While browsing books in the book lined basement of City Lights bookstore (San Francisco) it occurred to me that they use up an awful lot of trees to make books. No great revelation there - there's a reason they (geeks) call printed media "thin tree format". However trees are made of carbon which means growing trees, turning them into paper and then storing them, often for hundreds of years must have taken an awful lot of carbon out of play. Yes, books are our very own knowledge based carbon sequestration technique. We should be burning or recylcing books but just filling our basements, garages, and homes with them. What a thought, buying books is patriotic!
But then again I have to wonder, does it take more carbon emissions to produce each book than that which is stored in the book on the shelf? If so maybe it is time for low carbon emissions eco-friendly books.
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