Ecological Footprint; Aviation Industry; Finland and Climate Change

Ecological footprint = a calculation that estimates the area of Earth's productive land and water required to supply the resources that an individual or group demands, as well as to absorb the wastes that the individual or group produces.

Check www.myfootprint.org for your ecological footprint. (For what it's worth, I took this test and thought I live a fairly simple life, but apparently my footprint is 4.4; and if everyone lived this way, we would need 2.4 planets! Makes you go, Hmm...)

Aviation appears to be the big culprit in the footprint equation. On that front, in Britain just this week, a new storm of a debate has erupted over the issue of restricting aviation to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Prime minister Tony Blair is taking heat for his comments on the "impracticality" of measures aiming to restrict air travel; an antithesis to his previous statements pushing for such restriction and to the Stern Review on climate change which he commissioned last year.

So is it easier to be on the corporate side, where your fate depends not on votes but on net profits? A fair CSR question, perhaps.

On that note, Richard Branson of Virgin, the UK transportation and entertainment conglomerate, agreed last fall to invest $3 billion in a new venture devoted to solving the climate crisis. Perhaps Branson sees this as a moral obligation, considering a major part of his empire is made up of Virgin Airlines?

According to environmental website Grist.com, Branson "plans to plow 100 percent of the proceeds from Virgin's airline and locomotive divisions -- an estimated $3 billion over 10 years -- into investments in clean technologies, such as wind turbines and cleaner-burning aviation fuel, with a heavy emphasis on developing "cellulosic" ethanol."

The first new offshoot in Branson's business empire is called Virgin Fuels, which will invest $400 million over the next three years in the renewable fuels sector, beginning with an ethanol venture called Cilion.

Here in Finland, likewise, Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto, EK, or The Conferedation of Finnish Industries, published a press release on 9.1.2007 and said that Finland should aim to be a major player in the fight against global climate change. According to EK, we must amend our consumption patterns and develop and apply new technologies. More global technology investment into combatting climate change; global norms and regulations; effective emissions trade; and efficient production processes are key. Energy and climate related technologies could be a major area of innovation for Finland.