Carbon footprint?

The Office of Public Works has come up with a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in 250 or so of their buildings by 15% over the next two years. A laudable objective, but consider this:

Much of the CO₂ build up in government offices is due to hot air.

I propose a series of initiatives to reduce this pollutant from our workplace.

1. Reduce the number of meetings held annually.
2. Give managers a certain quota of words to use per day; eg they should not speak more than 20,000 words. This will force them to be more concise in their delivery and will reduce waffling and the resultant confusion among their staff. A good start to this would be banning “management-speak” clichés immediately.

If this should fail, which it might, as change is almost always poorly managed in the civil service, I propose the alternative strategy:

• Use the CO₂ as a renewable source of energy to power office equipment such as computers, fans and photocopiers. This could be adopted on a localised basis by attaching small portable wind turbines to each HEO to convert the hot air produced by said managers into electric current.

Also what about methane? CH₄ is a far more deadly gas than CO₂ don’t you think? It being highly flammable and all?

If the methane gases produced on a daily basis by civil servants in the office toilets were to be diverted to an external storage tank, this would heat the building in an eco-friendly and sustainable way. Also people using the toilets after the CH₄ has been released would no longer have to suffer the appalling stink. Flame throwers using methane as fuel could also be given to each EO as a motivational tool.

Finally, when considering noxious gases, let me remind readers that the abbreviation for clerical officer is the same as the chemical symbol for a molecule of carbon monoxide. And yes, both can provoke thoughts of asphyxiation.