Michael Specter has an interesting article in The New Yorker
about global warming and how "dazzlingly complex" it all is once
you start to take all of the factors into account. the
calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of
how we live can be dazzlingly complex. To sum them up on a label
will not be easy. Should the carbon label on a jar of peanut
butter include the emissions caused by the fertilizer, calcium,
and potassium applied to the original crop of peanuts? What
about the energy used to boil the peanuts once they have been
harvested, or to mold the jar and print the labels? Seen this
way, carbon costs multiply rapidly. A few months ago, scientists
at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon
footprint of Christmas—including food, travel, lighting, and
gifts—was six hundred and fifty kilograms per person. That is as
much, they estimated, as the weight of “one thousand Christmas
puddings” for every resident of England. This passage caught my
attention. We need to