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World’s first real-time carbon counter
In the center of New York City, near Penn Station, a 70-foot billboard with a digital display is tracking the trillions of tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
This should make your eyes open wide. It’s a huge number, and it’s getting bigger, fast. As Scientific American wrote the day the counter was unveiled, “Can you say guilt trip?”
Deutsche Bank partnered with MIT scientists to create this display– the world’s first real-time carbon counter. Its intent is to help create sense of urgency about greenhouse gas emissions, much like the National Debt Clock did a few years ago. This counter takes into account carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and a handful of other greenhouse gases, and reports them in “CO2 equivalents.”
As Newsweek summarized, “National debt used to be the big number we all lived in fear of. Now it’s greenhouse gases.”
We don’t like perpetuating fear and guilt when we talk about climate change, so we hope you look at this carbon counter, feel shocked, then take control and do some simple actions to reduce emissions. And if it makes you feel any better, the carbon counter’s display itself is made of low-energy LEDs to save– you guessed it– greenhouse gas emissions.
Roger from Solar Power Facts said,
July 1, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
Maybe individual counters should be put on homes. That’d be a good way to tax the richer people as their homes no doubt consume far more energy than others.
David Robins said,
July 5, 2009 @ 5:56 am
To succeed both businesses and individuals need to do their best to reduce their energy consumption and switch to green energy when possible. There is so much each one of us can do to make our planet cleaner and healthier for all of us. We have selected reducing our carbon foot print as a goal for our business.