making sense of mangoes and jet fuel

A few weeks back Christophe was telling me how he loved eating mangoes: that whenever he visited the Philippines he’d take every chance to have some, and then when he returned to France he’d bring several boxes of it as well, both for him and his wife. So I asked him, “Why bring so many boxes of it? Aren’t mangoes sold in France? Why don’t you just buy them there?” Of course, in my mind I thought it was probably cheaper for him to buy them here than in his country where the markup could be tenfold, so he might as well seize the opportunity to get more for less. His response was similarly within those lines, plus something more.

He was a French economist who was helping us out craft an A/R project under the Clean Development Mechanism. And for him, although he loved Philippine mangoes, he resisted from buying them in France, not because it was too expensive but because he personally wanted to reduce his carbon footprint. By not supporting mangoes in France, he was lessening (or not creating) the demand for more mangoes to be exported from the Philippines to his country. Less demand meant less volume to be shipped which would translate to reduced jet fuel consumption due to lessened freight transport; hence reducing the carbon emissions. That, he believed, was his personal contribution to mitigate climate change. (Jet fuel, by the way, burns much hotter than ordinary fuel and therefore emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.) Apart from that, he even shared that their firm allowed them only several flights (or flight miles) in a year to conduct their business; they had a quota for their personal and institutional carbon emissions, and if they exceeded their limit they had to offset it by purchasing carbon credits in the EU market or elsewhere (like a CDM project in the Philippines or in other developing countries).

I told a friend of mine, Mithi, who works in another environmental NGO as I do about my discussion with Christophe. I asked her what she thought of it: if she thought Filipinos could be capable of making the same effort. It was a noble effort, she said echoing my sentiments as well. We both thought that long-term positive responses to global crises such as climate change should begin at the individual level. However, we similarly felt that in the Philippines it was still far from reaching critical mass. In these times when cheap flights are proliferated making air travel affordable—and possible—for every Juan, it’s even more challenging. She said even her organization was already considering implementing programs of the sort, but without lifestyle change the mitigation initiatives within an organization will be difficult and unsustainable to carry out; it might not even take off from the ground. So all they can do for now is encourage people to take the high road of being more conscious about their ecological—and not just carbon—footprint.

And then I thought about my own lifestyle and remembered my own footprint. Some years back I took an internet survey (I forget the URL) on assessing one’s ecological impact. As it turned out, the results revealed that if all the people of the world had my lifestyle—considerable material consumption, high meat diet, frequent air travel—we would need 2.5 planets to survive (Gack! Can you imagine 2.5 planets? What does that make me?).

I’ve realized the need for individual effort to respond to climate change, which when treated collectively can really make huge differences in the current and future climate situation of the world. While I don’t discount my part in advocating and implementing conservation programs, I know that I’m already offsetting my emissions by being involved in various environmental initiatives. But there’s something to making a personal difference in that you know that you now take ownership of the problem and the solution; you know that you now become empowered to do something.

So far, on my suggestion our household has completely switched to using compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), which not only decreases energy consumption (hence, lowering our electric bills) but also reduces emissions of greenhouse gases (the main culprit for warming the atmosphere). I’ve opted to walk short distances instead of riding tricycles or jeeps; I’ve even considered getting a bike later this year so I could use it to go to work instead of commuting daily. I still have large work to do though on reducing my dominantly meat diet, or on finding ways to offset the carbon impacts of my frequent traveling. I can’t even say yet that I’m somewhere remotely close to Christophe’s conviction (plus I’ve not considered yet how these personal actions impact other important things like the shifts in livelihoods of people, trade, employment, and what have you).
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I’m relieved at least that I live in this country and that mangoes are just sold at the nearby market a few blocks away from where I live. But the next question is: do I have to start thinking whether those mangoes are better (in terms of reduced environmental impacts and not quality) if they come from Luzon and not from Guimaras or Davao? I’m not sure if I’m already at that level of consciousness, but at least I’ve begun to think in terms of efficiency and trade-offs in responding to climate change.