Understanding environmental impact is hard.

Me and my gas-guzzling mini-van have a much lower impact than most "green car" owners... simply because I drive way, way less than average.

Planes aren't bad for the environment because they burn lots of fuel. Planes are bad for the environment because they are convenient and encourage, enable and create a market for massive amounts of travel.

Switching to advanced, super-clean vehicles won't improve things nearly as much as telecommuting would.

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@HerraBRE
This goes both for big and small solutions alike. The lack of a shared way of measuring the environmental impact is problematic but I'm not sure is solvable: factors are a lot, and hard to reduce in simple formulas.

Odum gave it a good shot, ending up with a system which is interesting but IMHO not usable.

Measuring carbon footprint in some other way, such as the direct impact, is oblivious to the indirect effects... it's a topic I'm thinking a lot lately, and in some sectors (I mainly know the agricultural one) some standards are being developed which may be a good start.

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