PledgeBank United States
I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help

Things to do with this pledge

• Creator only: Send message to signers

Comments on this pledge

• It's good that you are asking people to cut down on the carbon footprint, but is it really the right way to go about things? It can't do any harm, but will it do a significant amount of good? Maybe there are better ways to the same goal. We all want our planet to survive in a fit state for us all to live on. I've tried the carbon footprint calculator and it is too crude. I will become less effective if I stop using my car and my tipper and my excavator and lawnmower and so on, and I am in many ways typical of the majority. The majority will not cut down on energy usage of themselves. There are ways that we can all be helped to do this, but they are complex and involved. I am starting something that could take these things forward. I don't have a website yet, but I will get one constructed for me this year and start promoting my ideas. One idea is to buy up land to grow trees on. I have just paid £20,000 for 6.25 acres in Rhyd Y Fro,Pontardawe near Swansea. It's half wooded already. Millions of us have to buy millions of acres and grow billions of trees to absorb the carbon we are burning. Eventually there will be enough wood to use instead of the dwindling fossil fuels. And as long as there are many other changes we'll get enough gaseous, liquid and solid fuels from wood, as well as building materials, to power our systems without fosil fuels. But we need to get on with buying the land and planting the trees as quicly as possible.
  Robert Howes, 13 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Robert,
  Thank you for your interesting comments on my pledge. I think that there is something in what you say - none of us want to cut down on our burning fossil fuels - but if we all do a little bit it will help a little bit. I know the Carbon footprint is crude but it does bring home the damage we are doing if we choose to fly abroad for our holidays or for a business trip. These are choices most of us can make for the sake of our children's futures.
  
  I believe the only long term solution is for governments to get together and to tax fossil fuels heavily at the point of extraction.
  
  With regard to your idea of planting trees, recent research has shown that planting trees (apart from in a narrow belt around the equator) will not reduce the global warming effect in the atmosphere. In fact it may even increase it. This has put me off tree planting "offsetting" initiatives.
  
  If we plant trees and use the fuel and stop using fossil fuel that would help.
  But you can't run a car or an aeroplane off wood (at least not yet).
  
  Jonathan
  Jonathan Samuel, 13 years ago. Abusive? Report it!

Current signatories (= they've done it)

Jonathan Samuel, the Pledge Creator, joined by:

• jakke Debruyne
• Daphne Llewellyn
• Deborah Mann
• Jessan Dunn Otis
• Vicky Denaxa
• Jeremy Robert Furbish
• 4 people who did not want to give their names

View signup rate graph