Some weeks, I just wish everyone could afford a subscription to
The New Yorker. Two essays this week seem of particular interest to people who post here.
Making a Market out Carbon Footprints:
Michael Specter's
Big Foot begins by describing Sir Terry Leahy, head of Tesco Supermarkets in Britain, and his pledge that Tesco will be a leader in creating a low-carbon economy.
He announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products. “Customers want us to develop ways to take complicated carbon calculations and present them simply,” he said.
