Reference: How green can you get, Bangkok Post, September 30, 2008

It is proposed that we should reduce our carbon footprint by using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels as a way of mitigating climate change (How green can you get, Bangkok Post, September 30, 2008). It should be recognized in this context that promoting the carbon footprint as the overarching environmental issue does more harm than good because it trivializes more important pollution issues and also because some measures taken to reduce the carbon footprint create more environmental problems than they solve (Beyond carbon, Bangkok Post, September 30, 2008). For example, the use of fertilizer to grow renewable energy crops is causing an extreme form of water pollution by nitrogen compounds called eutrophication. The carbon people have run afoul of the nitrogen people. Environmentalism has gone awry.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand