Carbon (bean) counters

This is a piece I had written more than three years ago, but I do not recall having posted it anywhere. In a way, then, it is safe to assume that this is a re-post.

I have an abiding sneer on my face when I mention accountants, the bean counters. My favorite assessment is they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. And, management people drill it into us, repeatedly, that what cannot be measured does not exist. I have only slightly less contempt for them. Their focus on numbers, to be fed into their Excel sheets, gets my goat.

But today I am getting a lesson on the virtue of knowing the cost, some numbers, of at least some things. It is about a New York bill board, not a commercial advertisement but something more akin to a public services message. And, the way the message is displayed makes me hopeful that it will get through some thick headed people, the global warming skeptics.

Some details: It is a 21 m wide message (you can view a photo of the signage here [1]); located near Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, a lot of foot traffic who can look up at the message and who, hopefully, can take it in; put up by Deutcsche Bank’s asset management division (a penance for the excesses of the recent past?); shows green house gas levels in the atmosphere, on a global reckoning in real time. If you accessed this [2] you may get a visceral feeling for what we are doing to the atmosphere. The heart of the Earth is beating at rates that will kill any living being.

I must confess to a middle-level awareness of issues of global warming. Yet, the only numbers related to climate change that I can throw up are 387, 2, 450, 30 billion and 21. The current level of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is 387 parts per million. This number increases approximately by 2 every year. When the concentration reaches 450 we can say good bye to living comfortably (another 30 years or so), no matter the capacity of the air conditioners. 30 billion tones is the total amount of green house gases we emit annually (weighted by carbon dioxide equivalence). And, 21 is that equivalence for methane, typically from farming and animal breeding activities. These are not enough to satisfy an accountant.

But, I have some more numbers for him or her, thanks to the bill board. One is, 3.64 trillion, and the other is 2 billion. The first is the tons of green house gases in the atmosphere. The other is an estimate of by how much it will increase in a month at the given rates of consumption.

In Europe, environmental, particularly global warming, tracking of automobile use is through GHG emissions per kilometer and these are beginning to be mandated. Automobile manufacturers are forced to tweak their engine design. Till now the common man had trouble reckoning his imposition on the environment because nothing he did registered on the scales doing the rounds - annual 2 ppm increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. That sounded so remote. But now his job has been made easy because the numbers are more accessible. This is an instance of coming across meaningful numbers.

Even big numbers, when accessible, have a way of waking people up (I hope). But, the results of a similar awareness raising campaign conducted about 15 years ago in New Delhi do not offer much hope. That was when the nation was inching close to the one billion mark in total population. A large board in front of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, not as big as the one in New York now, showed the total population number jumping up in real time. And, it was given a royal ignore. What was worse was that when the “official” millionth current citizen was born, the occasion was celebrated! The government gave some “gifts” (I do not remember the details). It is to hoping this does not repeat in New York: No “gifts” for the 10 millionth SUV.

It is my fervent hope that visitors to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden glance up at least once in a while and see the numbers dancing in front of their eyes. Perhaps we should have similar boards at airports, oil refineries, thermal power stations, cement factories, meat processing plants, construction sites, and places of energy intensive activities, first in the US and later on in China, the West European nations, Japan, Australia, East European nations, OPEC countries, Mexico, Brazil, India, and …

To conclude, the sneer on my face faded partially. I see numbers as meaningful, even beyond the Excel sheets. Accountants and management people are not evil incarnate, after all.

Raghuram Ekambaram

References

1. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jun/18/new-york-carbon-counter
2. http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/;jsessionid=73FD487FCCDC4654B27E11E267F3849C.internet3

AGW, climate change, Carbon emissions, CO2, Methane,