Felix: Our cumbersome carbon footprint

You have to feel sorry for the farmers. First it was BSE, then it was foot-and-mouth, and now it is flatulence. Farmers are now getting the blame for global warming because the cows are pumping out gas at both ends more than the apocryphal vicarage tea party.

You would have thought that having been through a crisis where the cows were mad, so had to be killed, then they risked getting ill so had to be killed, but now are no longer falling over or foaming at the mouth and are in the pink, in fact in rude health, they might feel that they would be left alone to chew the cud and bicker about whether it is going to rain or not (not so tricky to decide this summer, admittedly). But no '“ now being healthy and doing what they are meant to do has brought them a whole lot more bother.

From Wellington boots to wigs

So then if the average farm has a carbon footprint more the size of Wellington boot, I wondered what ours is, down the Crown Court. I expect that it is pretty full-bottomed wig-big.

Let us see: there are twelve jurors, one usher, one court clerk and one judge for starters. They all travel too and fro and make lots of cups of coffee. Then there are the jolly old advocates who have got up terribly early to travel to far flung places, adding their carbon footprint.

Then there are all the solicitors and/or their clerks, and then there is the star or stars of the show, the defendants themselves (plus entourage of bored looking security officers). Well that is a lot of travelling '“ particularly the felons as they travel about the country in the salad van from court-to-court and prison- to-prison.

Then we all have the lights on all the time, and the heating on all the time because it must not get too cold, and the air conditioning on all the time because we must not get too hot, and then we do eventually get there we only sit for a fraction of the day. Rather like watching a cricket match, in most trials, most of the time, nothing much is happening. So, that is a lot of carbon for not a lot of action. At least the cows get milked twice a day and look nice.

Over the years of course there have been efforts to reduce the amount of travelling: we have the video link PCMHs where the defendants appear on a screen in court, beamed in from 'the Scrubs' or some other such exotic location, and we can all pretend that we are in Star Trek talking to the television (although resisting such phrases as, 'It's a trial your honour, but not as we know it'). And sometimes we do not bother with defendants at all for some things. And now we are not supposed to have many mentions.

But in the end it does cost a lot of energy to get us all there '“ and then of course, one of the jurors goes off sick.

What really expands the footprint is of course the massive amount of photocopying. This is something that armies of very well paid and highly qualified trainee solicitors at City firms spend years perfecting: yup, 'the bundles'.