists say are contributing to climate change.
The experience of Dell, one of the few multinational corporations to claim it already has achieved carbon neutrality, shows the reality often falls short of that ideal.
The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company’s “carbon footprint.” But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently.
Dell counts the emissions produced by its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings’ electricity use, and its employees’ business air travel.
In fact, that’s only a small fraction of all the emissions associated with Dell. The footprint doesn’t include the oil used by Dell’s suppliers to make its computer parts, the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them.
Click here to read the rest of this story in the Wall Street Journal.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I have heard of some good scams in my time but this is the best ,carbon and c02 is needed for everything on earth to survive ,these radicals should be in prison for fraud science shows it is all nothing but lies and a scam for money so they can control powerm water in the world at a rediculous price and cost ,i guess thats why they are radicals or economic terroists ,c02 is not even a pollutant its essential for all life ,ethanol is dangerous as it puts out poison nitros oxide ,people are so dumb believing this crap.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Carbon neutral my A$$! Not that it really matters, but anyone who makes this statement is an outright fool and any company claiming this impossibility is sorely lacking in good common sense and judgement.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:53 am
…not to mention the fact that major name brand computers are really just cheap disposables. how “green” is that?
January 6th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I am committed to establishing the TRUTH about Carbon Offsets and the pure non-sense of the term Carbon Footprint. Read my blog, understand the use of “guilt” by organizations, be they non-profit or for-profit. http://www.squidoo.com/CARBON-FOOTPRINT-OFFSETS
Dan, Jan 6, 2009
January 8th, 2009 at 3:50 am
how longs it take to get a response published around here???
January 8th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I would have to agree with DELL on how it calculates it’s “Carbon Footprint”. If the emissions of thier suppliers are included in DELL’s “Carbon Footprint” calculation then their suppliers would have to reduce their own “Carbon Footprint” calculation by that same amount to prevent double counting those emissions. Also they could then be expected to include their employee’s auto emissions driving back and forth to work and the employees would subtract that from their emissions. IMHO
January 9th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
The increase in CO2 emissions attributed to mankind is so infinitesimally small that it couldn’t result in global warming. Do some research.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
When the global scientific community says global warming is real, and pseudo-scientific political community says it’s not, leave it to multi-national corporations to further muddy the waters for profit.
January 10th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
climate change is not a scam for money. Brilliant researchers at Yale, Stanford, U. of Michigan, Harvard, Maryland, Cornell, MIT, U. Florida, to name a few, all agree that it is happening before our eyes. We need to redefine our definition of carbon neutrality, but property rights certainly complicate the issue.