Climatepath’s mission could be summed up in one sentence – “make consumers aware of the real carbon economy and not limit them to the market economy”.
This is what Dave Rochlin, CEO of Climatepath, expounded during the last week’s EcoTuesday event. We are living in a capitalist society, where we believe price is always set by market forces, supply and demand. We also believe that the true cost of a product is already reflected in the price we pay. But contrary to the wisdom, market forces subsidize the product cost in many ways. What we pay may be just the production cost (fixed cost + variable cost + transportation cost). But, each product has its own lifecycle and many of the lifecycle costs are hidden from the consumer.
When we pay less for the products we use, we are actually pushing the problem to another part of the world or to the next generation. Therefore awareness needs to be created in the society regarding these costs. Dave demonstrated the lack of awareness by posing three simple questions to the audience:
(1) Do you use organic material because it is good for the environment? – Many hands went up.
(2) Do you use fair trade products and practices so that you are aware of how the product is produced? – Again many hands went up.
(3) Do you buy carbon offsets to reduce your carbon footprint? – None of the audience raised their hands.
Dave mentioned simple steps to adopt conservation in everyday life:
Wash clothes in cold water – the detergents work great in cold water as well as hot water. Washing in cold water cuts the fuel consumption tremendously. Also drying them in sunlight really helps.
Transportation, esp. air transportation is the biggest user of fuel. Cutting down non-essential travel, limiting the air travel to few trips per year can really help with the fuel consumption.
Dave is big on technology help to solve the sustainability problem. He suggests usage of network computing, cloud, storage on network as possible solution to prevent people migration.
Overall, the talk was both entertaining and enchanting for an audience of nearly 12 people (26 registrants). Dave truly rocked!!
