Baby steps to personal carbon limits

CO2 Calculator
Slowly does it.Yesterday, David Milliband launched the government's new personal CO2 footprint calculator.

This one is to be the definitive calculator, using detailed and official data to calculate either your personal or your home footprint.

The problem so far is that it is either completely unavailable, or it runs so slow that, by the end, some of the answers you had entered could already be wrong. You might even have moved house!

It is unfortunate that the graphics and images are so extravagant that you cannot help feeling that they are to blame for the slow performance.

But in fact, it is surely the huge interest that this calculator has created that means it will be difficult to access for a while. This is good - and it is good that attempts are being made to standardise our concept of a personal or home carbon footprint. With so many versions available, each asking a different number of different questions, credibility has always been stretched.

The calculator seems to be quite comprehensive (although I have to admit that I still haven't made it to the end, since it crashed half way through each time I managed to get past the splash screen) - and even asks in earnest fashion how many wind turbines or solar panels you may have installed. Great!

If you cook with an oil fired range (what an aga? surely not...), you cannot complete the calculator. Surely an oversight when so many of the UK's detached houses have such cookers, and they will be prime candidates to really drive the use of still quite costly microgeneration and energy saving gadgets.

So...it doesn't work, but so far so good. If this is the next step in making us all understand our own responsibilities, then it should be applauded.