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ATREEM meter measures a tree's girth against your carbon footprint (and wallet)
Worried about your impact on the planet? The ATREEM project by Nitipak Samsen, a graduate of London's Royal College of Art, makes doing something about it as easy as swiping your credit card. At least, that's the plan.
Samsen's ATREEM (or Automated Tree-Rental for Emission Encaging Machine) is, in short, a meter strapped to a tree that measures its girth and determines how much it offsets carbon emissions. You can queue up a list of greenhouse grievances — such as the amount of electricity you use or your daily drive to work (or even the amount of power it takes to run ATREEM) — and then swipe your credit card to donate money to the tree rental service running ATREEM.
It's all a bit tongue-and-cheek, but the aim of the project is to make the work done by carbon-emission-offsetting websites more tangible, as a physical tree would show you how long it takes for nature to handle what you do in your daily life.
Check out more in the gallery below.
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Via Dezeen
By Karpet at 10:20 PM ON 07/06/09
The epic futility of this entire project is as foolish as the concept it upholds. Let's get to the heart of it, the tree will engulf and consume this unit before it can divulge anything remotely useful. Even the slightest of pressure against a tree's bark will cause the new bark cells to grow around the obstacle. Surely people have seen trees where it has absorbed its own branches in this manner.
Furthermore the very idea that someone is selling rights to the life functions of an existing component of an eco system is absurd and deceitful. While capitalistic goals are the driving force of a healthy economy, the fact that environmentalist are so blinded by the prospect of monetary solutions to global warming and other such eco-issues is proof to the simple mindedness of the cause. If the only thing that changes in the system are amounts in a bank account and not the physical characterizes of the environment then nothing really changes.
It matters not if this is an art installation or a realistic attempt to legitimize the sale of 'carbon offsets', it does more to illustrate the uselessness of said offsets.
If you feel bad about driving to work, stop driving to work. If you want to help reforest, then plant a tree. Any questions?
By Giggity at 1:26 PM ON 07/07/09
Well said Karpet.
The idea of carbon offsets is a politcally driven concept for business (and Al Gore) to make more money off us poor saps.
By Aazimon at 2:02 PM ON 07/07/09
This comes from the new "Clean Energy" bill, that's going through Congress.
By karpet at 7:41 PM ON 07/07/09
You my friends sound like you might enjoy the hippie engine project. hippiesarefuel.blogspot.com . we touch on all the neo-environmental issues that are designed more so to cripple our way of life then help the planet.
By Hired Mind at 1:08 AM ON 07/08/09
Drat. I went to the Hippie Engine Project fully expecting an engine that would use hippies as its fuel - thereby killing two birds (and a lot of hippies) with one stone.
Oh well, nice site anyway...
By karpet at 8:31 PM ON 07/09/09
@Hired Mind: Thanks for visiting. We have yet to post any of our really hard research data about the use of hippies as fuel but we are currently undergoing a study of the thermal energy of the average hippie/eco-phile. Check back often as new discoverys are made every day.
By MikeRider at 2:54 PM ON 07/10/09
Al Gore will sue: this is obviously an attempt to muscle-in on his patented "get people to pay money for intangible units that have no real value" idea.
Lawyer-up, Bubba.
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MikeRider:
Al Gore will sue: this is obviously an attempt to muscle-in on his patented "get people to pay money for intangible...More »