The University of Not-Bielefeld, like many other institutions these days, has hopped on the environmental bandwagon (electric powered, of course) and, among other things, designed an Action Plan to guide it along its path towards becoming CO2 neutral. (Me? I’ve always been CO2 neutral, except when there’s too much of it in a room trying to kill me. Then I get CO2 hostile and open a window.)
As with most documents of this kind, the Action Plan was long on big words and even longer on bigger promises (and, at 50+ pages, just bloody long too), but surprisingly short on actual, concrete actions. One of the few mentioned, however, was to replace the aging, 40-year-old windows on campus.
Now in replacing the windows on the very large, glass-fronted foyer on our building (good) while also fitting a good many out with solar panels (better), they had to remove a two-meter strip of shrubbery to provide a solid base for the heavy machinery (not great, but understandable), which they then cobbled over when all was said and done (WTF?). Apart from providing even less runoff area for northern Germany’s torrential winter rainfalls, it appears that University’s idea of achieving CO2 neutrality is to remove about 20 square meters of objects that remove CO2 naturally.
On top of that, a very much optional part of the renovations was to add a two-meter large, double-sided LED display panel that, until now, has mostly displayed only advertising. On top of a university generally needing this like Elon Musk needed to sell flamethrowers, the presumably non-solar powered cooling fans are already going crazy in the 20 ºC spring “heat”. The University, it would seem, is taking CO2 neutrality literally instead of trying for the more farsighted goal of becoming CO2 negative.
But then, as one of my colleagues put it, at least they didn’t chop down any trees to ensure that the solar panels see enough sunshine.
Welcome to bonehead CO2-neutrality of the day …
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