Eric is planting trees to offset his electoral carbon emissions. I think Eric is a lovely big huggie bear and an tireless local Mp but seriously this is a crock.
Invercargill MP Eric Roy kicked off a carbon-neutral campaign for re-election yesterday by planting trees in Queens Park.
Mr Roy planted 20 native podocarps near the animal enclosures on the Queens Dr side of the park yesterday afternoon.
The 20 trees would be more than enough to offset the carbon emissions produced while travelling around the electorate, he said.
Mr Roy drives a 3-litre diesel Hilux. He estimated he would travel 1500km during the next 40 days.
"There's a bit of driving ... we've made the best attempts to work out what we need to do and work out how to meet that requirement." The calculations were based on the estimate the emissions of an average household per year could be offset by planting four trees, he said.
The campaign would produce an estimated 430kg of carbon dioxide, while each tree would offset 250kg during its growing life, he said.
"I'm significantly under the estimation." Campaign materials would also be printed on recycled paper, which would cost 30 percent more than normal paper, he said.
The campaign had not been registered with carboNZero, a branch of Crown Research Institute Landcare Research, he said.
CarbonNZero technical manager Ann Smith declined to comment on Mr Roy's campaign as it was political.
Invercargill's Green Party candidate Craig Carson applauded Mr Roy's attempt to go carbon neutral.
"I think it's great that he's doing it. How well it works or not I'm not sure." Mr Carson said that because he worked fulltime and had limited resources, he was not able to follow suit.
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4 comments:
Bb, who is the local ACT candidate, they surely deserve a plug and a vote after the actions of this fool.
Eric should also check his maths. The life cycle of a podocarp is measured in hundreds of years, so he needs to divide his lifetime 250kg sequestration per tree by, say, 300 years. Also, he needs to understand that for the first 50 years there'll be bugger all sequestration.
He, OTOH, will be belching hot air vastly in excess of the tree's potential in just 40 days.
JC
I liked the Green candidates response: so he can't afford $80 and 45 minutes to plant 20 trees? what a fuckwit.
BTW, jc, Graeme Hall's research for Landcare in 2001 (I think) showed sequestration in natives occurs faster in the first 15 years.
"BTW, jc, Graeme Hall's research for Landcare in 2001 (I think) showed sequestration in natives occurs faster in the first 15 years."
Yes, I was thinking of a rimu struggling up through a forest canopy.
However, now I look at it, Roy's figure of 250kg depends on tree type and possibly just early growth.. insufficient information.
His larger problem is that native forest only grows about 1-3 tonnes/cubic metres per hectare per year compared to P radiata's ability to sequester up to 30 tonnes of CO2 after about age 10. If he really wants to make a difference he'd plant a lot of P rad because theres a final payoff in timber and even ethanol in the future.
JC
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